Several of the respondents to R. R. Reno’s First Thoughts item “When Reality is Unspoofable,” which offered the program for last year’s meeting of the Catholic Theological Society, noted how often the theologians used”invoked might be the better term”the word “prophetic.” The item was published last June, but Reno is the sort of writer whose lightest jotting one wants to read and reread and if possible commit to memory. My saying this has nothing to do with his being the next editor. Nothing at all. It’s perfectly, completely , sincere.
Anyway: In my years as an Episcopal activist, I duly read all the “progressive” magazines and newsletters and press releases and sat through dozens of “progressive” sermons, lectures, press conferences, and literally weeks of General Convention meetings, covering the debates both of the house of bishops and the house of deputies (which included clerics and laymen both). I was surprised, after a while, to notice not only how often the progressives used the word “prophetic,” but how un-ironically they used it.
