Catholicism
The Catholic Church
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The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions and has played a prominent role in the history and development of Western civilization. The Church consists of 24 sui iuris (autonomous) churches, including the Latin Church and 23 Eastern Catholic Churches, which comprise almost 3,500 dioceses and eparchies around the world, each overseen by one or more bishops. The pope, who is the bishop of Rome, is the chief pastor of the church.
The core beliefs of Catholicism are found in the Nicene Creed. The Catholic Church teaches that it is the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church founded by Jesus Christ in his Great Commission, that its bishops are the successors of Christ's apostles, and that the pope is the successor of Saint Peter, upon whom primacy was conferred by Jesus Christ. It maintains that it practises the original Christian faith taught by the apostles, preserving the faith infallibly through scripture and sacred tradition as authentically interpreted through the magisterium or teaching office of the church.The Roman Rite and others of the Latin Church, the Eastern Catholic liturgies, and communities and societies such as mendicant orders, enclosed monastic orders, third orders and voluntary charitable lay associations reflect a variety of theological and spiritual emphases in the church.
Of its seven sacraments, the Eucharist is the principal one, celebrated liturgically in the Mass. The church teaches that through consecration by a priest, the sacramental bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ. The Virgin Mary is venerated as the Mother of God, and Queen of Heaven; she is honoured in dogmas, such as that of her Immaculate Conception, perpetual virginity and assumption into heaven, and devotions. Catholic social teaching emphasizes voluntary support for the sick, the poor and the afflicted through the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. The Catholic Church operates tens of thousands of Catholic schools, universities and colleges, hospitals and orphanages around the world, and is the largest non-governmental provider of education and health care in the world. Among its other social services are numerous charitable and humanitarian organizations.
The Catholic Church has profoundly influenced Western philosophy, culture, art, literature, music, law and science. Catholics live all over the world through missions, immigration, diaspora and conversions. Since the 20th century the majority have resided in the Global South, partially due to secularization in Europe and North America. The Catholic Church shared communion with the Eastern Orthodox Church until the East–West Schism in 1054, disputing particularly the authority of the pope. Before the Council of Ephesus in AD 431, the Church of the East also shared in this communion, as did the Oriental Orthodox Churches before the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451; all separated primarily over differences in Christology. The Eastern Catholic Churches, which have a combined membership of approximately 18 million, represent a body of Eastern Christians who returned or remained in communion with the pope during or following these schisms due to a variety of historical circumstances. In the 16th century the Reformation led to the formation of separate, Protestant groups and to the Counter-Reformation. From the late 20th century the Catholic Church has been criticized for its teachings on sexuality, its doctrine against ordaining women and its handling of sexual abuse committed by clergy.
The Diocese of Rome, led by the pope as its bishop, constitutes his local jurisdiction, while the See of Rome—commonly referred to as the Holy See—serves as the central governing authority of the Catholic Church. The administrative body of the Holy See, the Roman Curia, has its principal offices in Vatican City, which is a small, independent city-state and enclave within the city of Rome, of which the pope is head of state and the elective and absolute monarch. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church
The Rise of Trad (traditional) Catholicism
The rise of trad (traditional) Catholicisms sowing discord at religious institutions—including Benedictine College, where the NFL kicker Harrison Butker, made his controversial remarks, 5/21/2024; The New Republic, https://newrepublic.com/ article/181700/harrison-butker-benedictine-trad-catholicism, Katherine Kelaidis wrote, “With pro-Palestinian demonstrators roiling campuses across the country, few could have predicted that the most controversial commencement of the season would occur at Benedictine College, a small liberal arts college in northeast Kansas, courtesy of a 28-year-old NFL player. But Harrison Butker’s speech on May 11 seemed lab-engineered to generate outrage.
The Kansas City Chiefs kicker referred to Pride Month as one of the “deadly sins”; declared that “things like abortion, IVF, surrogacy, euthanasia, as well as a growing support for degenerate cultural values in media, all stem from the pervasiveness of disorder”; implored men to be “unapologetic in your masculinity”; and, addressing the graduating women specifically, said, “I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.”
While plenty of people who were not at the graduation ceremony (and likely had never heard of Benedictine College before this news) were angered by Butker’s speech, most of his actual audience was nothing short of delighted, judging from the standing ovation he received at the end. That is not surprising to religious scholars, like me, who had heard of Benedictine. This conservative Catholic school of just 2,200 students is a microcosm of a major trend in American religion. Like many other Catholic institutions, it has been taken over by one of the fastest-growing religious movements in the country: “trad Catholicism.” And not without strife. The Sisters of Mount St. Scholastica, an order of nuns who co-founded Benedictine College, last week released a statement condemning Butker’s speech, saying it did not “represent the Catholic, Benedictine, liberal arts college that our founders envisioned and in which we have been so invested.”
