Concept

Modern Catholic Church

Intro

"The Catholic Church has about 1.3 billion baptized members. It is the largest single Christian body in the world by a wide margin. Within roughly the last sixty years, the inside of that Church has changed more than at any other comparable stretch since the Reformation."

The story begins in 1965, the year Vatican II closed. The council had committed the Catholic Church to a major reorientation: liturgy in the vernacular, the Church described as the People of God, religious freedom embraced, ecumenical dialogue opened with other Christians, respectful conversation with non-Christian religions, expanded lay participation. Implementing all that took decades and is still being negotiated.

Pope Paul VI, who finished the council, handled the first wave. In 1969 he promulgated a thoroughly revised order of the Mass, the Novus Ordo. It was a major break from the old Latin Mass that Catholics had known for four centuries. Some Catholics loved it; others felt their familiar worship had been replaced overnight. In 1968 Paul VI also issued Humanae Vitae, reaffirming the traditional Catholic prohibition of artificial contraception. That document split the Catholic intellectual world: large numbers of Catholic theologians and laypeople publicly dissented, while a significant minority rallied around it as a courageous defense of tradition. Both decisions, the liturgy and the contraception teaching, are still arguments inside the Catholic Church today.

Then came John Paul II. Karol Wojtyla, the Polish cardinal who became pope in 1978, served for almost twenty-seven years, the second-longest pontificate in history. He was the first non-Italian pope since the sixteenth century. He traveled more than any pope in history, speaking to crowds of millions on every inhabited continent. He played a substantial role in the collapse of communism in his native Poland and across Eastern Europe. He wrote fourteen encyclicals, including Evangelium Vitae on the dignity of life and Veritatis Splendor on moral truth. He authorized the publication of the Catechism of the Catholic Church in 1992, the first comprehensive summary of Catholic doctrine since the Council of Trent. He apologized publicly for past sins of the Church, including the trial of Galileo and the historic mistreatment of Jews. He maintained the Catholic prohibition of women's ordination and contraception, frustrating progressive Catholics; he opened dialogue with Islam and Judaism, frustrating some conservatives.

Benedict XVI, John Paul's longtime doctrinal lieutenant Joseph Ratzinger, was elected in 2005. He was a German theologian of the first rank, more bookish than his predecessor, more cautious in public, deeply concerned with the theological legacy of Vatican II. He pushed for what he called the "hermeneutic of continuity," reading Vatican II as continuous with the previous Catholic tradition rather than as a break from it. He also took a harder line in the public square: his 2006 Regensburg Address, which quoted a Byzantine emperor critical of Islam, provoked a global controversy. He created an Anglican Ordinariate in 2009 to receive groups of disaffected Anglicans into the Catholic Church while preserving aspects of their liturgical heritage. In 2013, citing failing health, he became the first pope in nearly six hundred years to resign.

Pope Francis, the Argentinian Jorge Bergoglio elected in March 2013, has been a different kind of pope again. He is the first Jesuit, the first Latin American, the first non-European in well over a millennium. He emphasizes pastoral practice over doctrinal precision, mercy over juridical rigor, the poor over institutional self-protection. His major writings include Laudato Si (2015), an encyclical on environmental concern, and Amoris Laetitia (2016), a long document on marriage that included a footnote suggesting some divorced and civilly-remarried Catholics might in some circumstances receive Communion. The footnote produced an international Catholic argument that remains unresolved. He has emphasized "synodality," shared deliberation among bishops and laity, as the Church's preferred mode of decision making. The German Catholic bishops' "Synodal Path," which has proposed substantial changes to Catholic teaching on sexuality and church governance, has run into pushback from Rome and from bishops elsewhere.

The Church also lives under the long shadow of the clergy sexual abuse crisis, which became public knowledge in the United States in 2002 with the Boston Globe investigation, expanded in Ireland, Australia, Germany, France, and elsewhere through the 2010s, and continues to surface in country after country. Many bishops were found to have moved abusive priests rather than report them. Hundreds of thousands of survivors have come forward; billions of dollars in settlements have been paid. Diocesan bankruptcies have followed. The crisis has reshaped how Catholics talk about the Church, how non-Catholics view it, and how the institution itself functions. It is also, painfully, one of the central topics of any contemporary engagement with the Catholic Church.

