
Do you ever hear the terms “left-wing” and “right-wing” used when people talk about the church?
These days I usually stop listening, because that person has already told me that they don’t have a clue about what the church is.
Left wing and right wing are terms that belong in a political party. The church is not a political party.
We’ve also been taught very carefully that anything “right wing” comes with a Hitler salute, while anything “left wing” comes with Nice People Who Care.
It’s time we threw this stuff overboard. It’s not useful anymore.
But we can’t deny that in the church there is a spectrum of belief—about faith, morals, doctrine, and practice. It ranges from fervent daily Mass attenders through to so-called CINOs, Catholics In Name Only.
So what might be a better way of thinking, if not actually talking, about these divisions in the church?

I read an excellent article recently in Catholic World Report by James Kalb about what he calls “progressive Christianity.”
I don’t like this term either. It hints that there might also be “regressive Christianity” which, quite frankly, sounds even worse.
But we’ll go with it for now, because I’ve noticed that many Catholics like to call themselves “progressive.”
I’ve noticed that progressive Catholics love the Kingdom of God—but they think we can build it in this world. They’re happiest when they’re trying to achieve social justice goals here and now.
They’re natural allies of secular social justice campaigners and are happy to throw the church’s weight behind their campaigns.
There’s nothing wrong with social justice, except when it’s pursued at the expense of belief in the supernatural elements of our faith.
The social justice stuff is supposed to flow from seeing an immortal soul created by God with dignity and purpose in every human being.
It should also be informed by belief in original sin. Not every human being has grown into a good person. Some people are a danger to others, and we need to protect the vulnerable from them.

Progressive Catholics tend instead to believe in the innate virtue of pretty much everyone who they feel sorry for. Theft, assaults, and rapes are caused by oppression, not by original sin.
This means that they aren’t always keen on evangelising. After all, if everyone is going to go to heaven, why complicate matters?
The idea that a person can be deeply converted and change their life is not really part of the progressive worldview. Unless they’re converting from the use of fossil fuels and single-use straws.
Sadly, many progressive Catholics are also not comfortable with the supernatural side of our religion. You will find this in their (sometimes performative) avoidance of things like Sunday Mass.
They say hand-wringing things like, “All that money wasted on trappings and gold…” Clearly, they haven’t been inside a typical suburban Catholic Church for quite some time.
We could say that the first progressive Christian was Judas, who thought that the woman adoring Jesus by wiping his feet with expensive perfume was wasting money that should have been given to the poor (John 12:4-6).
Judas was also uncomfortable with the supernatural aspects of Jesus’ ministry. At the end of the Bread of Life discourse in John 6, Jesus identifies him as the devil in their midst (John 6:70-71).
A lot of people found Jesus’ insistence on the divine too much for them. They were happy to overthrow the hated Romans, but not via a crucified God.

I think the opposite of a progressive Catholic is a “conservative” Catholic. I mean that word in its original sense: people who want to conserve what is best and what works.
Conservative Catholics believe that they are at the tail-end of a very long spiritual tradition. Like the Aboriginal people, they are culture-bearers who want to hand on their spiritual heritage intact.
They work to conserve the key elements of practice and belief for the next generation. They’re very comfortable with the supernatural aspects of faith, because that’s the whole idea.
It’s true that some of them get stuck in the supernatural and forget to connect it to the real world. But not all of them.
Working for true social justice will always flow from a living faith that’s growing through active regular engagement with the life of the church.
There’s no left wing or right wing about it.