Ok, I’ve been getting this question for all day, and for good reason. I’ll try to give an answer. Unfortunately for you all, my answers will be oblique because there really isn’t a good clear definition for such a person. So you’ll be getting vignette and anecdotes and a general definition.
A Cultural Catholic is a person who continues to observe many external actions of the Faith, in many cases even when not fully sure of the significance.
Most people are assuming a Ted Kennedy or a John Kerry would be a cultural Catholic. This is not entirely true, since such folks tend to have a good idea of what the Faith means, but ignore it. Cultural Catholics cling to what they were taught, whatever that may have been. In some cases, those externals take on a life of their own.
As an example, one question dealt with Mass Cards. If you ask the average cultural Catholic to expand on the doctrine of Purgatory, or on the question of indulgences, you may be met with a blank stare. If you suggest to her sending flowers to the funeral instead you will be quite firmly told, “We are not Protestants.”
The Mass Card, or the rosary, or the scapular is what Catholics “do”. Do I blame the person for not knowing fully the impact of their actions? Of course not! In the first place, many folks received abysmal catechesis while growing up. In the second place, there is not a written exam to get into heaven. I like St. Thomas Aquinas, but if we all need to have St. Thomas Aquinas’ knowledge of theology to merit heaven, heaven will be a pretty empty place. As this Pope John Paul II ubergeneration, or whatever Father O’Leary calls us, we are so into getting the latest book from TAN, or checking up on Scott Hahn or parsing the Catechism for the nine trillionth time that we forget most normal people don’t operate that way. Guess what, God doesn’t intend for most people to operate our way. In a truly Catholic environment, one whiff of incense during Exposition and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament is worth more than five years of studying transubstantiation.
We say often say “Lex orandi; lex credendi” that we tend to forget most people do operate solely on “lex orandi” not “lex liberi”.
Sadly, we have something nowadays known as converts. Don’t get me wrong; I like converts. I’m really happy they joined the team and came on over for the big win. But in many cases, you get converts who have spent so much time studying and firing up the zeal for the faith, they can’t relate to folks who do not equate Catholicism with months of intense study. These folks then tend to denigrate the level of faith or understanding of the cradle Catholics around them. This can lead to a circle of hostility as those new to the Faith try to impose their particular rigor on those around them while those born in it retreat even further into externals as a test of orthopraxy.
Since I’ve taken it upon myself to stand up for cultural Catholics, I’ll take up the banner. Please go easy on them, converts/reverts. While you may have invested time and effort into studying the Faith and took many risks to embrace the Faith, do not fault those of us who don’t read as much theology as being “lazy”. Please remember, you may have studied and converted, but we prayed for you to receive the grace to want to study and the strength to convert. In a very real way, you owe us. Remember, when you don’t have questions, you tend not to look for answers.
The rest of the description is external gravy. Cultural Catholics tend to be urban, unionized ethnic-Americans. They gather in great cities like Philadelphia, and lesser cities like New York, Chicago and Boston. Many of them still tend to vote Democrat, even though the party has hardly any resemblence to their beliefs. This mostly comes from the fact that Democrat party bosses like Boss Tweed got Catholics jobs when no one else would hire them, the Democrat party was the only one to stand up to the Know Nothings in the 1850’s, and some of Richard Nixon’s people put red nailpolish on the head of George Washington’s profile on quarters as a crude way of saying electing a Catholic means rule by the Pope.
To most of these folks, the Irish potato famine occurred last Thursday. Do you think they’re ready to forget about what the Nixon people did?
Cultural Catholics also tend to take a very…concrete…view of sin and suffering. Numbers of us were frightened out of our wits going to certain relatives houses and seeind the paintings and statuary kept on the premises. After visiting one aunt’s house for years, I can watch the Passion of the Christ without batting an eye. It looks a bit watered down to me.
When I was four, I asked my grandmother for a bedtime story. I was hoping for something with like pirates and swordfights or space explorers or whatever. My grandmother was from Poland. She tucked me in and told me this story:
Once upon a time there was a mother with a little boy. The mother loved her little boy very much, but he was very wicked and cruel. He never listened to his mother, and often yelled at her. At times, he even struck her when she asked him to behave. She cried and cried and did her best to make him a good boy, but he never listened to her.
One day, the boy and his mother were struck by a car and killed. The mother, due to the suffering she bore from her child, went immediately to heaven and received a gold crown. The boy went to hell. As a further punishment, God willed that the boy’s hand would stick up out of the grave. Through snow and rain and heat it stuck in the air, cracking and peeling. The mother pleaded with God to have mercy, and let her son’s hand return to the grave. God refused. He told the mother the hand would return to the grave only after she beat it with a stick. The mother had tried everything to correct her boy, with the exception of beating him. Now that the boy was in hell, he was still required to receive one beating from his mother for the sins he committed against her. Weeping, the mother reached down from heaven and picked up a stick by the grave. With that stick, she beat her son’s hand until it bled, all the while being consoled by the Blessed Virgin. Finally, the little boy’s hand sunk back into the grave, and his body was left to rest in peace until the Last Day. On that day, it will join the soul of the little boy in hell for all eternity.
Good night, my Tommy. *click*
Uhh, good night, Ponjie. So much for pirates and space explorers.
To this day, my wife can’t understand how I can watch what she considers “terrifying” horror movies. Steven King is an amateur next to my grandmother.