Globally, the Catholic Church looks dramatically different in the 2020s than it did in the 1960s. Europe has hemorrhaged practicing Catholics. The Americas continue large but are losing share to evangelical Protestantism and to secularism. Africa and Asia are growing fast. Some demographers expect Africa to overtake Europe as the largest Catholic continent within decades. The future of the Catholic Church is increasingly being decided not in Rome or Munich but in Kinshasa, Lagos, Manila, and Sao Paulo.

This page traces that arc: from Vatican II through the present, with attention to the popes, the structural fights, the abuse crisis, and the global rebalancing.

In full

The Modern Catholic Church refers to the contemporary global Roman Catholic communion from the close of Vatican II (1965) to the present. Numbering approximately 1.34 billion baptized in 2023 (Vatican statistical yearbook), it remains the largest single Christian body in the world. Its post-conciliar history is marked by the four pontificates of Paul VI (1963 to 1978; liturgical reform via the Novus Ordo Missae 1969; Humanae Vitae 1968), John Paul II (1978 to 2005; global travel, anti-communism, Catechism of the Catholic Church 1992, Veritatis Splendor 1993, Evangelium Vitae 1995, ecumenical and inter-religious dialogue), Benedict XVI (2005 to 2013; theological retrieval, hermeneutic-of-continuity reading of Vatican II, Summorum Pontificum 2007 on the Tridentine liturgy, Regensburg Address 2006 on Islam, Anglican Ordinariate 2009, resignation 2013), and Francis (2013 to present; pastoral emphasis, synodality, Laudato Si 2015 on the environment, Amoris Laetitia 2016 on marriage with the controverted footnote 351, Fratelli Tutti 2020, Traditionis Custodes 2021 restricting the Tridentine Mass, ongoing engagement with the abuse crisis). The contemporary Church is shaped by major structural facts: the demographic shift to the Global South (especially Africa and Asia); the clergy sexual abuse crisis as long-running institutional reckoning; the traditionalist resistance to Vatican II and the Francis pontificate; the liberalizing-conservative axis within Catholicism on sexuality, women's ordination, married clergy, and biblical scholarship; the German Synodal Path as a high-profile test of national-level Catholic governance under Roman primacy; the China question and the controversial 2018 Vatican-China agreement on bishop appointments; ongoing ecumenical engagement with Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran, and other Christians; and continuing theological debates between manualism (the pre-conciliar neoscholastic synthesis), nouvelle theologie (the patristic-biblical retrieval of de Lubac, Daniélou, Congar, Ratzinger that shaped Vatican II), and various contemporary schools (liberation theology, communio theology, integralism, the postliberal turn). The Catholic Church of 2026 is at once dramatically continuous with the Catholic Church of 1962 (same doctrine, same hierarchy, same sacraments) and dramatically transformed (vernacular liturgy, lay participation, ecumenical openness, demographic shift, abuse-crisis reckoning).

Paul VI and the post-conciliar implementation (1965 to 1978)

Giovanni Battista Montini, Paul VI, finished the council, oversaw the early implementation, and weathered the first round of post-conciliar conflict.

Novus Ordo Missae (1969). The new Mass authorized by Paul VI implemented the council's call for vernacular liturgy, simplified rubrics, expanded scripture readings, and active congregational participation. The 1969/1970 missal replaced the 1962 Tridentine missal as the ordinary form of the Roman Rite. The change hit ordinary Catholic life hard, and traditionalist resistance dates from this point.
Humanae Vitae (1968). The encyclical reaffirming the Catholic prohibition of artificial contraception. It surprised many in the Church, including members of the pontifical commission Paul VI had convened, who had recommended permitting some forms. Mass public dissent followed. Sociologically, Humanae Vitae tracks an inflection point in Catholic practice in the West: Mass attendance and seminary entries began declining, divorce and contraception use among Catholics rose to near-secular rates. The encyclical's defenders argued (and continue to argue) that it correctly named structural problems in the modern sexual revolution; its critics argued it was a missed pastoral opportunity.
Curial reform. Paul VI restructured the Roman Curia (the bureaucratic apparatus around the pope), including the renaming of the Holy Office to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Ecumenical and inter-religious engagement. Continued. Paul VI met with Patriarch Athenagoras of Constantinople in 1964; the mutual lifting of the 1054 excommunications was finalized at the council's end.
Aldo Moro kidnapping and death (1978). Paul VI's longtime friend, the Italian statesman Aldo Moro, was kidnapped and killed by the Red Brigades; Paul VI personally pleaded for his release and presided at his funeral. The pope died less than four months later.

