To Change the Church, Ross Douthat
To Change the Church, Ross Douthat
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To Change the Church
Pope Francis and the Future of Catholicism

Author: Ross Douthat

Narrator: Jonathan Todd Ross

Unabridged: 8 hr 32 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/27/2018


Synopsis

A New York Times columnist and one of America’s leading conservative thinkers considers Pope Francis’s efforts to change the church he governs in a book that is “must reading for every Christian who cares about the fate of the West and the future of global Christianity” (Rod Dreher, author of The Benedict Option).

Born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in 1936, today Pope Francis is the 266th pope of the Roman Catholic Church. Pope Francis’s stewardship of the Church, while perceived as a revelation by many, has provoked division throughout the world. “If a conclave were to be held today,” one Roman source told The New Yorker, “Francis would be lucky to get ten votes.”

In his “concise, rhetorically agile…adroit, perceptive, gripping account (The New York Times Book Review), Ross Douthat explains why the particular debate Francis has opened—over communion for the divorced and the remarried—is so dangerous: How it cuts to the heart of the larger argument over how Christianity should respond to the sexual revolution and modernity itself, how it promises or threatens to separate the church from its own deep past, and how it divides Catholicism along geographical and cultural lines. Douthat argues that the Francis era is a crucial experiment for all of Western civilization, which is facing resurgent external enemies (from ISIS to Putin) even as it struggles with its own internal divisions, its decadence, and self-doubt. Whether Francis or his critics are right won’t just determine whether he ends up as a hero or a tragic figure for Catholics. It will determine whether he’s a hero, or a gambler who’s betraying both his church and his civilization into the hands of its enemies.

“A balanced look at the struggle for the future of Catholicism…To Change the Church is a fascinating look at the church under Pope Francis” (Kirkus Reviews). Engaging and provocative, this is “a pot-boiler of a history that examines a growing ecclesial crisis” (Washington Independent Review of Books).

About Ross Douthat

Ross Douthat is a columnist for the New York Times op-ed page. He is the author of To Change the ChurchBad Religion, and Privilege, and coauthor of Grand New Party. Before joining the New York Times, he was a senior editor for the Atlantic. He is the film critic for National Review, and he cohosts the New York Times’s weekly op-ed podcast, The Argument. He lives in New Haven with his wife and four children.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Ben

The many online debates over Pope Francis and Amoris Laetitia tend to sort themselves into two camps: those who think his pontificate is the saving grace for the Catholic Church and those who see him as an intense danger to the deposit of faith, if not a heretic than at least heterodox. But, as is u......more

Goodreads review by Nic

This book genuinely made me wrestle. I never really think of my faith organization in the same way I do as politics in the country, but Ross makes quite the case for division. The conclave seems to be made up of conservatives, liberals and a few in the middle. He submits several propositions around......more

Goodreads review by Sam

Douthat really excels at presenting plausible interpretations from several perspectives of the shifts taking place in Francis’s pontificate and places them in historical perspective. Seeing him think in such a way while still having his own criticisms makes his book a great example of how to interpr......more

Goodreads review by Alex

The Roman Catholic Church does not have a particularly appealing image among many in the West. Critics decry the myriad of sexual abuses scandals committed by Catholic clergy and social liberals lament Rome’s antiquarian moral stances on contraception, homosexuality, divorce, priestly ordination, an......more