Catholic Culture

This article provided my with new food for thought. The article as a whole is worth reading, but these paragraphs are the ones that have me thinking the most. "

But, in fact, they live in a different world from most American Catholics. Opposition to abortion doesn't stand at the center of Catholic theology. It doesn't even stand at the center of Catholic faith. It does stand, however, at the center of Catholic culture in this country. Opposition to abortion is the signpost at the intersection of Catholicism and American public life. And those who--by inclination or politics--fail to grasp this fact will all eventually find themselves in the situation that Fr. Jenkins has now created for himself. Culturally out of touch, they rail that the antagonism must derive from politics. But it doesn't. It derives from the sense of the faithful that abortion is important. It derives from the feeling of many ordinary Catholics that the Church ought to stand for something in public life--and that something is opposition to abortion.

Fr. Himes went on to tell the Boston Globe, "Some people have simply reduced Catholicism to the abortion issue, and, consequently, they have simply launched a crusade to bar anything from Catholic institutions that smacks of any sort of open conversation." (I cut out the remainder of this paragraph)

Still, in a peculiar way, Himes is right that "some people have simply reduced Catholicism to the abortion issue." It is a horrifying fact, in many ways, that Roe v. Wade has done more to provide Catholic identity than any other event of the last 50 years. Still, for American Catholics, the Church is a refuge and bulwark against an ambient culture that erodes morality and undermines families. Catholic culture is their counterculture, their means of upholding the dignity of the human person and the integrity of family--and, in that context, the centrality of abortion for American Catholic culture seems much less arbitrary than it first appeared.

This is what the leaders of Notre Dame need to grasp. They do not necessarily have bad theology when they equate the life issues with other concerns. They do not necessarily have bad faith just because they say that war and capital punishment outweigh the million babies killed every year in this country by abortion. But they lack the cultural marker that would make them Catholic in the minds of other Catholics. Abortion is not the only life issue, but it is the one that bears most directly on the lives of ordinary Catholics as they swim against the current to preserve family life. And until Catholic universities understand this, they will not be Catholic--in a very real, existential sense."

I've never given much thought to the role that the culture plays in Catholicism. As I ramble through some of the things I have been thinking on this topic, I want to make one point very clear. I know that abortion is wrong. I know that Church is opposed to it. I know that it is a fundamental issue because it is intrinsically evil and violates the dignity of human life. Nothing that I say here is meant, in any way, to detract from that Truth.

It is interesting to think about how the tide of popularity manifests itself in the Church. It does seem true that abortion is the "popular" issue in Catholic culture (in America) today. In a lot of ways, it also seems to be the issue that "makes or breaks" one's reputation as a "good" Catholic. Is it impossible for a whole slew of other Catholic issues to combine to be enough to override a pro-choice stance? We've all seen the bumper stickers "you can't be Catholic and Pro-Life." Does his invitation to Obama and his special recognizing of Obama with an honorary degree (ignore for a second the disobedience to the bishops) make Fr. Jenkins a bad Catholic?

At this point people are probably thinking right Melissa but here's the thing, you can't ignore the disobedience of the bishops, and you can't pretend that abortion isn't genuinely a big deal. - Fine. But the point I'm trying to make here (for which abortion is probably not the best example) is that the culture interacts with the Church in a way that gives a certain degree of power to the culture.

I frequently find myself annoyed (that is an understatement) with the Education system in the U.S. and its tendency to cater to the needs of a society that is debased and disillusioned. I would not say that the Church does the same thing. However, I would say that it has become clear to me that the world, the culture, chooses for the Church what She will battle. I'm neither saying that this is a bad thing, nor a good thing. I'm simply stating what I have come to observe. So, what does this mean for the Church? I will not propose an extended response. However, I do think, at the most basic level, it means that She must find ways to promote the wider compilation of the Catholic vision (faith and theology), because there is a real danger of Catholicism being reduced to merely its parts (in this case, it has possibly become abortion).