To be a conservative is to question the revolution and assert the permanence of the permanent things, but--to all appearances, at least--today it seems like the only thing permanent is the revolution. No matter how many elections we win, no matter how many judges we appoint, no matter how many times the revolution falls on its face, acts like a tyrant, or eats its own, it progresses on inexorably. It is slowed, but almost never stopped, and never reversed. It as if the center of gravity resides with the left, so that (as O'Sullivan's law has it), any organization that is not explicitly right-wing will over time become left-wing.
It is particularly disheartening to see this operating in the Church. After a quarter century of John Paul II, the election of Ratzinger of all people as his successor, it seemed like we might finally put liberal Catholicism to bed. It had shown itself to be completely played out, sterile, self-hating, aesthetically and intellectually bankrupt, a dead end. Everything vital and new in the Church was clearly conservative. But then Benedict retires, a new guy comes in, he abandons the careful rhetoric of his predecessors for a casual style that generates left-friendly sound bytes and appears to do just about everything he can to reopen the left's pet causes that his predecessors put the lid on for years, and it's as if the last two papacies didn't happen. Despite 30 years of episcopal appointments, papal documents, a new catechism, a massive dying-off of liberal orders and institutions, the center of gravity is with the left--and, in fact, as moved leftward, so we're talking about being welcoming to gays and transgenders instead of just the boring old remarried mom with kids.
Now, it looks to me like the center of gravity among the bishops is still toward tradition and they're going to shut down the move to the left in this case, and, I don't think Pope Francis is actually a consistent or radical liberal. But still, at least to all appearances, the revolution is relentless and is playing the long game, while those standing up for what is ostensibly immutable feel as though there is no room for error--even when we're talking about bishops overwhelmingly chosen by conservative popes in a Church that stakes its very claim to authority on the immutability of its teachings.
It is a marvel. The confidence that the Catholic once had that the Church was unchanging is now felt by the progressive who is confident that progress is an inevitable law of the universe. Like it or not, the progressive shapes the dominant narrative of our society, and we are to some extent captive to it, even if we consciously reject it.
