The Manhattan Declaration

It is certainly a very interesting and welcome document, with a very interesting and welcome list of signatories, several of whom have been active in this sort of thing for decades. The text itself indicates the first signs of a shift back towards mentioning Catholic Social Teaching and the Evangelical tradition of work for social justice. In the days of things like Evangelicals and Catholics Together, they never used to bother, when they thought that the Republican Right might deliver the goods, especially on abortion.

Well, they have clearly given up waiting for that one. That, too, is interesting and welcome. Expect future products of this process to say exactly what they have been longing to say for years as much about global capitalism and its wars as about sexual promiscuity and its abortions, and about how all these things are connected. And expect that, in turn, to bring some very interesting and welcome, not to say otherwise unexpected, people over to Rome, which has been proclaiming the catholicity of these concerns for ever.