What does it mean to be Catholic? Replies A through T
Here, as promised, is the collection of answers provided in the first post where I asked the question: “What does it mean to be Catholic?” Thanks to all who gave answers and my apologies to those who’s comments I deleted. I was quite heavy handed in my editing in order to try and encourage participation and keep the vision I had in mind.
Take some time to look over these diverse replies and feel free to make objections to them or to question the very idea of doing this as you wish.
I will try to return to this one more time to draft a meditation of my own after having read your generative work here.
My only criterion for deleting things here will be this: lack of charity. That mean that the presumption here is that we are doing this in good faith, although we may think that someone’s ideas are misguided—or flat out wrong—in some form or another.
To set the record straight, if this begins to go into the direction of drafting a canon for what language one is required to use in order to be remain a “real” Catholic, then, I will just shut the whole thing down. But let’s hope that doesn’t happen.
A. To be Catholic is to be in the body of Christ, so to work and do the work of Christ in history; to be the one God works through to continue to heal the sick, to feed the hungry, to reveal the truth of God to all.
B. As Gerard Manley Hopkins put it in The Wreck of the Deutschland, it “rides time like riding a river,” which, to me, means that although it is sometimes badly captained, and, although it is always IN PURSUIT of the “Truth” and doesn’t have it on board, and, despite its being a very old bark and full of cracks and wormholes, it is, nevertheless, the only bark to be on to keep in direct physical and sacramental contact with Jesus Christ and the bodies He inhabits. That should be enough for any deeply devout Catholic, and there should be no need to concern oneself whether the other barks, otherwise steered, are taking their passengers home to Eternity.
I think that this great Hispanic hymn of love could never be produced by any but a Catholic culture, and please notice that it explicitly rejects such peurile, self-protective sentiments as are expressed in Pascal’s vulgar “wager”:
I am not moved, my God, to love You
by the heaven You have promised me;
nor am I moved by feared hell
to stop from offending You.
You move me, Lord; I am moved to see You
nailed to a cross and tortured;
moved to see Your wounded body;
moved by Your humiliation and Your death.
I am moved, in sum, by Your love, and so much so
that even if Heaven did not exist I would love You,
and even without Hell I would fear You.
You do not have to give me anything for me to love You,
just as for all I await I would not be expecting,
in the same way as I love You and would love you.
(translation from the Spanish)
And I would say that anybody so imbued with the Protestant religious spirt to say that the last few lines are presumptous really doesn’t understand properly the truly chivalrous aspect of the Christian’s relationship to his Saviour and brother.
C. To be Catholic is to stand with the crucified Christ, desiring and working with him to bring about the full union of God with humankind (as signified by his Cross’s vertical beam) and of humankind with each other (as signified by his Cross’s horizontal beam), in a new community of love, justice, peace, compassion and mercy.
D. To truly love.
E. To be Catholic is to give the full, trusting assent of faith, as distinct from the provisional assent of opinion, to the fullness of divine revelation in Jesus Christ, as presented by a divinely constituted authority claiming to be divinely protected from error in doing so.
F. The purpose of being Catholic is to pursue contemplative union with God.
“In the end result, it is between you and God. Nothing else matters”-Bl. Teresa of Calcutta.
St. John of the Cross teaches that the common purpose of vita contempliva and vita activa is to achieve contemplation, and, once one has achieved contemplation, nothing else matters.
G. To see that the true pattern of reality is love and to try fit into that pattern.
To love the Triune God with all your heart, mind, and strength. To love your neighbor as yourself.
“Being a Christian is in its first aim not an individual but a social charisma. One is not a Christian because only Christians are saved; one is a Christian because for history Christian loving service has meaning and is a necessity.” Ratzinger, Intro to Christianity, 249.
To allow yourself to be entirely “from” God and entirely “for” the other as Jesus is entirely from the Father and entirely for humanity.
H. Being Catholic to me means conforming my life to Christ’s, through service to (and with) others.
I.
