Soccer Over Dogma? by Anthony Esolen

By Anthony Esolen, Crisis Magazine, Aug. 8, 2023

Dr. Anthony Esolen is the author of 28 books on literature, culture, and the Christian life, whose most recent work is In the Beginning Was the Word: An Annotated Reading of the Prologue of John. He and his wife Debra also produce a new web magazine, Word and Song, devoted to reintroducing people to the good, the true, and the beautiful.

In spite of the pope’s seeming preference for soccer over dogma, proclaiming the truths of the Catholic Faith—i.e., being “dogmatic”—leads to more joy and happiness, not less.

News broke last week that about twenty Catholics, “ultra-conservative” as they have been called, “far-right extremists,” were arrested in Lisbon for interrupting a Mass at World Youth Day. The Portuguese article in Visio did not mention exactly what they were chanting, and except for their opposition to what they see as the normalization of gay relationships in the Church, and their evident belief that what was going on was sacrilegious, we are not told what was conservative or extreme about them.

They should not have disrupted the Mass, not least because they thus gave plenty of undeserved publicity to a small group of gay people who are proud in their disobedience. …

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