Who Is a Real Catholic?

[MountainLaurel]

All you need to know to diagnose the state of the Catholic Church in America today is that Pope Benedict XVI -- who has a knack for ticking off Muslims and Jews -- spent the past week wandering the Middle East, yet Catholics here barely noticed. They were too busy fighting over Barack Obama's appearance as commencement speaker at Notre Dame or arguing about the fate of a popular Miami priest known as "Father Oprah," who was caught on camera sharing a seaside embrace with his girlfriend.

Is this what Catholicism in America has come to? Bickering about whether Notre Dame is really Catholic, or whether a priest can make out on the beach with his gal pal? Well, yes. And that should come as no surprise.

Since the emergence of Catholicism in the 19th century as a counterweight to the United States's reigning Protestant culture, American Catholics have struggled to balance their desire to assimilate into society with the fear of losing their faith in the nation's melting pot. These new controversies show that, in the Catholic saga, assimilation is winning.

That is because American Catholics -- and there are upwards of 65 million of us -- are going their own way on many matters of faith and especially on issues ranging from priestly celibacy to political candidates, and there seems to be little the bishops can do about it. If there is a true swing vote in the U.S. electorate today, it is the Catholic bloc. This disturbs conservative members of the faith, the self-styled "orthodox" who often dismiss such fickle folks as "cafeteria Catholics." In the vacuum left by the disappearing Catholic subculture, conservatives have made politics the eighth sacrament, with one's position on abortion and gay marriage becoming the litmus test of whether one is a "good Catholic," or a Catholic at all.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/15/AR2009051501390.html

[MichiganVote]

1. Anyone who could protest the sex abuse scandals/dirty Bishops...and did.

Guess that limits the field some doesn't it. The rest are of bunch of routine driven, guilt producing, chicken hearted religious drones who give themselves excuses or beat their breasts out of the need to think they are better than anyone else.

Sorry...not looking for friends in my answer.

[madeline_con]

2. "Is this what Catholicism in America has come to?"

Yes, and worldwide as well. The Inquisition, selling indulgences, allowing sex abuse to go unchecked for decades and electing a Nazi pope has damaged the church irreparably.

[Occam Bandage]

3. Given that three of those date back to at least the 1400s,

and given that Roman Catholicism accounts for about half of all Christians on the planet, I think "irreparable damage" is a bit off (unless you count the existence of Protestants to be irreparable damage).

[madeline_con]

4. I'm sorry, let me amend my statement to include

"to the Catholic Church" after the word "damage".

Protestant fundies have wreaked their own form of havoc on their brand of religion also. :)

[JerseygirlCT]

5. I'm no longer R. Catholic myself (Episcopalian now)

but whenever I speak with my parents, the biggest related topic is the food pantry run by the parish I grew up in, and the amount of time my mom spends there. (Every waking minute, according to Dad).

Not Fr. Cutie, not N.D. and Obama. (my father's a Villanova guy and would likely dispute the importance of position given to ND by many newscasters these days. I'd say G'town runs far higher on the list than ND as the premiere Catholic university, but I digress...).

[lamp_shade]

6. My Slovenian grandmother who died in 1980 at age 90.

[sakabatou]

7. As soon as you find the TRUE Scotsman

then you'll know.

[Meshuga]

8. I could be wrong but I always had the idea that

"Catholics" are those who go through the Catholic sacraments. Now, if Catholics differ in opinion then that should not make them any more or any less Catholic.

[JerseygirlCT]

9. You are correct

And in a way, it's ironic that there is a sort of stickiness to the process - as far as the RCC is concerned, once baptised and confirmed, you are a Catholic, whether you are practicing or not - and this argument about who the "real" Catholics are.

"Real" Catholics run the gamut of religious and political belief, with almost every possible position being held by some. Many are quite comfortable ignoring the boys in Rome and concentrating on their own congregations, worship and work in the world.

Catholic itself means universal. Of course, a lot of age-old politics involved in the RCC's claim to hold the one, true, universal faith, but those of us not Roman Catholic also include the phrase (small "c") in the Nicene prayer as well. Universal there means more universal and less "part of this particular club that's got it all right!".

[Brigid]

10. I became a Catholic a little over a year ago.

And when I did, I didn't have my brain extracted and sent to Rome. I pondered the decision for many years before finally signing up for RCIA classes in August 2007. I came to the Church late in life and for my own reasons: I love the rich, ancient tradition of the Church; I like the Mass; I like the proud tradition of charitable works. Despite its flaws, it's a wonderful place. If being uninterested in standing in front of an abortion clinic with tape over my mouth, refusing to assume that gays are automatically going to hell, thinking that women should be ordained to the priesthood starting immediately, and not considering contraception a sin makes me not such a "good Catholic" in the eyes of some, I simply remember that Jesus wasn't considered a "good Jew" by some in his own time either.