I’ve written extensively about the chasm that exists between American Catholics — a majority of whom support LGBT equality — and the church’s hierarchy, which has made opposition to LGBT rights a top priority for the foreseeable future. The division is wide, growing, and unsustainable.
One prominent scholar — Sir Diarmaid MacCulloch, a renowned church historian at Oxford University — has gone a step further, predicting that the Catholic Church will “undergo a major schism” over its moral and social teaching, as well as “the way authority [is] expressed.”
What do you think? Is a major split in the Catholic Church imminent due to its mistreatment of women and LGBT people, dictatorial, top-down management style, outdated and unrealistic teachings on sexuality, and criminal mishandling of the sexual abuse crisis? If you’ve left that church, would you consider returning to a newly-formed splinter church whose moral and social teachings are firmly grounded in the 21st century? Pro-equality Catholics who haven’t yet left: would you exit the Roman Catholic Church in favor of a modernized version? Or would any split be too little, too late?
Sound off in the comments section below.