John Paul I (1978)

Albino Luciani, the "smiling pope," was elected in August 1978 and died 33 days later, of presumed heart attack. The brevity of his pontificate became fodder for conspiracy theories; mainstream scholarship treats it as a natural death from cardiovascular disease.

John Paul II (1978 to 2005)

Karol Wojtyla, archbishop of Krakow, was elected on 16 October 1978. His pontificate of 26 years and 5 months is the second-longest in history.

Global travel. John Paul II visited 129 countries and gave thousands of public talks. He was the first pope to enter a synagogue (Rome, 1986), the first to visit a mosque (Damascus, 2001), the first to visit Lutheran and Anglican churches in active worship.
Role in the collapse of communism. His 1979 visit to Poland is widely credited with catalyzing the Solidarity movement, which contributed substantially to the unraveling of the Communist bloc. The 1981 assassination attempt by Mehmet Ali Agca (alleged to have had Bulgarian and Soviet KGB connections; never definitively proven) John Paul survived; he later visited Agca in prison and forgave him.
Doctrinal teaching. Fourteen encyclicals, including Redemptor Hominis (1979, on Christ as redeemer), Veritatis Splendor (1993, on moral truth and the natural law), Evangelium Vitae (1995, on the dignity of life), Fides et Ratio (1998, on faith and reason), Ut Unum Sint (1995, on ecumenism).
Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992). The first comprehensive doctrinal summary published since the Council of Trent. Aimed at clergy, catechists, and the literate laity. Has gone through two editions and become the standard Catholic doctrinal reference text.
Apostolic exhortations and Marian devotion. John Paul II added the "luminous mysteries" to the Rosary in 2002 and entrusted the Church and the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Apologies. "Mea culpa" prayers for past Catholic sins, including the trial of Galileo, the historic mistreatment of Jews, the violence of religious wars, and the Eastern schism.
Condemnation of liberation theology, in part. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Cardinal Ratzinger issued two instructions (1984, 1986) criticizing certain Marxist analytical commitments within liberation theology while affirming its legitimate concern for the poor. Gustavo Gutierrez, the founder of liberation theology, was never himself censured; theologians like Leonardo Boff were.
Sexuality and women's ordination. Reaffirmed the Catholic prohibitions of contraception, divorce, abortion, and homosexual acts. Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (1994) declared that the Church has no authority to ordain women, on the precedent set by Christ's apostolic appointments. Affirmed in the strongest possible terms short of dogmatic definition.
Sexual abuse crisis. Increasingly came onto John Paul II's desk in the early 2000s. His handling has been substantially criticized: he was slow to recognize the scope of the crisis, slow to discipline some bishops, and in particular failed to act on the case of Fr. Marcial Maciel, founder of the Legionaries of Christ, despite credible early reports of grave misconduct (Maciel was disciplined under Benedict XVI).
Death (2005). John Paul II's death on 2 April 2005 was watched by millions globally. His funeral was attended by a record number of heads of state. He was canonized in 2014, an unusually fast process.

Benedict XVI (2005 to 2013)

Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under John Paul II and one of the towering Catholic theologians of the twentieth century, was elected 19 April 2005 at age 78. He took the name Benedict XVI, signaling continuity with the peace and unity emphasis of Benedict XV and the monastic stability of Benedict of Nursia.

