Since my reversion back to my faith many years ago, I have been blessed with getting to know many Catholics who practice their faith to the fullest (or try very hard to, which would be more my category). I have met many through home schooling groups, and I have met many online (yes, if you are reading this, that means YOU). But In real life, unless you purposefully seek out other Catholics like yourself, meeting other true, practicing Catholics are far and few between. There are plenty of Catholics, but they fall into what I call cultural Catholics: they are baptized, they belong to a parish to utilize it for the weddings, baptism and First Holy Communions and because their mother told them "this is our parish". It's part of their ethnic identity more than it is about the Faith.
I know that sounds horribly judgmental because I cannot truly read a person's heart. But I live in the diocese of Albany. The Albany area is something like 60% Catholic, yet we are closing Churches at phenomenal rates. In meetings with the Bishop he cannot resist (after delivering some new heterodox policy or another Church closing), talking about going back to our "Irish Catholic families". My husband said he would go to work, and everyone would be Catholic, yet he would be the only one abstaining from meat on Fridays during Lent...or go to Mass on Sundays...and was jabbed at for having more than two kids.
And again, I do not think this is limited to "Irish Catholics". My family is Italian and it is the same thing: they go to Mass, have statues of saints in every corner, make Novenas, yet criticize every name I pick for a child ("Francisco Augustine? Where'd you get a name like that?"), are quick to say God doesn't exist when life becomes a little difficult, and oh gosh, how they ride me hard for the number of children I have. They actually do not differentiate between Italian customs and Catholic ones. Sunday Mass is a place to socialize and exchange gossip more than it is where you get graces and instructions in ultimately how best to get to Heaven.
My mother in law does the same thing-she thinks customs that are actually Puerto Rican in origin: "October is special in Puerto Rico, Puerto Ricans take out their rosaries and wear them around their necks." Oh. I didn't have the heart to tell her that October is a month dedicated to Mary to Catholics throughout the world because she was honestly trying to connect to me on my level, which is something she rarely, is ever, does.
So getting to the point, I came across this Inside Catholic by Deal Hudson about why Obama picked Joe Biden as a running mate-because he thinks we Catholics are "cultural" and that will win back any Catholics lost in Saddleback:
Our Church is no longer a place where telling a few “Pat and Mike” jokes and stories about Notre Dame football or Georgetown basketball can take the place of basic Catholic beliefs.
That kind of Catholic identity was born out of the age of assimilation when many Catholics, immigrants, or descendants from immigrants achieved the American dream of college and a home in the suburbs.
John Paul II, and now Benedict XVI, led American Catholics away from their infatuation with secularism and the culture of death it espouses. True Catholic identity, they reminded us, is established by embracing the Church's view of life, marriage, and the family, positions particularly despised by secularists and leftists.
It never occurred to me before that my own revert experience had a lot to do with the evangelization efforts of JPII. It totally makes sense. But all these I thought the Church was just waiting there for anyone who wanted to scratch below the surface of their cultural Catholicism. Of course it was, but this is part of a larger plan. It also brings me comfort to see the cultural thing is an old, dying trend. People should not be dismissed from Church communities on the basis of not growing up in a parish. Nor should we embrace a pro-choice candidate for simply being "one of us". But it's not like I was going to vote for Obama for being black either.
HT:Catholics Against Joe Biden
