In her eight novels and many short stories, Alice McDermott has brought a distinctly Catholic imagination to her fiction—but not in the same way as her forebears.
Were a papal document forthcoming it could lead to a new and definitive papal teaching document on issues as polarizing as contraception, assisted procreation and palliative care.
Believers who oppose abortion are not doing so by divine dictate. On the contrary, though our ethical thought is certainly inspired by our religious faith, it is not directly derived from it.
The papalization of the church reached its most robust form in the first half of the 20th century, but it might be seeing its twilight under Pope Francis.