Faith Matters

Matt Dellinger interviews Peter J. Boyer in The New Yorker. Here, Boyer gives an outsider's perspective.

The difference with the Catholic Church, though, and the mainline Protestant churches is that the Catholic Church can ultimately reel in clergy that have gone too far. There is an authority and a central Church teaching. There was a huge acrimonious debate about homosexuality in the Catholic Church, but now there's no doubt about what Church teaching is, and, at the end of the day, the Pope dispatches his guardian of the faith and cracks the whip.