In [New York Archbishop Timothy] Dolan, the bishops have turned to their most gifted natural communicator, a leader with a demonstrated capacity to project a positive image for Catholicism in the public square. Rather than electing a behind-the-scenes broker of compromise, in other words, the bishops tapped their best front man. That choice could be taken as an imminently rational reaction to recent events.
… while Dolan certainly is more “conservative” than Kicanas, it’s not what’s distinctive about him. To be sure, there are plenty of other conservatives in the USCCB. Dolan’s defining quality isn’t really his ideology, but rather his capacity to build relationships with people who don’t share his outlook.
In many ways, Dolan is a high-octane, populist American expression of what I’ve called the “affirmative orthodoxy” of Benedict XVI: no compromise on matters of Catholic identity, but a determination to express that identity in the most positive key possible, keeping lines of conversation open with people outside the fold.
In other words, it might be more analytically productive to read Dolan’s election not so much as a victory of conservatives over liberals, but rather as an endorsement of the “affirmative orthodoxy” wing of the conference’s conservative majority over its harder ideological edge.
Here’s the [url=http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/three-keys-reading-dolan-win-usccb]link[/url].
“Affirmative orthodoxy”– that’s a very good idea. That’s what we need to be doing in Anglicanism as well. Not reactionary or negative, but positively putting forward the immutable apostolic faith.
Can you imagine just ten years ago a reporter for the NCR opining that Joseph Ratzinger is the face of affirmative orthodoxy? Remember the PanzerKardinal! Now we supposedly have two wings in one wing of the USCCB. Let’s see- the affirmative orthodox/hard-edged ideologues. I wonder which group is favored by Allen? This taxonomy is all fairly meaningless.
Heh — nice spin. Worthy of ENS.
RE: “Can you imagine just ten years ago a reporter for the NCR opining that Joseph Ratzinger is the face of affirmative orthodoxy?”
Right — but when you’ve got to try to come up with another reason [other than, the church is moving conservative] for why this is the second time in history that “a sitting vice president was on the presidential ballot and lost the election” you’ll say anything.
Desperate spin times call for desperate spin measures.
Allen’s comments are most rational given the ideological hysteria of the right and left.
Yeh — they turned down a sitting vice president on the presidential ballot for the second time in history because the conservative guy who also is pro-life — unlike the rejected sitting vice president — is a good communicator.
; > )
But it *is* rational for libs to try to come up with an alternative . . . uh . . . reason. I completely understand why they would try that and it’s perfectly sensible.