An interesting question raised by Bishop Curry's piece is when a tradition is in good health. Is it when people placidly move along in time, without fighting, argument, or criticism? He seems at points to worry that that all the argument, all the intellectual jostling since the Second Vatican Council is actually harming the Church.

I think most Catholics are insulated from the arguments of "Professional Catholics" -- my term for anybody who's gotten a paycheck for talking or writing about Catholic things. Most Catholcs don't read First Things or Commonweal or America. As the bishop suggested, they go about their normal lives, trying to live them in faith.

But Catholicism is also a long theological, political, and cultural tradition. And if Alasdair MacIntyre is right (on many things, I believe he is), traditions live and grow by argument. A tradition, according to MacIntyre, is a historically extended argument about the goods internal to it, the practices that sustain it, and the virtues that help one appreciate those goods. A tradition has reason to worry when some people -- intellectuals (i.e. Professional Catholics) AREN'T arguing passionately about its status, growth, and health.

So I think Bishop Curry is right to point to the vibrancy of the Church. And I think he is, as a bishop, right, to worry about the health of the people of God--that's his job. But I think he's wrong to see the intellectual wrangling--by Neuhaus, Steinfels, Baumann, and the rest of us--as necessarily harmful.

Now that doesn't mean we can't all make a New Year's Resolution to argue argue more civilly or more productively--or more charitably.