The credibility of the Catholic Church as public actor

O'Loughlin, Thomas

Abstract

This article assumes that there is a profound crisis of credibility in the Catholic Church today. This is distinct from the issue of the credibility of Christian faith or the credibility of theism, for many who believe, indeed many Catholics, are affected by this sense that the Church, as a public actor, lacks credibility. Moreover, while it
would be a mistake to seek the roots of this lack of credibility within general appeals to “modern unbelief,” so it would also be a mistake to imagine that it is purely a matter of “image” or as a direct result of the
revelations about clerical child-abuse and its cover-up. It argues that modern society has evolved, through painful experience, a healthy scepticism about large organisations and with this has developed a set of social values (e.g. mutual responsibility and transparency) that
are at odds with many of the values (e.g. hierarchy) that the Church has inherited from its past. Far from seeing these developments as part of a pathology of modernity, they can be seen as the work of the Spirit and a challenge to the Church to embrace new ways of being a witness to the truth and new ways of embodying the Christ in its living.

Citation

O'Loughlin, T. (2013). The credibility of the Catholic Church as public actor. New Blackfriars, 94(1050), https://doi.org/10.1111/nbfr.12011

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Feb 11, 2013
• Deposit Date: Apr 3, 2014
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 3, 2014
• Journal: New Blackfriars
• Print ISSN: 0028-4289
• Electronic ISSN: 0028-4289
• Publisher: Wiley
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 94
• Issue: 1050
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/nbfr.12011
• Keywords: Catholic, Church, Credibility, Transparency, Authority
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/713414
• Publisher URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nbfr.12011/abstract