Debranding Catholicism

Labels, Divisions, and the Mess that is the Church on Earth

Let’s start this new newsletter off with a bang by talking about the labels we attach to the Catholic Faith—labels like “conservative,” “liberal,” “traditional,” “charismatic,” and more. 

Actually, let’s first talk about this past Sunday morning, which, for our family, did not go as planned. 

Thanks to the repeated night wakings of our newly minted three-year-old, both Chris and I overslept. We then attempted to redeem the morning by heading to a later Mass at a different parish than our own, forgetting that the parish has no place to which we can escape when the toddler, the baby, or the even littler baby decide they’ve had enough of sitting and would prefer to party instead.

Accordingly, when the inevitable party in our pew began, we were stuck, with Becket trying to crawl down the aisle, Toby asking to go outside so he could play with rocks, and Ellie cooing loudly at every person who glanced in her general direction. 

For a minute—okay, more than a minute—I was mortified. We were a mess, a cute mess, but a mess just the same, with our crazy on full display, distracting anyone within a 50-foot radius. 

I was just about to grab Toby by the hand and whisk him outside to the nearest rock pile when a cry from the other side of the Church drowned out the noise in our pew. I glanced over and saw another frantic mother looking as mortified as I felt. 

I then looked around some more. At the gaunt single man sitting in front of us. At the frail elderly couple to the right. At the tired new parents with their lone babe sleeping on the dad’s chest. At the family of eight, whose six littles were a blur of constant motion. At the two young girls in their twenties, self-consciously tugging on their too-short-for-comfort dresses.

For the first time that morning, I breathed deeply. Then, I laid my head on Chris’s shoulder and laughed. Yes, we were a mess. Maybe a louder mess than most. But no more a mess. Every one of us sitting in that parish was struggling. Some with small children. Others with their spouse. Or their work. Or with loneliness, fear, grief, or loss. Some were likely struggling with the Church herself, doubting or trying not to doubt her teachings. Maybe some were struggling with God, wondering where He was in the mess of their life. I suspect, in that church, there were one or two people much farther along the road to sainthood than the rest of us. I also suspect there were at least one or two mired deep in some dark sin.

It was the same at our own parish, a few miles away, which also had been full that morning of struggling, doubting, stumbling people…and it was the same at every parish in the diocese…and at every parish in the world. It was this way 1800 years ago, when the Arian heresy started burrowing its way into the heart of the Church. And it will be this way 1800 years hence, if this old world makes it that long. 

What does any of this have to do with labels? Everything.

Label Making

The older I get, the more I understand the truth of James Joyce’s words: “Catholic means ‘Here comes everybody.’” In the Church, there’s no avoiding the mess. Not on this earth, where Christ’s Body is a complicated amalgamation of fallen, broken people—a tangled throng of friends and foes, with weeds and wheat in every heart. 

Nor are we supposed to avoid the mess. Jesus didn’t. He was born into it. He lived in the midst of it, dining with Pharisees and Sadducees, tax collectors and prostitutes. He called all those people to Himself, and then He called them to the Church He established—a Church shepherded by ordinary men with ordinary weaknesses, made great only by grace. 

I don’t think we can say Jesus loves the mess. He loves us, but He’d rather us not be such a tangle of weeds and wheat. We can say, though, that Jesus isn’t afraid of the mess. He has never worried about being associated with it. He didn’t run the other direction when His followers disappointed. He didn’t take a new Bride, when the first one proved unfaithful. He remains with us even now, in yet another scandal-soaked century, giving Himself to us day after day, year after year, as priests with darkened hearts confect the Eucharist and as people with unbelieving hearts open their mouths to receive Him. Scandal and faithlessness don’t drive Him away. He is not fazed by sin and doubt. He is steady and true. Jesus said He would be with us always, and He has not gone back on His word. 

And this brings us to the topic of labels. Because we are not so good at doing the same. 

Some of us, disillusioned by the mess that is the Church on earth, do walk away, looking elsewhere for a perfection we will never find on this side of eternity. Others of us remain, but attach adjectives to our faith, cordoning ourselves off into likeminded tribes of believers, labeling ourselves “conservative Catholics” or “liberal Catholics,” “social justice Catholics” or “traditional Catholics,” “Latin Mass Catholics,” “woke” Catholics, or “charismatic Catholics,” and all the while, intentionally or not, declaring to others the superiority of our own particular brand of Catholicism.

I once did the same. When I was 19, I left the Church, believing I’d find more faith and more love outside her doors. When that turned out not to be the case, I came back, but with an adjective attached. I was, I would have told you, a “conservative” Catholic, meaning not so much that I voted Republican, but that I identified with Catholics who prayed the Rosary and obeyed the pope.

