In his position at the Times, Douthat is an essentially, if covertly, evangelistic writer, and he is most convincing when his tone is irenic, funny, and self-deprecating, and when he is willing to trade small, stubborn differences for broader agreements—when, in other words, he most closely resembles Francis. Both hope to win a soul or two, and both come across as willing, given their surroundings, to make a few compromises in the winning.

It is high-minded cultural criticism, concise, rhetorically agile, lit up by Douthat’s love for the Roman Catholic Church. In some respects it goes to the root of the discontent that drives all three books; in others it is a simple sour mash, applying to Pope Francis insinuative caricatures like the ones he applied to Gabby ... Douthat’s own position is traditionalist-cum-literalist: Any relaxing of the Catholic teaching on marriage — one man, one woman, one time — means that core teachings can be changed; if core teachings can be changed, the Catholic Church is no longer the Catholic Church; and if the church is not the church, all hope is lost. From this fixed position, he slyly derides other positions, especially the liberal outlook.

New York Times editorialist Douthat believes Pope Francis is one of the most consequential Roman Catholic leaders ever. His own ambiguous demurrals notwithstanding, Francis is trying hard to change the church ... If the church under Francis comes to allow communion to civil divorcées, does it undermine its sine qua non basis in Christ’s explicit teaching? That question animates Douthat’s book, which is an absorbing chapter, not just in the pope’s but in the church’s life story.

He weaves a gripping account of Vatican politics into a broader history of Catholic intellectual life to explain the civil war within the church. This is not just a conflict between the pope’s liberal fans and conservatives who pine for Benedict XVI, but a contest between two different visions of the church’s relationship to modernity ... He is hardly the first critic to accuse the pope and other progressives of ancient heresies, but his accounts of complex episodes in long-ago church history are by turns exasperating and intriguing ... Historical comparisons that leap centuries, cultures and continents are always full of problems, but they are also deeply interesting. Douthat manages in a slim volume what most doorstop-size, more academic church histories fail to achieve ... He helps us see that Christians have wrestled repeatedly with the same questions over the past two millennia ... But in his tale of the perils to orthodoxy, he ignores the way in which the church’s compromises with secular democracy and multiculturalism have — at least partly — helped Catholics domesticate the chauvinistic impulses that tend to corrupt all religious ideals.

Douthat wishes to decipher which will provide the template for the post-Pope Francis era. He analyzes the two modern factions’ strengths and weaknesses and games out scenarios based on questions such as how long the current pontiff will live and how many cardinals he will therefore be able to appoint ... We already know how the story ends: with Christ victorious. If any of Douthat’s worst fears come to pass, it will be because something in his conception of what Catholic doctrine requires is mistaken—or because everything we think we know about God’s power on earth is false ... Douthat should look to the pope of his childhood and take comfort in the words for which St. John Paul II was known: Be not afraid. Do not be afraid.

To Change the Church: Pope Francis and the Future of Catholicism is Douthat’s latest tactical maneuver in his running battle with Catholic theological liberalism. The format he chose was not that of a treatise, but something closer to his wheelhouse: a pot-boiler of a history that examines a growing ecclesial crisis precipitated by a pope who — quietly, tactfully, cunningly — seems to be contravening church teaching ... One does not have to share Douthat’s theological commitments to sympathize. Everyone who orients their life toward something beyond themselves will feel in their gut his anxious love for his church ... For Catholic and non-Catholic readers alike, that will undoubtedly be the most striking and disturbing aspect of To Change the Church: Douthat’s ringing, clear case that the destination should, in fact, be the latter.

Regular readers of his New York Times column will not be surprised to learn that Douthat has written the most balanced and least polemical of the recent critiques of this pontificate ... To his credit, Douthat is willing to entertain the idea that he is simply wrong and that others—Pope Francis and his advisers—are right ... Douthat, for his part, has succeeded in helping make at least a little sense of that mess, in ways that are both disconcerting and, taking a long enough view, reassuring. His readers will be grateful.

In it, the New York Times columnist offers a compelling blend of history and theology to analyze the Church’s internal division in recent decades, skillfully examining how Francis’s agenda and personality might alter the Church’s course, perhaps even for generations to come ... Douthat’s picture of the current pope is not all critical, and some of the details he includes might reassure people who are disturbed by Francis’s method and agenda —stories about the pope’s time as the head of the Jesuits in his home country of Argentina, for example.

As Douthat argues persuasively throughout To Change the Church, this clash between rival wings of the Church mirrors a larger battle playing out across the world, between tradition and modernity, between those who judge truth to be objective and unchanging and those who view truth as relative to the individual and their personal circumstances ... Douthat’s work of diligent reportage and analysis offer a good starting point for anyone interested in entering into a fascinating, two-millennia-old dialogue still being played in an ancient institution that commands the loyalty of more than a billion followers.

Douthat is never shy about sharing his staunch beliefs, but he is able to temper them with modesty and asks more questions than he answers. Those interested in contemporary Catholicism and how it might develop will be pleased with this look at the liberalizing policies of Pope Francis.

A balanced look at the struggle for the future of Catholicism ... Though largely sympathetic to Francis and Catholic liberalism, Douthat does play devil’s advocate on many occasions and, in his conclusion, provides some criticisms of the pope. However, the author is prone to an overabundance of speculation, often bogging down his otherwise solid analysis with a series of what-ifs. His attempt to see the current church through historical lenses—e.g., comparisons with controversies over Arians, Jansenists, and other heresies and schisms—is laudable but overdone. An imperfect but certainly fascinating look at the church under Pope Francis.