Catechism's Ostracism

Bad Religion:
How We Became a Nation of Heretics
by Ross Douthat
Free Press, 2012
(340 pages, $26.00, hardcover)

reviewed by Leon J. Podles

I grew up in 1950s Catholicism, which had its elements of narrowness and blandness, but functioned well. The experts at the Second Vatican Council, however, falsely assumed that Catholics had internalized the doctrines of the Church and could respond to the new opportunities the council created in ecumenism, the vernacular liturgy, and lay responsibility. So instead of evangelizing the world, Catholics were quickly becoming disevangelized by the world.

Touchstone is a Christian journal, conservative in doctrine and eclectic in content, with editors and readers from each of the three great divisions of Christendom—Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox.

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