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What does it mean to be Catholic? Replies A through T

What does it mean to be Catholic? Replies A through T

Last updated on: July 21, 2009 at 2:16 pm by Sam Rocha

What does it mean to be Catholic? Replies A through T 2009-07-21T14:16:05-05:00 Sam Rocha

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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.

Sam Rocha

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