• To be baptized
• To believe that somehow, the earliest humans effected a breach with God that needed to be healed by a redeemer
• To believe that the Jews were chosen and prepared by God to receive a redeemer
• To believe that a redeemer came to the Jews in the form of God incarnate, Jesus
• To believe that Jesus founded a church and granted authority and “powers” to his followers that they could pass from one generation to the next (apostolic succession)
• To believe that Jesus preached, worked miracles, was crucified, and bodily rose from the dead
• To believe that Jesus commissioned his followers to spread the word about him to the world, and then ascended into heaven
• To believe that Mary, forever a virgin and the mother of Jesus, was exempted from the effects of the breach between the first humans and God, and that she was taken up into heaven bodily, either before or after her death
• To believe that the Jews, God’s chosen people who were sent a redeemer did not accept him
• To believe that Paul encountered Jesus and legitimately opened the church Jesus founded to non-Jews
• To believe that the church Jesus founded continues in an unbroken line from the apostles to the Pope and the Catholic bishops
• To belief in the sacraments – that a person must be baptized to be saved; that confessing to a priest is a way to be forgiven for sins; to believe that the body and blood of Jesus are actually present in the Eucharist; to believe that marriage was made a sacrament by Jesus; to believe that Holy Orders give a man (and only a man) certain powers
• To believe that the Church speaking on matters of faith and morals is protected from teaching error and consequently to believe that marriage is between a man and a woman and is indissoluble; sex outside of marriage is prohibited; homosexual sex is prohibited; every sex act must remain “open to life”; abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide, and embryonic stem-cell research are prohibited.
J. I think that to be Catholic is to be a little more aware of what is at the center of everything — a tremendous all-consuming Love that is like a mighty refining fire of fun and joy and peace — and to be aware of how far we are from that center and to try to let its pull take one where it will, to realize that it is omnipotent and is working around one in ways that are probably least expected. This slightly greater awareness comes thanks to the Advocate that turns us to the ministry of Jesus whose incarnation continues in his Body.
K. All of the above!
L. To follow Jesus Christ and to celebrate the sacraments in communion with believers throughout the world.
M. Another thing that is almost never mentioned when American Catholics talk about the religion is its international character, and, probably, for good reasons: this has, historically, been a touchy and somewhat controversial subject in the history of the Anglo-Saxon nations, whose governing classes have particularly disliked this aspect of the religion. Catholics of Anglo-Saxon descent, however, who have lived “abroad” for much of their lives, take great comfort in it. Catholicism is an international religious culture just as much as it is a faith, and there are as almost as many ways of “doing Catholicism” (not talking about politics here) as there are continents, languages and countries.
N. The question, “What does it mean to be Catholic?”, can be approached in many different ways. I assume you are asking for a definition: when can someone be said to be a Catholic?
I think a Catholic is a person who actually believes certain things and tries to live his life accordingly.
There are many things a Catholic should believe. However, here’s what I think the indispensable beliefs are (summarized):
* One God in Three Persons
* Incarnation, sacrificial death, and resurrection of Jesus
* authority of the Church / apostolic succession
* efficacy of the Sacraments, especially the real presence in the Eucharist
* the primacy of the Pope
The first two are necessary to be Christian. The next three are necessary to be Catholic.
The second part of my earlier statement, “tries to live his life accordingly,” is extremely difficult to flesh out. Everyone will do so differently and imperfectly. Most people, myself included, will do so quite poorly. But I wouldn’t say we aren’t Catholic.
If, on the other hand, you are asking a normative question — what should a Catholic be like? — then I can only point to two passages: “Be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matt. 5:48), and “‘If you wish to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to [the] poor … Then come, follow me.’” (Matt. 19:21)
O. Necessarily incomplete as any comment length summation must be:
To be Catholic is to believe that we as humans are incarnational creatures — both animal and divine — made in the image and likeness of God in that we have immortal and rational souls with the power of free will which allows us to accept or reject our creator. And further, to believe that our ultimate purpose is to know, love and serve God and to be happy with Him forever in heaven.
