In the course of an insightful
essay
on Vladimir Putin’s challenge to civilization, Italian historian Roberto de Mattei observed that, amidst the general decline of the West, “the Church . . . appears as a wasteland.” That certainly seems to be the case with institutional Catholicism in Germany and Belgium, where bishops violate the profession of faith they made before their episcopal ordination by declaring that the Church has been teaching falsely on certain moral matters, and by suggesting that settled doctrinal questions are not settled. And it’s not hard to see how Rome-based de Mattei could feel as if he were living in an ecclesiastical desert: The priest in charge of catechesis in the Diocese of Rome, Fr. Andrea Camillini, recently said, “It’s time to give up the delusion of omnipotence, of evangelizing Rome, and abandon the idea of making Rome into a Christian city. It’s no longer our objective and it never was.”