Conversely, Cultural Catholics tend to fall more on the celebratory side than the repenting side of the liturgical year. Baptisms, confirmations, feast days, all excuses for lavish parites. While it’s true we haven’t figured out a way to make Ash Wednesday into an occasion to throw a block party, rest assured that we have people working on that while we speak. Yeah, I know. I read the section above this too. It’s the duality of man, the Jungian thing.
Cultural Catholics in America feel little need to agitate for monarchy as we already live in a feudal society centered around the parish. The pastor ruled with as near an iron hand as you will see in this country. All the while, there were landed gentry surrounding him. This gentry was known as the women who ran the parish. For the most part, they differed from the modern bitter DRE type so common today in that they gave no thought to a theological agenda. It wasn’t about advancing Kung or Fox. It was about advancing the altar and flower society over the Blue Army. Folks from the Balkans and the Middle East would send observers to cultural Catholic neighborhoods to take notes on tribal infighting and bearing vendettas for generations.
The following is a true story from my life. I was saving it for November 11th, which is not only the anniversary of my Confirmation, it is also the feast of St. Martin of Tours.
I’ll start with a small story.
My name is Thomas Joseph
My mother’s father’s name was Thomas Joseph Boyle (he died well before I was born).
So as they say, “So it’s himself you’re named after.”
I was confirmed at age 11, in our Parish Church in Philadelphia.
Look at the photos, look at the stained glass. I was surrounded with this.
The wreckers still haven’t gotten their grubby mitts on it. I actually remember coming back from college, and going to a meeting (hell, this wasn’t even my parish anymore at the time) about proprosed renovations. This one guy brought up some…progressive plans. During the comments section I got up and said, “I’ll fight you.”
Then I sat down.
When I said, “I’ll fight you” I didn’t mean I’d start a petition or raise a legal challenge.
They didn’t go with them.
Anyhow….you need to get some background. My dad was in the military, and retired in 1976 after twenty some odd years. He immediately went into the merchant marine, where he’d be gone for weeks at a time. My mother was responsible for (at the time) four boys and a bedridden mother. Now, you tell me what kind of woman can raise four boys by herself in an ethnic neighborhood. Back to the story…so it 1984, and I’m prepping for Confirmation. My mother tells me, “Your confirmation name will be Michael.”
Now, I had my kid’s “Butler’s Lives of the Saints” which I read every day, and I had read about St. Martin of Tours. I thought he was cool because he was a Roman soldier and because Christ came and told Martin how happy he had made him with that “cutting the cloak” bit. So I turned around.
“Mom. I have already decided to take the name ‘Martin’. I love St. Martin of Tours and I want him to be my patron.”
“Your grandfather was Thomas Joseph Michael. YOU will be Thomas Joseph Michael.”
“But ma, I..”
*backhand*
Don’t you dare talk back to me!
Three weeks before Confirmation, my mom had us run some errands. She asked me to go to the corner grocery (we didn’t have supermarkets. We had “corner stores”.) and get some milk and eggs. She told my older brother to go the rectory and get two Mass cards from Father. A friend’s mother had died.
When we both got outside the front door. I turned to my brother. “Look” says I, “you hate going to see Father, because he’s always after you for quitting being an altar boy. I hate standing in line at the grocery. Why don’t we just switch.” So we did. You see, I had a plan.
So I go see Father Joseph Sikora. I tell him I’m there to buy two Mass cards, and he sits me in his office while he goes and gets them. Father still had Catholic books that were in rough leather with Latin words in gold embossed and lots of little ribbons on them. Not like today when a priest’s office looks like a cheap lending library. When he comes back, I ask quietly. “Father, is it ok if I talk with you? There’s something I need to discuss.” Father sits, like he was personally going to judge the Quick and the Dead.
I explain my dilemna with my mom.
He doesn’t say a word. Finally, he stands up, walks me to the door and shakes my hand. He /never/ did that before. “Pray, Tommy. God places obstacles and gives us all suffering, so we may grow in grace.”
I walk home with the Mass cards. Damn it! I was hoping /he/ would at least understand.
I get home at the same time as my brother. When we walk in (it’s all of a five minute walk from the Church to my house back then), my mother’s on the phone. She sees me come in. She sees me come in HOLDING THE MASS CARDS, and then she pales. In that moment, she knew why she was getting such a strange phonecall out of the blue. She knew what I did.
Father Sikora was on the phone with my mother. He didn’t talk to her on the phone. He SUMMONED her to his office. Right. This. Second.
My mother is at the door, she glances back at us as she opens it. There will be pain tonight. My older brother is like, “What did you do? Why am I going to get a beating? What did you do to me?”
Then he starts to pummel me in retaliation for whatever he was going to get later that day.
My mother was there for an hour and a half.
She came home shaken and drawn.
“If you really want to take that name. Then you go ahead and break your mother’s heart and take it.”
She didn’t speak to me until after my Confirmation.
So I’m Thomas Joseph Martin
To this day, my mother hasn’t forgotten this. I was twenty-six years old, and went to her with a problem. Her first response was, “You knew how to go to the priest to get that name, so I’m sure you’ll figure out a way to…”
I heard snippets of the conversation in later years.
“Faithless woman, how dare you stand in the path of the Communion of Saints…Your stubborn pride adds to the sufferings of your father in purgatory….Your will is standing in the way of graces that are being showered on your son…for so young a boy to be so mature as to decide on a patron…You seek to ruin the plan God has had for your son since the beginning of time.” And you can be certain my mother wasn’t a shrinking violet during their little chat. A shrieking violet, maybe.
You asked me what does a Cultural Catholics look like. I could sit and give you something more cerebral, or more clear in detail. But that story above is what my heart remembers when I think of growing up Catholic.
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