This disparity between the applause on the ground and the rebuke from the nuns speaks to tensions within American Catholicism that can be found even in Butker’s speech. He criticized President Joe Biden as “a man who publicly and proudly proclaims his Catholic faith” while “pushing dangerous gender ideologies onto the youth of America.” He also went after Catholic church leaders who adhered to pandemic restrictions, noting “the chaos in our parishes, and sadly, in our cathedrals too.” Meanwhile, he claimed that “people, young and old, are embracing tradition,” then launched into an extended discussion of the Traditional Latin Mass.
TLM, as it’s known among its fans, is a Roman Catholic liturgy celebrated in Latin according to the Roman Missal of 1962, characterized by its solemn rituals, Gregorian chant, and the priest facing ad orientem (that is, toward the altar). The celebration of this mass untouched by the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council has become a major symbol of traditionalist Catholic identity, so-called trad Catholics. It is the liturgical manifestation of a theological, cultural, and ideological position that is fundamentally about the rejection of modernity and especially about disdain for anything that could be understood as an embrace of that modernity by the Catholic Church.
Over the past two decades, Benedictine College has become a center of the traditional Catholic movement. Earlier in the month, before Butker’s speech, Benedictine College featured prominently in an Associated Press story on the rise of traditionalists in Catholicism. At Benedictine, reported Tim Sullivan, “Catholic teaching on contraception can slip into lessons on Plato, and no one is surprised if you volunteer for 3 a.m. prayers. Pornography, pre-marital sex and sunbathing in swimsuits are forbidden.”
But it was not always this way. Benedictine College was formed in 1971, out of the merger of two earlier Catholic liberal arts colleges in the area: St. Benedict’s College, a men’s college run by St. Benedict’s Abbey, and Mount St. Scholastica College, a women’s college run by Benedictine nuns. Sister Mary Noel, of Mount St. Scholastica, oversaw the merger and served as the college’s first president.
Mount St. Scholastica, a convent founded in 1863, is arguably on the other side of the Catholic culture war from the trad Catholics. The nuns removed their habits soon after Vatican II permitted it. An entire section of their current website is titled “Gospel Justice” and focuses on issues like climate change, racial justice, and the conflict in Gaza. These are modern, and one might even say progressive, nuns. The sisters of Mount St. Scholastica are in some ways the very things that trad Catholics like Butker fear.
So how did an institution founded by these sisters end up as a base of the “other side”? The answer begins with the college’s current president, Stephen D. Minnis. An alumnus who won high praise from Butker throughout his speech, he has been at the helm of Benedictine for 20 years, making him by far the college’s longest-serving head. Previously, he was a corporate lawyer, and he remained active at his alma mater as president of the alumni association. But his qualifications to head Benedictine were neither academic nor professional. Long before his hire, Minnis was active in traditionalist Catholic groups and had cultivated relationships with major conservative activists—including Federalist Society co-chair Leonard Leo, the massively influential conservative donor and legal activist who was Benedictine College’s commencement speaker last year.
Under Minnis’s leadership, the college’s Religious Studies program was replaced by the much less pluralist Catholic Theology program. He also has promoted devotion to the Virgin Mary, which has become a hallmark of public piety among traditionalists; one of his first acts as president was to dedicate the campus to her, and he also had a Marian shrine built in the heart of the campus. This deeply conservative turn seems to be working. Benedictine College’s enrollment is growing at a time when colleges in general, and small liberal arts colleges in particular, are shrinking and in financial crisis—proof, some say, that young Catholics are likely more conservative than their predecessors.
Harrison Butker is one of those young Catholics, born decades after Vatican II, who has come to reject the council’s reforms and its embrace of modernity. In particular, he has spoken openly about his dissatisfaction with the assimilated, reformed Catholicism of his childhood and the spiritual center he found in the traditionalist’s interpretation of the faith. It is a shift that is playing out not only in the lives of individual believers like Butker but also in Catholic parishes, dioceses, and colleges around the country. It is the same conflict that has transformed Benedictine College—and that will shape American Catholicism for decades to come.
The New Republic, Katherine Kelaidis (May 21, 2024) article “The Religious Battle Behind Harrison Butker’s Culture-War Speech"