As I was reading Ross Douthat’s NYT column about the Catholic Church spinning out of control as the result of Pope Francis’ equivocal efforts at liberalization, the historical analogy that came to mind was Gorbachev, who saw his country implode when he tried to save the system by shaking it up just a little bit.
If you are surprised or offended by my analogy tying the Church to the Communist Party, don’t be. While the two are poles apart ideologically, they are actually quite similar structurally.
Don’t expect the Church to suffer the same fate as the Soviet Union. It has 2,000 years of experience on its side. That’s a lot of institutional knowledge and inertia.