In both contexts, ideas from the fringes — far right and far left, radical and traditional — suddenly have unexpected resonance. But he is no such thing, and not only because his politics are much more radical and apocalyptic than any Western technocrat. So the story of Catholicism right now has less to do with reaction alone and more to do with what happens generally when an institution’s center doesn’t hold. Just as Trumpism is forging tomorrow’s political left, in other words, Francis is forging tomorrow’s Catholic right — theologically and perhaps politically as well. But as a vision of what populism and polarization could deliver to Catholicism and Western politics, it is not the most implausible of prophecies.

Source: New York Times February 15, 2017 08:37 UTC