Theological retrieval and the hermeneutic of continuity. Benedict's central theological project, articulated most famously in his 2005 Christmas address to the Roman Curia, was that Vatican II must be read in continuity with prior Catholic tradition rather than as a rupture. He distinguished a "hermeneutic of reform in continuity" (correct) from a "hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture" (incorrect).
The Regensburg Address (12 September 2006). Lecturing at his old university, Benedict quoted a fourteenth-century Byzantine emperor who had criticized Islam for spreading by violence. Excerpted out of context in international press, the quotation generated protests, attacks on Christian churches and persons, and a long-running argument about Islam, violence, and reason. Benedict's substantive point, that genuine religion must be rational and that coercion is incompatible with the rational nature of God, was largely lost in the controversy. Some argued the speech was a needed honest intervention; others a prudential mistake.
Anglican Ordinariate (2009). Anglicanorum Coetibus created a canonical structure for groups of Anglicans to enter the Catholic Church together while preserving aspects of their liturgical and pastoral heritage. Three ordinariates were established (UK, US, Australia). Membership has remained modest.
Summorum Pontificum (2007). Benedict's motu proprio broadening access to the 1962 Tridentine missal, declaring it a permitted "extraordinary form" of the Roman Rite. The decision was popular with traditionalists and with many ordinary Catholics; it was later substantially restricted by Francis (Traditionis Custodes, 2021).
Sexual abuse crisis. Benedict took substantially harder action than his predecessor. He disciplined Marcial Maciel (silenced and removed from public ministry, 2006); revised norms for handling abuse cases; met with abuse survivors; and was the first pope to apologize personally. Critics charged that his earlier Curial role left him implicated in slow handling of some cases; defenders point to his sustained reform efforts as pope.
Resignation (28 February 2013). Citing failing strength, Benedict resigned, the first pope to do so since Gregory XII in 1415 and the first to resign voluntarily since Celestine V in 1294. He took the title "pope emeritus" and lived in a Vatican monastery until his death on 31 December 2022.

Francis (2013 to present)

Jorge Mario Bergoglio, archbishop of Buenos Aires, was elected on 13 March 2013. He took the name Francis, the first pope to use it, signaling his programmatic concern for the poor and for creation.

The pastoral turn. Francis's central distinction from his predecessors is one of emphasis. He has not repudiated Catholic doctrine, but he has consistently emphasized pastoral practice, mercy, and engagement with people on the margins over doctrinal articulation and juridical rigor. His famous "Who am I to judge?" reply (2013, regarding homosexual orientation) became a defining moment.
Laudato Si (2015). Encyclical on the environment, integrating ecology with Catholic social teaching on the poor, on dignity, and on integral human development. The first encyclical largely dedicated to environmental concern. Widely received outside the Catholic Church; criticized by some Catholics as conceding too much to secular environmentalism.
Amoris Laetitia (2016). Long apostolic exhortation on marriage and the family. Footnote 351 suggested that some divorced and civilly-remarried Catholics, after a process of pastoral discernment, might receive Communion. The footnote produced sustained Catholic argument. Four cardinals submitted formal dubia (questions) to Francis asking for clarification; he did not respond. Some bishops' conferences (Buenos Aires, Malta) interpreted the document in the more permissive direction; others (Philadelphia, Krakow) maintained the previous discipline. The argument remains live.
Synodality. Francis has emphasized synodal deliberation, the active participation of bishops, clergy, religious, and laity in discerning the Church's direction. The Synod on Synodality (2021 to 2024) was the major institutional expression. Critics argue synodality is a vehicle for changing Catholic teaching by procedural means; defenders argue it is a recovery of ancient ecclesial practice.
Sexual abuse crisis. Francis has continued the institutional reckoning. He convened a global meeting of bishops on abuse (February 2019); promulgated Vos Estis Lux Mundi (2019) on bishops' accountability; and authorized the Pennsylvania-grand-jury-style investigation of the McCarrick case (the McCarrick Report, 2020). Continuing critics charge that response has remained reactive rather than proactive in some areas.
Traditionis Custodes (2021). Restricted the celebration of the Tridentine Mass, reversing the broad permission Benedict XVI had granted. Among the most controversial decisions of the pontificate. Francis's stated rationale: he saw the broader Tridentine liturgy permission generating divisions within parishes; many traditionalists experienced the restriction as harsh and unilateral.
Fiducia Supplicans (2023). Declaration from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith authorizing pastoral blessings of persons in irregular relationships, including same-sex couples, distinguished from liturgical blessings of unions. Provoked substantial backlash, especially from African bishops' conferences. African episcopal opposition was strong enough that the document was effectively withdrawn for the African continent.
China question. The 2018 Vatican-China agreement on the appointment of bishops, periodically renewed, has been controversial. Defenders argue it is a pragmatic step toward eventual unification of the underground (loyal-to-Rome) and patriotic (state-recognized) Catholic communities. Critics, prominently including Cardinal Joseph Zen, argue it concedes too much to a regime continuing to persecute Catholics.

