Deliver Us from Evil

Yesterday brought a sad and distressing study in contrasts to my desk.

First came the phone call from the man distraught over his parish’s forced closing. “We really don't know what to do now,” he told me. “After years looking, we’d finally found a parish we could call our home. Our kids were safe there, we felt welcomed there, our faith was nourished there. And now they close it. Where do we go now? Do we start all over again? Do we go to the Anglicans? The Lutherans? Do we just give up?”

After my rather feeble attempts to console the man, I opened my mail, which included a Diocesan newspaper that features a weekly question box. “A priest told me last year,” one reader wrote, “that after communion Christ continues present with us for 15 or 20 minutes…. I had always assumed our Lord remained until we lost sanctifying grace by mortal sin. Is there a Church teaching on this?”

Last week I wrote about the polarized climate in our Church—and here was a perfect example. While one Catholic feels displaced by his own leaders, another Catholic is preoccupied with holding a stopwatch on Jesus, timing the Eucharist like a soft-boiled egg. How can such different concerns both find their spiritual home in the same Church?

For some time now, “Catholic Identity” has been a fashionable label for this struggle, raising a key question: “What does it mean to be Catholic?” Communicating the answer to that question is a major challenge, but that challenge faces a big barrier: before you can communicate an answer, you have to have one—and Catholic leaders don’t agree on the answer themselves!

For years, in fact, the label “Catholic Identity” has divided Catholics, not unified them, because some Catholics have been using the label like a club to beat on other Catholics, charging them (as well as many Catholic institutions) with having weakened, or confused, or even lost their “Catholic Identity.”

My best college friend is a proudly Conservative Catholic, with strong ties to conservative organizations like CUF (Catholics United for the Faith), the Legionaries of Christ, and Holy Apostles Seminary. CrossCurrents readers know my style of Catholicism is far from his, but we agree on two things: 1. A common Catholic Identity should be a critical part of the Church’s unity; 2. It cannot be that, until we get some consensus about what “Catholic Identity” means.

We both assume that “Catholic Identity” refers to what is essential to being Catholic, but our faith tradition is so vast, so old, so complex that people struggle to separate the “essentials” from the “non-essentials”

Among conservative Catholics, a popular tactic had been to criticize “cafeteria Catholics”—that is, people who think they can pick and choose which parts of Catholic tradition to digest and which to leave aside. Their point is that “real” Catholicism means accepting everything put in front of you, uncritically and with no discretion.

I have long argued that, however good this theory sounds, in practice very few Catholics know, understand, and accept everything in Catholic tradition—there’s just too much of it. I doubt you could fill New York's St. Patrick Cathedral with Catholics who have digested every Church teaching or practice without objection.

In history, in fact, most advances on Church teaching resulted precisely from objections and criticisms. It is exactly 125 years this month since Pope Leo XIII declared St. Thomas Aquinas the Church’s “official” theologian—yet upon his death in 1274, the bishop of Paris condemned 19 of his teachings as contrary to Church doctrine! Does this make the Saint a “cafeteria Catholic”?

Even so, the “cafeteria” image strikes me as promising, but too narrow. I’d rather expand the meal analogy to include many different kinds of Catholics. That way we can analyze the entire spectrum of Catholic Identity. So we find, for example, that there are:

“Low-Carb” Catholics. Get it? No bread, no wine! These Catholics get their kids baptized and maybe catechized, they show up for major family milestones—but Eucharistic worship is not in their routine. A slight variation: South Beach Catholics, for whom Mass is an occasional event (like dining out), but not part of their regular diet.

“Side Dish” Catholics. These Catholics go for the secondary aspects of Catholic tradition. Their favorite “side dishes” are ashes and palms, but they also gravitate to throat blessings, the Rosary, and devotions to saints. Some of these Catholics fill up so much on side dishes they skip the main course.

“A la Carte” Catholics. Some people like to focus on one course at a time, and especially the first courses and desserts. They are devoted to Mary, and may also be involved in spiritual movements like Cursillo and the charismatic renewal. They may gravitate to Bible Study. Sometimes their involvement in these things becomes more important than the central worship and sacramental life of the Church.

“Condiment” Catholics. These Catholics believe the “devil is in the details.” They are preoccupied with the ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise of Catholicism, instead of the beef: papal infallibility instead of major doctrines; contraception instead of healthy sexuality; passion plays instead of gospels; opposition to same-sex civil unions instead of promoting the sacrament of matrimony. These things flavor Catholic life, but they don't make a very nutritious diet. One wonders, “Where’s the beef?”

“Meat and Potatoes” Catholics. These people may not go for fancy trimmings; they focus on plain homestyle Catholicism: Mass and sacraments and parish and family. They can be fussy about style of liturgy, music, prayer and education, but as long as they get the staples they are satisfied.

In my view, Catholic Identity includes all these types. They are all, in some sense, Catholic people. I don’t think it serves much purpose to define any of them out of the Catholic Church.

On the other hand, if we want some kind of unified, common definition for Catholic Identity, let me suggest that the ideal kind of Catholic would be:

“Prix Fixe” Catholics: These are people who know the price tag in advance, and invest in the full-course meal. They may not finish everything on every plate, of course. They may not even like everything. By the end of the meal, some things will stand out as favorite items, and others will be left on the plate. But these people know the point of the meal is to experience the whole of the meal, and they know how to tell the dishes apart. They know what makes up the main course of Catholic life: 1. The gospel message, 2. Basic Catholic beliefs in the Trinity and in Jesus as the Christ, and 3. The sacramental and liturgical life of the Church. The rest adds richness, but nothing else supplies all the spiritual nourishment we need.

In the past I’ve compared Catholic tradition to an all-you-can-eat buffet. Certainly, no other Christian tradition offers such a vast, rich, varied array of customs, beliefs, heroes and heroines, rituals and teachings and institutions. There’s something for everyone in our Church. The fact is, of course, that no one at an all-you-can-eat buffet can actually eat everything there. The same is true for most Catholics—our tradition is simply too rich to digest it all.

The best Catholic diet is not achieved by demanding that we all eat everything. The best Catholic diet—and the clearest Catholic Identity—is achieved by inviting everyone to share the main course, knowing there will be plenty left to choose from all the other courses.

Send Your Comments and Questions to bfswain@juno.com