Catholic Culture
On Saturday night, Polo and I went to a neighbor’s house to watch the Roy Jones Jr./John Ruiz fight on pay-per-view. Many different topics came up during the conversation. At one point, one of the gentlemen asked my husband if he is teaching the children Spanish and if “no”, why not?. My husband told me later that he was baffled by the question because the asker’s significant other is not Hispanic, and Spanish is not a first or even second language in their household either. I explained to my husband that the question was not really about linguistics at all, but how is it that he could let his Puerto Rican heritage play second fiddle to any other culture. Needless to say, I asked my husband if he replied “because, we are starting off with Latin as a foreign language first.”
The conversation had me thinking about our family and how I always felt our predominant family cultural identity is of course “Catholic American” (as opposed to “American Catholic” i.e. decorates with androgenous looking Mullet Jesus’). Webster’s dictionary defines culture as the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group. I feel most at home around people who love to be surrounded by pictures of the Blessed Mother, who have the same ideals about family especially in regard to birth control, abortion and marriage. Even when I go to many diocesan events, I do not necessarily feel at home because it is not really “Catholic” in essence…
So this made me wonder, many Catholics these days, I do not think think of themselves as “culturally Catholic.” Was there a time that they ever did? I wonder when Latin was more the widespread as the language of the Church, did people identify more with being “Catholic” as opposed to being whatever? So this is where my mind has been for the past few days…