A Catholic Viewpoint: Survival Requires Orthodoxy

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Mary Eberstadt is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. She writes often on religion and society. She’s also a Catholic, and joins us in our studios.

Thanks very much for being with us.

MARY EBERSTADT: Thanks for having me.

SIMON: Before Pope Francis was selected, you wrote that you’d hoped to see the new pope deploy doctrinal orthodoxy. What do you mean by that?

EBERSTADT: Well, what I meant is that if you study the history of churches, over time the churches that have tried to lighten up the Christian moral code and put forth sort of kindler, gentler version of Christianity as they see it, have not done well. They haven’t done well demographically and they haven’t done well financially.

Churches that stick to orthodoxy do better over time, in part because it’s only those kinds of churches that tend to create families that can be of size and carry on the Christian tradition. So, in saying that the pope would do best to stick to orthodoxy, I was talking in part about what it would take to strengthen the Catholic Church.