Dear Rev. Know it all

My nephew, Les, is having a housewarming party because he is moving in with his girlfriend. They are planning to get married eventually, but they want just a small private wedding on a beach. They can’t find a Catholic priest who will do a wedding on a beach, but they have found a non-denominational minister who is available and not that expensive, so they are thinking next summer. Les’s father, Otto B.A. Law is refusing to go to the housewarming and says he will not attend the wedding unless they are married in a Catholic Church. Don’t you think this a little narrow minded? After all, one should be supportive. 

Sincerely,

Carmen Law

Dear Carmen,

Supportive!?! Supportive of what?  I’ve never quite understood the phrase. Why is my approval so important to your moral decision? If you really believe that you are doing the right thing, why would you want my approval?

Let me charge at the matter from a different angle. We read in the book of Genesis that when the Egyptians were starving in the seven years of famine, they went to Joseph, son of Jacob who was over Pharaoh’s household. First they bought food, then when they had no money they traded their livestock for food,. Then they traded their land, then they traded themselves and thus became slaves. When the sons of Jacob entered Egypt to escape the famine, they came as free men, but eventually they too became slaves, just like the Egyptians.

The issue is not so much that they were enslaved. They had forgotten the God of Abraham and  had become just like their neighbors: slaves to the comfort and security of Egypt. Like the Egyptians, they had sold themselves. When they escaped from slavery in Egypt and crossed  the sea to freedom, they immediately complained that they were hungry. “Why is it that you have brought us out into this wilderness to die? Were there not graves enough in Egypt?” ( Exodus 14:11) “We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost, also the cucumbers and leeks, melons, onions and garlic.” Numbers 11:5   Onions! They were ready to give up their freedom for onions!

When Catholics came to America, they came as free men and women. Their faith sustained them. Their faith also made them outcasts. Whole political parties were formed to keep them out of public life. We were different then, members of a different culture, a sacred culture.

Now we are the same as all other Americans. We cohabitate at the same rate (cohabitate is a fancy word for living together without being married.) We divorce at the same rate, we limit families at the same rate, we work on Sundays at the same rate, we slide into the gutter, all at the same rate as our fellow Americans. We have become the culture and the country that despised us back when we actually believed in something more than the “good life.”

I remember my distant youth when, in a restaurant, you could actually distinguish Catholics from the multitude. They made the sign of the cross and blessed their food. They actually prayed in public! If it was Friday, they didn’t order the burger, they ordered macaroni and cheese, meatless spaghetti or, still worse, some long dead and recently defrosted fish. They went to confession on Saturday and Mass on Sunday instead of golfing or dedicating the Lord’s day to some athletic pursuit like sitting in an armchair with a beer and a channel changer. Ash Wednesday always amazes me. One sees people marked with the sign of the cross, and thinks, “Oh, I had no idea they were Catholic!”

Catholics have become invisible and Catholicism has become a laughing stock.  I don’t know where it started. Some say that President John Kennedy was the point at which Catholicism ceased to be politically at odds with American culture. Perhaps he was only the fruit of a process that started with the deliberate Americanization of Catholicism by men like Archbishop John Ireland (St. Paul Minnesota, died 1918).  I don’t know how it started, but now Catholics are mostly visible as the butt of obscene jokes by former Catholic comedians on the Comedy Channel and in other Hollywood farces.  

According to the most recent statistics there are 61,000,000 (61million) Catholics in the United States, about one quarter of the population. Only 36%, or about 22 million, go to church on Sunday. Some statistics indicate that about the same number believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, though some think these studies flawed. I would venture that if people really believed that Jesus were present in the form of bread and wine, they would attend Mass.  About a third attend Mass, so it is reasonable that about a third of those called Catholics  believe in the Real Presence in a practical way.

I look at it differently. There are 61 million people who call themselves Catholics. Thee are 22 million who believe in Catholicism.  Catholicism is a way of life, a way of knowing God, a way of answering the deepest questions, a way of facing mortality and eternity and the nature and meaning of love. There are about 22 million people who believe in Catholicism, and 39 million who use the name. Twenty-two million guide their lives and their decisions with Catholic teaching, 39 million for whom Catholicism is a place to marry, bury and celebrate rituals of passage (baptism, confirmation, confession, communion etc. Oh, don’t forget Christmas and Easter.)  In an American population of around 300,000,000 (300 million), there may be lots of people who call themselves Catholics, but there are only 22 million, about 7 to 8% who believe in Catholicism. The sooner we face this, the better. The sooner we quit hiding our light in an effort to be polite, the better. The sooner we reclaim our evaporating freedom, the better. We are so afraid of offending those who claim the name but refuse to live the life of a Catholic. If we really stood for something that was true and strong and beautiful, perhaps we would have some hope to offer this sad and dying civilization. If we demanded the right to be Catholic, as vehemently as some people demand the right to be fools,  perhaps we could salvage something from the impending American disaster.

 It’s a free country. If people want to shack up, divorce at will and remarry,  limit the size of their families because they like having nice things, vote for abortionists, forget their obligations to the poor, make medicinal potions out of the corpses of unborn children, enjoy the pornography that Hollywood vomits up and generally behave like every other narcissistic, modern American, they are perfectly free to do so.  I would venture that your brother Otto should be free to be a Catholic, no matter what his son has decided. Last I looked, Catholicism was still legal in the United States. I doubt that it will be for long.

Rev. Know-it-all