There are extremists in the Church today, and there are moderates – and all of them are wreaking havoc. They are causing such distress precisely because they are ignoring, each in a particular way, the strangeness that lies at the heart of Christianity. It is my contention that the chief problem we face in the Church is not lack of loyalty to Rome, not insufficient concern for the poor, not ignorance of women’s concerns, not liturgical abuse, not theological imprecision, not resurgent triumphalism – though each of these is, I think, cause for worry. No, the chief difficulty we face is a lack of imagination, the inability to hold opposites in tension, the failure to be, boldly and unapologetically, bi-polar extremists.
Father Robert Barron, from Bridging the Great Divide: Musings of a Post-Liberal, Post Conservative Evangelical Catholic
Brett Salkeld is a doctoral student in theology at Regis College in Toronto. He is a father of two (so far) and husband of one.
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