To be Catholic is to believe that Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, though the power the Holy Spirit, in fulfillment of God’s covenant with the Jewish people, and that he suffered and died for our sins and rose on the third day.
To be Catholic is to believe that Christ intentionally founded the sacraments and the Church as a channel of grace, to bring His Word and the graces of his sacraments to all people in all places and times. It is further to believe that the Church is institutional, not merely the invisible union of all believers, and that it is led by the pope, the successor of Peter, whom the Holy Spirit protects from error when teaching on matters of faith and morals. It is to accept that the Church is the guardian of Tradition, and the scriptures (and their recognition as such) are a part of that tradition. And it is to see the Church as the unified Body of Christ, not subject to divisions of place or time, united in our beliefs, the graces of the sacraments, and our hope to live forever in the presence of our savior and creator.
P. To fully believe, live, and participate in the reality of the Incarnation in all of its dimensions
Q. There seem to be two types of answers. Type one is to try to name the essential beliefs and practices of Catholicism. Type two is to try to come up with a statement that apparently presumes of all the essential beliefs and practices of Catholicism and attempts to define their essence, or purpose, or goal.
The problem with the second type, it seems to me, is that if you asked even very knowledgeable people, “What do you call a person who _____________?” and fill in a type-two answer, they are unlikely to say, “A Catholic,” especially if they are not Catholic themselves.
R. To be Catholic is to be grafted on to the life of God Himself as it manifests itself through history, culture, devotion, and love.
S. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’
The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
T. 1. To love as Christ loves.
But then I realzed that’s the answer to the question “What does it mean to be Christian?”, so I need to add
2. To be aware of God’s presence in the everyday objects and actions of life.
I think I am inspired in my #2 answer from Greeley’s book “The Catholic Imagination” as well as the exposition of it in Thomas Rausch’s book “Being Catholic in a Culture of Choice”. Both books stress the idea of the Catholic concept of the incarnate nature of God, that He is everywhere present in everyday life. If you can’t really believe that you can find God in everyday things, then it is tough to make sense of transubstantiation, or the sacraments, or statues of saints, or all the other things that Protestants find so disturbing.
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I think the comment starting with the bit about Gerard Manley Hopkins is somewhat off.
I would say that the Truth is very much “on board” this particular bark. If I find the ride bumpy it is because of a deficiency on my part. In my view, to be Catholic is to be in possession of the Truth. What a comfort, what a relief.
In my view, to be Catholic is to be in possession of the Truth. What a comfort, what a relief.
Wouldn’t an adherent of almost any religion claim to be in possession of “the Truth”? The earliest “Catholics” didn’t believe in things like transubstantiation, the Trinity, the seven sacraments, and the Immaculate Conception. They believed in Jesus.
Actually, M consists of two different comments.
Of course every religion in the world claims to be true. What difference does that make to me, what they claim? In my judgment they are not in possession of Truth, at least not the whole of it. I am convinced that being Catholic puts me in possession of it, and that is why being Catholic is important to me.
As for what the the early Catholics believed … well, so what if they didn’t believe everything that I believe. When I flip on my earth friendly desk lamp, the bulb starts to glow, a little at first and then more and more, until 10 minutes later light finally fills the room.
So I imagine that God will continue to shine more and more light on How Things Are, and the Church will be able to see more and more. If the world is still around 2,000 years from now, Catholics living then will probably have definite beliefs about a hundred things that it hasn’t even entered my head to consider.
Thanks, Julian. I will go and correct it.
On “Truth”: The answer to “Quid est veritas?” is not a possession to be had—it is not knowledge, in other words.
Truth as possession is, in fact, un-Truth.
If the world is still around 2,000 years from now, Catholics living then will probably have definite beliefs about a hundred things that it hasn’t even entered my head to consider.
