What is going on in the Church today??
There has always been variety within the Catholic family—different ways to pray, different approaches to the supernatural mysteries, different moral and doctrinal emphases to meet the challenges of every age and place. But always united in the one recognizable Faith.
These days, however, all those harmonized differences of the past have given way to a cacophony of dissent, fracturing Catholic unity and pitting the body of Christ against itself. The world, which used to see the Church as an unshakeable rock of certainty (even when it hated us!), now looks at the many self-proclaimed liberal or “progressive” clerics, leaders, and influencers and isn’t sure anymore what Catholicism actually teaches and doesn’t teach, permits and forbids, blesses and condemns.
And not just the world—many Catholics, too, are looking at this mess and throwing up their hands.
In Confusion in the Kingdom, apologist Trent Horn (Why We’re Catholic) helps you make sense of the present chaos by examining the factions of progressive Catholicism and their beliefs, showing why they’re not representative of Catholic orthodoxy and exposing the harm and scandal they have caused.
Even better, he explains how to argue against those liberal errors you’re most likely to encounter on social media or at a family gathering. Whether it is in matters of doctrine, political and social teachings related to justice and the common good, or the many areas where liberal Catholics want to rewrite traditional Christian teaching on sex and the family, if there’s a progressive Catholic notion causing confusion, Trent is there to shine on it the clear light of perennial truth.
“There is a regrettable tendency among many progressive Catholics to treat matters of prudential judgment, about which Catholics of good will can disagree – for example, the specifics of immigration policy or heath care legislation – as it they were matters of dogma. Yet at the same time they treat matters of absolutely binding and grave moral principle (such as the Church’s teaching on sexual morality) as if they were of minor importance at best. The result is a distorted and politicized representation of the Catholic faith. A book-length critique of these tendencies is much-needed, and Trent Horn’s new book fills the bill.” - Edward Feser, Professor of Philosophy, Pasadena City College
