KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter
May 23, 2019
By Jason Steidl
Pundits criticized James Carroll’s Atlantic article, but did they try to understand him?
On May 17, The Atlantic published James Carroll’s “Abolish the Priesthood,” an overtly personal and lengthy critique of clericalism in the Roman Catholic Church. The author, a former priest, wrote of his anguished decision to take time away from the institutional Catholic Church after decades of disappointment with the hierarchy, including the last few years, which have leveled wave after wave of the sex abuse crisis.
Toward the end of the piece, which treats much more than its clickbait title suggests, Carroll proposes several ways that Catholics can reimagine their tradition to better meet their and the world’s spiritual needs. For Catholics exhausted by scandal after scandal in the church, Carroll offers hope that all is not lost. He argues that Catholic community, spirituality and service rooted in ancient tradition have much to offer the world today.
Sadly, this is not how most male Catholic pundits received Carroll’s thought. In fact, at a time when the internet-church is easily polarized through social media, the piece brought together condemnations from both the Catholic right and left. EWTN’s Raymond Arroyo immediately dismissed Carroll’s work as “unserious,” an “ahistorical, anti-biblical suggestion with zero constituency in Catholicism.” Carl Olson mocked the author as one especially unsuited to speak about the priesthood. Fordham University theologian Charles Camosy rhetorically asked, “What could be less provocative than this centuries’ old argument?”
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