Creative Fidelity

This is refreshing; it looks like LA is going to get the pastor they need. Attempts to view the Catholic Church, including morality and social justice, through a primarily political lens leads to bad digestion.

[LA Times] In its most faithful expression, Catholic life and teaching transcends secular polarization, allowing for a wide variety of leanings among its members within the Vatican's boundaries of orthodoxy. [...]

Recently elected to lead the U.S. bishops' efforts on behalf of immigrants, [Abp.] Gomez is a strong supporter of migrant rights. And his ascent is unlikely to give comfort to conservative activists who've called for a "Catholic Tea Party" movement and the dismantling of the church's national body, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. On the other hand, L.A. Catholics dismayed by Masses where Rome's rubrics seem to be viewed more as advice than as rules may see welcome changes in services. And on hot-button moral issues such as abortion and gay marriage, church members can expect a robust defense of the faith's 2,000-year-old teaching. In tone, however, Gomez is likely to be far less strident than the handful of conservative bishops whose interventions have dominated the church's national headlines of late. [...]

[R]ome's choice is no cookie-cutter ideologue. Instead, he embodies the pontiff's vision of a "creative fidelity," with his first allegiance being to the church's prime purpose: the spiritual sustenance of its own and, by extension, the world outside its walls.