So Catholics 2000 years from now will be more fortunate than Catholics today, because they will have more Truth to know about? And Catholics of today are more fortunate than, say, Mary Magdalene, because she only knew Jesus personally and believed in him, whereas today we know he is the Second Person in the Trinity, he had both a human and a divine nature (hypostatic union), his mother was conceived without original sin, and many other things that Mary Magdalene couldn’t possibly have known?
I am convinced that being Catholic puts me in possession of it, and that is why being Catholic is important to me.
I would think that it would be the Truth itself that is important, not the conviction that you possess it. A great many people in other religions believe they possess the truth, so they are in the same position as you say you are. It is important for you to possess the Truth, and you do. It is important for them to possess the Truth, and they do. You disagree on what the Truth is, but you both believe you have it. So you are all the same.
You haven’t said anything about Jesus yet. Isn’t Jesus absolutely central to Catholicism? Pope Benedict XVI often talks about “intimate friendship with Jesus.” Isn’t that the very heart of the matter?
David, I hope you take some time to get your Jesus grievance off your chest now, I am not clear as to what you mean, but you clearly have a point to make that I would be interested to hear (read).
Regarding truth, I prefer the word “pursuit” to “possession.” When we think we possess the truth, we stop pursuing it.
Unless we look at it within the domain of Balthasar’s aesthetics, were truth is presented to us in the form of Christ, which has been handed to us, but the depths within the form are infinite, so that we have the wholeness of truth — but we also have it so that the glory, the depth, of the truth far outweighs all we can grasp. This is also true not just for God, but for all — the form of an object is the manifestation of that object itself, of its essence, but its particular uniqueness, its depth, is more than what is presented to us, and it is why we are drawn to it, and not bored with what we see.
To be a Christian — and Catholics believe they have the most authentic way of being Christians — is to follow Jesus, who said, “”Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it.”
Usually, to be a follower of someone is more or less a means to an end. If you are a follower of Freud, it is his theory and his method you follow, in order to achieve results through psychoanalysis. But since Christians believe Jesus to be God, following Jesus is an end in itself. All of the teachings of the Church about faith and morals, all the liturgy, all the structure and official positions within the Church are meant to be helps in the sole task of a Catholic — to follow Jesus.
Any answer to the question of what it means to be Catholic — for example, to truly love, or to pursue a contemplative union with God, or to be in possession of the Truth — is inadequate (in my opinion), because Jesus is absolutely central to what it means to be a Catholic.
What confuses me, David, is how Love/God/Truth are somehow other than Jesus. I mean, the grammar of the words is different, but, it seems to me, that “saying” Jesus is less important than “meaning” Jesus. Insofar as Jesus is Love, God, and Truth, I have no objections and think that your objection is largely semantic. Make sense?
Henry: You nailed it. Although, I tend to dislike the word object (in my dissertation I argue that there are no objects in the world), you hit the nail on the head about the relationship between the Gift and possession. For Marion, this is why the Gift of gifts is “saturated phenomenon;” our cup overfloweth.
What confuses me, David, is how Love/God/Truth are somehow other than Jesus. I mean, the grammar of the words is different, but, it seems to me, that “saying” Jesus is less important than “meaning” Jesus. Insofar as Jesus is Love, God, and Truth, I have no objections and think that your objection is largely semantic. Make sense?
It seems to me that Jesus is a person, not an esoteric idea. He said, “Follow me.” Judging from the Gospel accounts, there was nothing terribly intellectual about his first followers. I think if you could go back in time and give Mary Magdalene a copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, she would be utterly bewildered by it. “Jesus” is very concrete. “Love,” “Truth,” and even “God” are very abstract. As I mentioned above, Benedict XVI talks of “intimate friendship with Jesus.” Catholics believe that Jesus came to be tortured and to die to redeem them. How can you not mention his name?
