What the Catholic Church can learn about change from baseball’s pitch-clock innovation

We have a great summer bonus episode, all about baseball! To listen to the full episode, become a patron of Jesuitical!

This is the first season with a pitch clock in Major League Baseball, which was implemented to try to speed up the game and appeal to younger viewers. But to some longtime baseball fans the rule change feels gimmicky and disrespectful to the grand tradition of America's pastime.

If the debate sounds familiar, that's because the Catholic Church is at a similar pivotal moment in its history. Younger people are not filling the pews as previous generations have, and Catholics are grappling with how to reform itself without compromising its authentic tradition. 

On today's episode, two past guests and baseball fanatics return to debate the pitch clock and draw analogies between the game and the church they love. J.D. Long-Garcia is a senior editor at America and Greg Hillis runs the Aquinas Center of Theology at Emory University. You can read their takes on the pitch clock here:

J.D. Long-Garcia, "The pitch clock is a travesty. The Catholic Church must learn from baseball’s mistake."

Greg Hillis, "Quit Trying to ‘Fix’ Baseball" and "In Praise of the Pitch Clock"

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