Perhaps I’m a bit naive, but I don’t think terms like “liberal” and “conservative” are all that helpful in the Catholic Church. Earlier this week, when I began to witness the discussion surrounding the elections of Archbishop Dolan and Archbishop Kurtz as president and vice-president respectively of the USCCB, I started thinking about how useless these terms are.

I’ve known both “liberal” and “conservative” Catholics who are exemplary Christians. And I’ve known both “liberal” and “conservative” Catholics who blatantly distance themselves from core teachings of the Church. So at the end of the day, it seems to me that a better indicator is simply whether a person accepts the teachings of the Catholic Church. Meanwhile, “liberal” and “conservative” work fine for politics.

Here’s mylatest column on the topic. Feel free to comment below and/or on the column site.