It seems to me that an authentic Christian is first and foremost a follower of Jesus — the person, not ideas about the person. Catholics believe the connection between God and humanity is not merely creator and creatures. They believe that God connected himself to humanity and manifested himself as a human person. I just don’t see how anyone can be satisfied with allusions or assumptions. That doesn’t mean you necessarily have to say the name Jesus. This statement does the job, in my opinion: “To fully believe, live, and participate in the reality of the Incarnation in all of its dimensions.”
One of the problems with the loftier statements is that they make Catholics seem smug and self-satisfied: “We have the Truth, and other religions don’t.” But it seems to me that the greatest saints have felt very much humbled by the Truth, not proud that they have it and others don’t. I remember reading C. S. Lewis saying that we must not think that when the saints thought of themselves as miserable sinners, it was a pious illusion on which God smiled. If you really believe you are a member of a seriously flawed race, that you are a sinner, and that someone had to be tortured and executed in a most brutal way to redeem you, it should be (among other things) quite a blow to your ego.
David, we seem to be ships passing in the night. I never said that Jesus is not a “person,” opting instead for “an esoteric idea.” I take God/Love/Truth also as real things not mere concepts. God is Love, is not some esoteric reflection; it is a declaration of what is the case. Now, I think you just don’t like the semantics that seem “lofty” to your intuitions, however, that is not a substantive problem, merely a semantic one. In no way, it seems to me, does it erode at the fact that Jesus is God and God is more than the word, God is more than all that is and is not, beyond the limits of all excess. In that way, the mystery of God is not something for intellectuals, but for mystics. How that runs contrary to more spelled-out allusions to Jesus, seems trivial to me.
How that runs contrary to more spelled-out allusions to Jesus, seems trivial to me.
I don’t see it that way, but if that’s how you feel, then I don’t think I am going to change your mind. I would have thought that any Catholic/Christian would consider Jesus absolutely, positively central to any notion of Catholicism, but I guess I am wrong.
A “person” is different from other real things because you can have a personal relationship (“intimate friendship”) with a person, and you don’t need a degree in theology to do it. I think of Christianity as a personal relationship, and so it seems to me odd to define Catholicism without referring to a person.
Suppose, as the Vatican astronomer recently did, that there are other intelligent races in the universe who did not need redemption. If they have had divine revelation, their theology would presumably be very much like our own. They could say “God is Love” and so on. But they wouldn’t be Catholics.
“I would have thought that any Catholic/Christian would consider Jesus absolutely, positively central to any notion of Catholicism, but I guess I am wrong.”
No. You are right. The point though, as you say, is not trivial. It is not a matter of grammar or semantics. It is a matter of being real. How it “becomes flesh” in grammar, speech and so on is less important, I think.
Remember God, is a community of persons, God is Love refers directly to that community, Truth refers to the Logos which is Christ. Nothing obscure about this unless we are fundamentalist about linguistic allusion to Jesus.
Nothing obscure about this unless we are fundamentalist about linguistic allusion to Jesus.
It seems to me that some of the more abstract or “esoteric” answers (and some of the simpler ones, too) about what it means to be Catholic come very close to being tautologies and rely on reading Catholic belief into the statements. Take this one: “The purpose of being Catholic is to pursue contemplative union with God.” You have to know the person is a Catholic, and you have to know the Catholic beliefs about God, in order infer a reference to Jesus. I might say, very simply, “To be Catholic is to be Christian in the most authentic and complete way possible.” Or I might say, “To know the Truth, to love the Truth, and to act in accordance with that knowledge and that love.” These all might be adequate answers for oneself about what it means to be Catholic. But they don’t communicate much of anything to anybody else, particularly if one doesn’t know the question. If a Jeopardy contestant got the answer, “To truly love,” or “To have Truth with a capital T,” would they come up with the question, “What does it mean to be Catholic?”
I see your point. However, I do not think I am looking for the expression most apt to fit a Jeopardy format. The fact that certain replies require a certain pre-disposition is, I think, the point: An act of love brings an actual Jesus in a way that an authoritative declaration doesn’t not. Hence Francis’ dictum, “Preach the Gospel at all times, when necessary, use words.”