Contemporary statistics

(2023 Vatican statistical yearbook and Pew Research data)

Total baptized Catholics: approximately 1.34 billion, roughly 17.7% of the global population.
Continental distribution. Latin America 41%, Europe 21%, Africa 19%, Asia 11%, North America 7%, Oceania 1%.
Growth and decline. Catholic population growing fastest in Africa (approximately 3.1% annual increase) and Asia; stable or declining in Europe; growing absolutely in Latin America but losing share to Pentecostal and Evangelical Protestantism.
Mass attendance. In the United States, weekly Mass attendance among self-identified Catholics has declined from approximately 55% in 1960 to roughly 17 to 25% in 2020s (varies by survey). Europe is generally lower (sub-10% in much of Western Europe; higher in Poland and parts of Italy). Africa, the Philippines, and parts of Latin America remain substantially higher.
Vocations. Seminarians worldwide were approximately 64,000 in 2023, down from a peak of about 116,000 in mid-20th-century. Decline is concentrated in Europe and North America; growth is in Africa and South Asia.
Priest numbers. Approximately 407,000 priests worldwide, slow overall decline, with rapid regional shifts.

Major recent controversies

The clergy sexual abuse crisis

The most consequential institutional reality of the contemporary Catholic Church.

Public emergence. The crisis broke into mainstream public consciousness with the Boston Globe Spotlight investigation in 2002 (later memorialized in the 2015 film Spotlight).
National reckoning. Sustained reckonings have followed in Ireland (Murphy Report 2009, Ryan Report 2009), Australia (Royal Commission 2017), Germany (MHG Study 2018), France (Sauvé Report 2021, estimating approximately 330,000 victims in France over 70 years), Pennsylvania (grand jury report 2018), and many other countries.
The McCarrick case. Theodore McCarrick, former cardinal-archbishop of Washington, DC, was found credibly accused of having abused seminarians and a minor over decades; he was removed from the College of Cardinals in 2018 and laicized in 2019, the first cardinal to be so reduced. The McCarrick Report (2020) detailed institutional failures across the Vatican and the US.
Patterns. Substantial historical evidence shows that many bishops, when receiving credible reports of abuse, prioritized institutional reputation and the careers of the accused over the protection of victims and the pursuit of justice. The pattern was widespread enough to be characterized as systemic.
Catholic responses. Have varied in emphasis. Some Catholic voices have argued the crisis is primarily a sexual problem rooted in a homosexual subculture within the priesthood (controverted thesis); others that it is primarily a power and clericalism problem; others that it reflects general institutional pathologies regarding child protection in twentieth-century institutions (schools, sports, juvenile detention) that the Church has now largely corrected since reforms after 2002. Most Catholic moral theologians integrate elements of all three readings.
Lasting institutional consequences. Substantial settlements (over $4 billion in the US alone by 2020 estimates), more than 30 diocesan bankruptcies in the US, sustained collapse in Catholic public credibility on moral questions especially in Western Europe, and a sustained question about the Catholic claim that the institution itself is divinely guided.

The German Synodal Path

A national-level synodal process initiated by the German Bishops' Conference in 2019 in the wake of the German abuse-crisis study (MHG). It proposed substantial changes to Catholic teaching and discipline, including blessings of same-sex unions, married clergy, women's ordination to the diaconate (and possibly priesthood), and reform of sexual morality.

The Synodal Path has produced sustained Roman pushback, both from the Vatican and from Catholic bishops elsewhere (particularly in Africa and Eastern Europe). Critics charge it constitutes de facto schism; defenders argue it is a legitimate exercise of synodal discernment that the universal Church must engage rather than dismiss. The outcome remains unresolved.

Traditionalist resistance to Francis

A subset of Catholics, often associated with attachment to the Tridentine Mass, traditional Marian devotion, and the doctrinal precision of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, has organized public opposition to elements of the Francis pontificate. The dubia of four cardinals on Amoris Laetitia (2016); the "Filial Correction" of 2017 signed by 62 theologians; Cardinal Sarah's public interventions; Archbishop Vigano's accusations against Francis personally; and traditional-Catholic media (Catholic World Report, EWTN, various blogs) have framed sustained criticism. Defenders of Francis argue this constitutes a kind of "right-wing dissent" symmetrical with the left-wing dissent of the 1970s, and inconsistent with traditional Catholic respect for the papal office. Both sides charge the other with materially undermining the papal magisterium.

