Yet the pope’s diagnosis of the condition of the Roman Catholic Church in America was actually fairly accurate. The “Church in America” would, in fact, be “different from that which is in the rest of the world.” Catholicism has undeniably made compromises in the United States—and this is precisely what has allowed it to thrive.
The Church has flourished here because it has made the same bargain all other religious organizations in the U.S. have made. In order to receive the many protections and advantages afforded to faith groups by law, it has agreed to conduct itself not as the one true faith, but as one among many. Having made this bargain, the Church has been influenced and enriched by the faiths around it, and must at times accommodate those with whom it disagrees.
Though Pope Leo XIII warned against compromise in the nineteenth century, and though as recently as last month Bishop William Lori of Connecticut declared “about religious liberty, there can be no compromise,” compromise itself is not a threat to the free exercise of religion. On the contrary, compromise is the very soul of American religious liberty.
(via slacktivist)
