The “American Situation” Is Not the Church’s Future — It Is the Church’s Present Ruin
New York Times columnist Ross Douthat suggested that the election of an American Pope indicates that Church leadership now recognizes that the “American situation” — marked by pluralism, complexity and conflict but also a vibrant local Church — may be a model for the rest of the Catholic world going forward.
The National Catholic Register reports that Ross Douthat, a New York Times columnist and self-described “Catholic representative” to the secular press, has proposed that the election of the American-born antipope Leo XIV signals a recognition by the conciliar structures occupying the Vatican that the “American situation” — religious pluralism, cultural competition, and entrepreneurial evangelism — should serve as the model for the global Church in the 21st century. Douthat praised the antipope’s “spirit of reconciliation” with those pretending to be traditional Catholics and his avoidance of “big internal controversies,” contrasting him favorably with his predecessor. He pointed to American evangelization groups like FOCUS and figures like Father Mike Schmitz and Bishop Robert Barron as evidence of a “flourishing” Church in the United States, even as Pew Research data shows Catholic affiliation declining from 23% to 19% in less than two decades. What Douthat and the Register present as a success story is, from the perspective of integral Catholic faith, nothing less than a comprehensive admission that the conciliar sect has abandoned the supernatural mission of the Church and embraced a naturalistic, Protestantized model of religious marketing in a marketplace of competing “faiths.”
