Friday, November 19, 2010

To be a Catholic

The point was made in the comments yesterday or the day before that many people who no longer pay much heed to the institutional church still consider themselves to be Catholics. And that is, true, they do consider themselves to be.

You can really see this in Quebec where I come from. Most Quebecois never go to church except for weddings and funerals and yet most Quebecois consider themselves to be Catholic. They even get their children Christened at Catholic churches, but those children never return again until they get married, if they get married, or until they come in in a box. or urn.

There are other Catholics who join communities that operate outside the boundaries and there are even a few rogue parish priests who operate below the radar.

Is that Catholic? If you look over at my profile you'll see that I describe myself as a "crypto-Catholic libertine" and, as one of my favourite movie characters says, "I'm not completely kidding."

But even I think there is something to the old joke:
Q: What do you call a Catholic who insists on independently making up their mind about doctrine and liturgy?
A: A protestant.
Does that mean a Catholic has to accept every jot of doctrine? Honestly, I think there are some things you can soft pedal. 

On the other hand, about twenty years ago now, The Serpentine One and I were in a Catholic church and she pointed out that some of the others in attendance would skip parts of the creed. There is a certain admirable integrity here; they won't say it if they don't believe it. But if you can't say every line of the creed and mean it, you aren't a Catholic.

And the creed includes this line: "one holy catholic and apostolic church."

I know that can sound all authoritarian and triumphalist but words have meaning and if you put the meanings of "one"and "catholic" together with "apostolic" and you get a religion where the institutional church cannot be ignored.

There is an oft told story about Theresa of Avila riding in a carriage that gets overturned and dumps her in the ditch. As the story goes, she got out of the carriage and shook her fist at the sky and said, "the way you treat your friends, it's no wonder you have so few of them."

I think a Catholic can take a similar attitude towards the institutional church. We can wonder at how it treats its friends and we can wonder what the hell it thinks it is up to but if we start to treat it as irrelevant we cease to be Catholics.

5 comments:

  1. In the creed, "catholic" is with a lower-case "c", which is not accidental nor incidental. So I don't think it follows from those words that the institutional Roman Catholic Church cannot be ignored, and I don't think people we're talking about ignore it so much as not take it too seriously. I decided to look it up on Wikipedia, here is how they define "catholic" with a lower-case "c":

    "It was first used to describe the Christian Church in the early 2nd century to emphasize its universal scope. In the context of Christian ecclesiology, it has a rich history and several usages. In non-ecclesiastical use, it derives its English meaning directly from its root, and is currently used to mean:

    universal or of general interest; or
    liberal, having broad interests, or wide sympathies;
    inclusive, inviting and containing strong evangelism."

    So at some point after the 2nd C. the Christian Church became the Catholic Church with an upper-case "C" but the early notion of "catholic" was still retained in the creed, even if not in actual practice. But even combined with "one" and "apostolic"--all Christian churches are apostolic. I look at "one" "catholic" and "apostolic" to include all Christian groups even those who don't refer to themselves as Catholic with an upper-case "C."

    As far as being able to soft-pedal some doctrine, here again going back to earlier discussions, everyone has his own ideas about that. What you might consider unimportant could be very important to others, and vice-versa. I think if a person decides to call himself Catholic is largely a personal preference, maybe because that's how they were raised. As I understand it, the "Old Catholic Church" that I referred to earlier believe they are the real deal and the Catholic Church after Utrecht got it wrong. The many people I know who left the Church and don't call themselves Catholic believe in most of the things that I believe in, but for various reasons choose not to call themselves Catholic. From my vantage point, more often than not, its to make a statement.

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  2. I'm not sure this helps. The problem is that the church we declare our belief in the creed has to meet all three qualifications put together. That is to say it is a church such that there is only one of them, it is catholic and its apostolic. There are are only two churches that can plausibly claim to meet those three qualifications: Catholic and Orthodox.

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  3. Well, you're referring to Apostolic Succession and if I'm not mistaken the Anglicans claim Apostolic Succession also, passed down from the Bishops who were ordained prior to Henry VIII. But I interpret the one, catholic, and apostolic as the entire Christian community.

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  4. I hope you can open this. This came out of nowhere but it only underscores what Vatican II affirmed--WE are the Church in all its myriad facets, and everyone can make a contribution. There is not only a right but a duty to inform the Pope and other hierarchy when necessary, and they have the obligation to listen and thoughtfully consider with an open mind. I think this demonstrates that Benedict is willing to do that. This is monumental, and I think it will go a long way in re-establishing some credibility. In addition, people can justifiably infer (if they haven't already done so) other moral uses of condoms, e.g., not having children you can't afford or are too young to take care of. The wise old Jesuit who mentored me when I did the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises 19th Annotation Retreat over the course of the Liturgical Year 1996-97 said that the Jesuits have always felt that they had an obligation to point out when they think the Pope is wrong. I think that applies to everyone.

    Pope: condoms can be justified in some cases - Yahoo! News


    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101120/ap_on_re_eu/eu_pope_condoms

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  5. Here's the thing, nobody gets to decide who is Catholic and who is not except the person involved. The Church is not a private country club or the YMCA. The SSPXrs have as much right as the Old Catholic Church, or the people who only go to Church at Christmas and Easter, practice birth control, are actively gay, to call themselves Catholic or not. As I said before, its been my experience that those who choose not to call themselves Catholic do so in order to make a statement of dissociation from the policies and practices of the Roman Catholic Church, and they have that right. But so do those who continue to call themselves Catholic despite their disagreements about policies and practices.

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