Changing Witness: Catholic Bishops and Public Policy, 1917-1994

Changing Witness

By Michael Warner. Traces the development of the social teachings of America’s Catholic bishops from World War I to the present and shows how papal teaching, the reception of the Second Vatican Council, the upheavals in American morals, mores, and politics, and the bureaucratic evolution of the bishops’ conference all contribute to a “changing witness” in the volatile years between 1917 and 1994 and detects a profound paradigm shift at work, as the bishops gradually abandoned their traditional analytic framework in favor of a generally liberal reading of the “signs of the times”. Read more.