As much as I get a kick out of Catholics throwing scriptural verses at each other — which wouldn't have happened before Vatican II! — the exchanges demonstrate the way Catholics on both sides of the ideological divide make a fundamental flaw when applying scriptural edicts to the church today. They forget the profound observation made by H. Richard Niebuhr in his book Christ and Culture: "A great and powerful church cannot responsibly do what a small and persecuted sect found to be required of it."
Still, my problem with Vance is different and deeper. My problem is the way Vance, like a series of prominent conservative converts to Catholicism, reduces Catholicism not just to ethics, but to an ideology.
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