Paul Collins is an engaging writer. He engages with his audience, with the defects of his church, and with the public issues of his day. In this book, he stands back a little, asking why, in the face of so much that he finds to criticise, he remains Catholic.
He makes a persuasive, if not original, case for leaving the church behind. For Collins, sexual abuse and its cover-up, the harassment of faithful Catholics, intolerance, dishonesty and a repressive sexual ethos, have deep roots. They lie in an abuse of power that makes office holders unaccountable, infantilises local churches, and encourages vigilante groups. His is a deeply dysfunctional church, that alienates its members.
Caught in such a deep winter, one may well ask why not head for warmer climates. Collins replies that Catholicism is in the blood. A genuinely Catholic faith affirms the goodness and promise of the world that God has made. It shapes a community that encourages a confidently enquiring attitude to the world, and looks for God’s footsteps among the people and the plight of the world. Collins values prayer and contemplation as ways of finding God’s presence in the world. In more recent years, he has responded to God’s presence in nature and has committed himself to the environmental movement.
He refers to this generous vision of the world as the Catholic imagination. If it sets him against a rationalist and fearfully dogmatic form of Catholicism, it also leads him to criticise the secular rationalism that finds no value in faith. He finds both adversaries shallow.
The Catholicism which Collins describes represents the Catholic tradition at its best. It is informed, reflective, undemonstratively devout and confident. Collins has a good eye for its enemies and for its counterfeits. He is right to claim that an emphasis on control and on unthinking is alien to the Catholic tradition. His book will encourage those who espouse an inclusive style of Catholicism to hang in. If the Roman hobgoblins of his book seem to wear black hats of unnatural darkness, his readers will enjoy the more their decapitation.
The broad Catholic tradition, however, is not simply for celebrating. It is also for passing on. That the struggle to pass on the full Catholic tradition will be fought on an unfavourable terrain with few troops becomes evident if we reflect on the questions that will shape the Catholic Church of the future. Who will