"At various times in the John Paul II era there would be complaints from conservative Catholics, asking why, if liberals believe so intensely in moral and doctrinal transformation, if they are so committed to having (for instance) married or female clergy, intercommunion with other Christian churches, acceptance of homosexuality and contraception and even perhaps abortion, they don’t join one of the numerous Christian bodies where those transformations have taken place? Why be a dissenting and disgruntled Roman Catholic when you can just be a faithful Episcopalian or Congregationalist?
"The answer, surely, is that the religious-liberal project believes itself to be God’s project, that its tireless advocates believe themselves to be doing the Holy Spirit’s work, and it proves very little about God’s ultimate intentions if a few modestly sized bodies in the firmament of mainline Protestantism embrace the sexual revolution. You will only know and prove that God wants liberalization when liberalization comes to the church of Rome and its billion-odd Catholics. You can’t be fully vindicated, fully assured of Providence’s favor, unless you change that church.
"A similar logic applies to conservative Catholics [under Pope Francis and Fiducia supplicans] today."
Ross Douthat, "No better time to be a Catholic: Catholicism's problems are the problems of the world," Opinion, The New York times, 22 December 2023, underscoring mine.
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