“Catholic” as Empty Signifier

Back in the early summer of 2018, when I sent the manuscript for Transfiguration: Notes toward a Radical Catholic Reimagination of Everything to my publisher, I was pretty comfortable with the identifier “Catholic.” But while the manuscript was in the hands of copyeditors and in the limbo of the publishing process, the atomic bomb that is the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report came out, as did the disgusting details of Cardinal McCarrick’s evil shenanigans. The list, of course, has grown and no e...