I mean, even the word “Jesus” requires that we are “reading in” Catholic belief. Otherwise, I could be talking about my friend, Jesus Rodriguez.
I mean, even the word “Jesus” requires that we are “reading in” Catholic belief. Otherwise, I could be talking about my friend, Jesus Rodriguez.
I am not sure any of this is shedding light on what it means to be Catholic, and it doesn’t appear others are interested, but this last point is really quite weak. I wasn’t arguing that you can expect readers to bring nothing at all to what they read. If you manage to write something about what it means to be Catholic in which people can’t tell if “Jesus” means Jesus of Nazareth or your friend Jesus Rodriguez, then you have failed to communicate.
However, if I write, “To me, being Catholic means having an easy yoke and a light burden,” I am expecting the reader to fill in an awful lot of blanks. It seems to me that if in writing what it means to be Catholic, if you take what you have written and show it to Jews (Baptist, Buddhist, Muslim) and tell them somebody was writing what it meant to them be a Jew (Baptist, Buddhist, Muslim), and they can all say, “Yes, that makes a lot of sense to me,” then you haven’t succeeded in explaining very well what it means to be Catholic. You may have come up with a great ecumenical statement about human spirituality, but if you have to identify it as a statement about what it means to be Catholic for people to recognize what it is, then I don’t think you have succeeded. Or I don’t think you have succeeded unless you feel that each religion is, at its core, the same as all the others.
Can I ask what your answer is to the question what it means to be Catholic?
Hi David
I think I am not nearly as disturbed by the variety of answers as you are, because I understood the purposes of this exercise differently from the beginning.
I had assumed, when Sam started this process, that we were supposed to give answers that were suitable for an “insiders” crowd (because really most of the people on this blog at all are Catholic already). So I was expecting answers that wouldn’t pass at all on Jeopardy, but spoke more on a psychological / personal level — not so much “What does it mean to be Catholic, by definition?” as much as “What does it mean to be Catholic TO ME, why do I bother with this whole Catholic thing anyway?”
Looked in this light, then none of the answers are “bad” — insofar as they all speak to the psychology of the person giving the answer. And I think the exercise has been insightful, at least to me. Let me give an example.
When my wife and I watch the “Jesus of Nazareth” miniseries, she always cries at the crucifixion scene and I never do. It never occurred to me to wonder why that was. It now occurs to me because of your comments that she internalizes the “intimate friendship with Jesus” that you speak of in a way that I don’t.
I don’t find that I go around my day-to-day life consciously solidifying my friendship with Jesus all the time. But I am consciously always trying to find ways to love the people around me better — my wife, my kids, even the obnoxious co-worker I can’t stand. I see how my Catholic faith informs me on that point, and so when Sam asks the question “What does it mean to be Catholic?”, I end up jumping on one of those “loving more fully” answers. I don’t see my answer as wrong, but it is a good insight for me to think that, hey, somebody else really thinks that friendship with Jesus is a primary aspect of being Catholic, and maybe I need to think about that more. So I think it is good if we have the chance to view each other’s psychology.
Anyway, I may be imposing my own view of the purpose of this exercise. Apologies if that’s the case. I thought it would be good to suggest another perspective on this process that seems to bother you so greatly.
I thought it would be good to suggest another perspective on this process that seems to bother you so greatly.
Andrew,
Thanks for your comments. I am really not quite sure why I am so insistent about my own view. Whether or not I am even a Catholic is a very open question. Perhaps it’s my interest in the historical Jesus that is driving me here.
Andrew: Thanks for setting me straight. You are right, that was my initial question. To be honest, I became a bit annoyed at the grammar of “Jesus” becoming a stumbling block for the real Jesus in all of those answers. But, that was my own mistake: letting my own intellectual pettiness distract from my initial intent. So…
David: My apologies for that. And your question is a fine and fair one. I plan to draft that reply this nest week along with another slogging away at my Marion series.
Peace to you all.