Liberal Catholics have lately been lamenting the preponderance of conservative and traditionalist voices in mainstream op-ed sections, especially that of the New York Times. The attention given to the Catholicism of vice-presidential candidate J. D. Vance also seems to have struck a nerve. But this reaction may speak to a bigger issue: the paucity of public Catholic theological voices in the general political and societal discourse.

Back in 1960, following the election of John F. Kennedy, Time magazine featured John Courtney Murray on its cover. The tagline read “U.S. Catholics & the State.” Sixty-four years later, we see very little of this kind of mainstream exposure of Catholic religious leaders and thinkers, nor do we hear voices articulating or elaborating on the views of Catholics regarding major issues or world events. Consider, for example, the war in Gaza. In May, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, noted the absence of prophetic voices of religious leaders working to foster peace and reconciliation in the region. The situation has not changed significantly since then. Catholics have spoken up, but in Catholic publications and outlets, not in mainstream media. A national sign-on letter from U.S. Catholics on Israel-Palestine garnered thousands of signatures—bishops and clergy, women religious, laypeople, academics, and activists—but it did not register in the national debate on Israel and Gaza.

One leading Catholic who does break through in the mainstream media is the pope. But Francis is also a head of state, and so there are limits on just what and how much he can say (the papacy is a combination of prophecy and diplomacy). On the war in Gaza, the pope and the Vatican face a cluster of doctrinal, theological, and political issues: the religious relations of the Church with Judaism and Islam; the diplomatic relations of the Holy See with the State of Israel, its position on Jerusalem and the holy sites, and the relations with Israel’s neighboring states; doctrinal issues around “just war” and emerging types of warfare; the theological uniqueness of the Holocaust for Jewish-Christian relations. These are some of the narrow boundaries within which the humanitarian and peacebuilding efforts of the Church can develop and the delicate balance between prophecy and diplomacy in the Vatican can more easily be understood, if not justified.

It’s not just Gaza. There are other issues on which the voices of Catholics seem to be getting lost amid coverage of the pope’s words, and are thus unable to reach a larger audience. There’s the question of the role of the Patriarch of Moscow in providing theological justification for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. There are the lies that Vance and Donald Trump are telling about Haitian migrants in Ohio, to say nothing of their approach to the larger issue of immigration to the United States overall.

Is there a “treason of theologians,” as the ninety-year-old Italian theologian Severino Dianich wrote recently? Are we being silent in the face of tragedy and in this ever more threatening moment of history? Does the current moment echo that of a century ago, when Julien Benda in his 1927 La Trahison des Clercs criticized French and German intellectuals for abandoning their universal vocation—the promotion of the value of justice and democracy—and getting caught up the political passions of class struggle, nationalism, and racism?

It’s undeniable that there’s a problem with the public voice of theologians. The job of theology professors is to produce and keep alive the critical conscience of a people—a vital component of the experience of faith, but also for people of other or of no faiths. Yet that effort is increasingly politicized and subject to propaganda, given the heightened stakes of two-party electoral politics (which increasingly also seems to infect the Church). And despite Pope Francis’s efforts and personal popularity, the social-justice component of Catholic theology is receiving far less visibility than it used to (and than it should), which influences the public perception of what Catholicism stands for today. Catholic intellectuals of our generation betray their own mission when they fail to challenge the notion that the only response to corruption, scandals, and toxic politicization of institutional religion is to walk away from it.

Theologian David Tracy famously defined theology in its relation to three distinct publics: academy, church, and society. In these last few years, theology has become far less of a subject for public audiences, having been further integrated into the “market” (higher education, publishing, mainstream media, social media, big donors, think tanks). The university has ceded the role of thinkers and scholars—including theologians—to diversity officers, education experts, and branding wizards. In some ways, that has helped liberate theology from the close watch of Church authorities, but it also now makes it more subject to the pressures of donors, customers, and other stakeholders in the “marketplace.” The decisions and whims of funding organizations now pose a bigger worry than the decisions the Holy Office of the Inquisition once did. In an ironic reversal of roles, as John Gray noted in The New Leviathans, “the university campus is the model for an inquisitorial regime that has extended its reach throughout society.”

But it’s not just theologians. Bishops don’t write for the larger public as much as they used to, and when they do, their voices register only when they’re weighing in on culture-war issues. Lay Catholic leaders, meanwhile, are more and more often identified with a particular agenda or institution, and so, like academic theologians, what they say is often assumed to reflect the preferences of the funding institutions and donors supporting them.

There’s something else that might be limiting the voice of Catholics in the public space: the desire to speak out. Is there a vocation? Is it part of the job? Does it help in the work of evangelization? And amid recent controversy over university free-speech policies regarding Israel and Gaza and declarations of institutional “neutrality” on the issue, are Catholics feeling less inclined to go public on hot-button issues?

There is also an ecclesiological problem. The Catholic Church is not in a state of schism, but there is something like a schism in the social-media world of public Catholic figures. Additionally, while the Francis papacy has pushed local churches to assume a more decentralized and less Rome-focused vision of Church governance, Francis doesn’t seem to have been influenced by the synodal vision that he is advocating for when it comes to his own manner of exercising papal primacy. This has created a sort of journalistic ultramontanism, augmented by Francis’s direct and frequent interactions with the press, where the only voice that ends up mattering is his. This problem was especially apparent most recently on the in-flight press conference of September 13, when Francis addressed the upcoming presidential election and suggested a moral equivalence between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. Whatever happens on November 5 and after, Catholic voices must find a way to speak again to the public—but maybe also to the pope.