Reply #14: She's a Catholic the way a lot of Jewish atheists are Judaic, it seems.

[BurtWorm]

It's a heritage thing. Non-Catholics and non-Jews wouldn't understand (of which I'm one, by the way, but I'm trying to understand). Especially for people who are Irish and Italian, and Polish and Hispanic or latino, Catholicism is not just a belief system, it's a cultural heritage, an integral part of learning to be Irish or Italian, etc. In fact, it often seems that belief has less and less to do with being Catholic than belonging to an ancient historical lineage and cultural tradition.

The hierarchy really doesn't seem to understand and appreciate what a sidebar the church is to more and more self-identified Catholics, rather than the main feature of life that it once was, and that misunderstanding seems to be endangering its position in Ireland and the US certainly. I was reading today that the newly appointed archbishop of Dublin criticized the Archbishop of Canterbury for saying that the church had injured itself so badly that priests were beginning to feel conspicuously unsafe in their collars on the street. Maybe the Anglican archbishop went overboard, but the Irish archbishop said his remarks weren't helping people keep faith with the church. Well, what reason do the Irish Catholics who feel betrayed by the hierarchy have to ever trust their hiearchy again? Why should they take anything the bishops say on faith alone?