In The Idol of Our Age, Daniel J. Mahoney devotes a chapter to “Pope Francis’ Humanitarian Version of Catholic Social Teaching.” Mahoney’s subtitle—How the Religion of Humanity Subverts Christianity—sets the tone of his appraisal of Francis. A careful writer and a courteous man, he is concerned to give due weight to both the consistencies and inconsistencies of Francis’ relation to traditional Catholic teaching:

We need a “hermeneutic of continuity” that forthrightly confronts Francis’ ample continuities and equally amble discontinuities with the great tradition that preceded him.

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