The question of who is right has not been resolved within Catholicism. From outside it, both sides are recognizable Catholic constituencies operating within the institutional bounds of the Church.

China relations

The 2018 Vatican-China provisional agreement on the appointment of bishops, periodically renewed (2020, 2022, 2024), has been one of the most controversial Francis decisions. Critics, including Cardinal Joseph Zen (former bishop of Hong Kong), argue it concedes too much to a regime continuing to persecute Catholics. The Vatican defends it as a long-term pastoral strategy to unify the underground Catholic community (loyal to Rome) with the state-recognized Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association. Catholic opinion remains divided.

Ongoing theological debates

Manualism vs nouvelle theologie

Through roughly the first half of the twentieth century, Catholic theology was dominated by the manualist tradition: synthetic textbooks of neoscholastic theology working in continuity with Aquinas and the post-Tridentine commentators, often in juridical and conceptual register. The nouvelle theologie ("new theology") movement of the mid-twentieth century, including Henri de Lubac, Jean Daniélou, Yves Congar, and Joseph Ratzinger, criticized manualism as ahistorical and called for a return to biblical and patristic sources (ressourcement). The nouvelle theologie shaped Vatican II decisively. Contemporary Catholic theology is substantially continuous with the nouvelle theologie, though manualist sympathies persist in some seminaries and conservative theological centers, and the integralist movement has reopened some of the older arguments.

Vatican II hermeneutics

The hermeneutic-of-continuity vs hermeneutic-of-rupture debate, named by Benedict XVI, remains live. The various Catholic political-theological positions (integralism, communio, postliberal, liberal-Catholic, Catholic Social Teaching mainstream) substantially line up with positions in this debate.

Role of women

The question of women's ordination remains formally closed (Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, 1994), but the discussions of female deacons, of women in significant Vatican leadership roles, and of broader female agency within the institutional Church remain active. Francis has appointed women to senior dicastery roles for the first time, while maintaining the prohibition of priestly ordination.

Married clergy in the East

The Eastern Catholic Churches (in full communion with Rome but with their own liturgical and disciplinary traditions, particularly the Byzantine, Maronite, Chaldean, Syro-Malabar, and others) have always had married priests, while reserving the episcopate to celibates. The 2019 Amazon Synod raised the question of whether the Latin Rite might admit viri probati (mature married men) to the priesthood in mission territories. Francis declined to authorize it in the post-synodal exhortation Querida Amazonia (2020), preserving the Latin discipline of celibacy.

Liturgical questions

Whether the post-Vatican-II liturgical reform faithfully implemented the council, whether the Tridentine Mass should be more freely available (and to whom), and whether further reforms (including, more recently, the use of inclusive language in lectionaries) are warranted, are continuing arguments.

Tensions

Continuity and discontinuity. The single most pervasive tension. Whether the contemporary Church is fundamentally continuous with the pre-conciliar Church, or whether Vatican II constituted a genuine new beginning, is contested in every domain (liturgy, doctrine, governance, ecumenism, sexual ethics).
Mercy and truth. The pastoral emphasis of Francis, the doctrinal precision of Benedict XVI, and the integrating instinct of John Paul II represent three Catholic styles of holding mercy and truth together. Catholic life in 2026 is substantially shaped by which of these three styles the institutional moment seems to call for.
Universal jurisdiction and synodality. How the Vatican I doctrine of universal papal jurisdiction integrates with the Vatican II doctrine of episcopal collegiality and the Francis emphasis on synodal deliberation remains a live theological and practical issue.
The abuse crisis and Catholic self-understanding. The Church teaches that it is divinely instituted, indefectible, and the privileged means of salvation. The credible evidence of systemic institutional failure in protecting children, and of cover-up by many bishops, creates substantive tension with that self-understanding. Catholic theological responses have not converged on a single account.
Global Catholicism and Roman primacy. The center of Catholic life is shifting demographically to the Global South while its institutional center remains in Rome. The Synodal Path crisis, the African resistance to Fiducia Supplicans, and the China question all surface aspects of this tension.