The longer I claimed that label, though, the more uncomfortable I became with it…and with almost all labels preceding the word “Catholic.” I was fine with a few: faithful and unfaithful, practicing and lapsed, believing and struggling. All those worked—all those still work—because they describe our relationship to the Faith, our ability to embrace or not embrace something that is fixed. 

Adjectives like “conservative,” “liberal,” and “progressive” do the opposite. They put the Faith on the level of politics and policy, giving the impression that the fundamentals of theology and doctrine are reversible or subject to the whims of popular opinion. Which they’re not. 

Equally problematic, when we put words such as “traditional,” “charismatic,” and “social justice” before Catholic, we imply–whether we intend to or not—that there are different types of Catholicism, different brands of the Faith from which one can choose depending on one’s personal preference. 

Catholicism, however, is not a product. It’s not Coke-a-Cola, with Original Coke, Diet Coke, Caffeine-Free Coke, and (God forbid) New Coke. It’s the Church. The one Jesus established. It’s His Body. It’s His Bride. And it’s one. It doesn’t come in different flavors or brands. There’s not a traditional Catholic Church and a charismatic Catholic church. There is one Catholic Church. And those who call her Mother can pray in Latin or speak in tongues, be for a war or against a war, love Gregorian Chant or worship music, advocate for 100 different pragmatic solutions to the intractable problems of crime, immigration, poverty, and education, and do all that while still being plain old Catholics, no qualifiers necessary, in perfectly good standing with Rome. 

Owning the Mess

I know that most people who affix a label to their Catholicism mean well. They love what they love and want people to know that. Few have ever thought through all that one little adjective can imply. Most also have no idea how spiritually dangerous the practice can be. 

But it is dangerous. Gravely so. Because the devil is a master tempter, and no one is better than he at convincing us that we are better than the mess that is the Church on earth, that we are better than the mess that is humanity, that we are holier, wiser, and above it all. 

That is the lie Satan told himself when he first said No to God, and that is the lie we start to tell ourselves as we become more and more entrenched in our identity as a “social justice Catholic” or a “traditional” Catholic or any other kind of labeled Catholic. 

The more we identify as a “Insert Adjective” Catholic and not just a plain old Catholic, the more we are saying to the world, “I am one of these Catholics.” Which is also saying, “I am not one of those Catholics.” It’s saying, “Associate me with this more faithful, more reverent, more just, more loving, more righteous, or more socially acceptable group of people. Don’t lump me in with those unfaithful, irreverent, intolerant, unthinking, unloving, or culturally odd men and women who also call themselves Catholic.” 

Those labels become, in a way, our attempt to escape the mess, to walk a little bit apart from the ragtag parade of fallen humanity who find their home in the Church and make sure that others know we’re the right sort of Catholics, not the wrong sort.

And that’s the lie. For the truth is, we are the wrong sort. All of us are, whether we like the Latin Mass or the Novus Ordo, whether we voted for Biden or Trump, whether we prefer going to Lourdes or to the downtown soup kitchen. We are all broken. We are all messing up. We are all falling short of the grace that’s in us every single day.

Even when we try our best to do as Jesus asked, we see but through a glass darkly. We can’t perceive all God is doing, in time and in eternity, in the world and in our hearts. So there will be missteps. There will be errors in judgement. There will be failures to love and give and die to ourselves as Christ calls us to love and give and die to ourselves. At some point or another, we will be the bad Catholic, the one who hurt or disappointed or scandalized someone else. We can’t barricade ourselves into some spiritual safe zone, away from the wrong sort of Catholics, because we can’t barricade ourselves away from ourselves. 

The Church is messy. We are messy. We’re not called to pretend otherwise. We called to just be Catholic, accepting all the messiness that word implies, striving to abide at the heart of the Church, believing what the Church teaches, living what the Church teaches, and accepting what the Church says is acceptable, even if it’s not our personal preference.  

Because, in the end, it’s not about our preferences. It’s not about us at all. It’s about God. It’s about the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. 

The Holy Trinity is why we get ourselves out of bed on Sunday morning and head off to whatever church we worship at—our local parish; an Eastern Rite parish; the parish with the really good music or the really good preaching; the parish with all the smells, bells, and Latin; or the parish with the best Mass time for unruly babes. As long as validly ordained men say the black and do the red, all are good…or, at least valid. All are Catholic. 

It’s perfectly fine to prefer one parish over the other. There is nothing wrong with receiving more spiritual nourishment from one form of liturgy than from another. It’s totally okay to say “I think this is the best way to vote, raise a family, or attack problems of poverty, racism, abortion, and crime.” That’s all normal human behavior. We are going to respond, love, and think differently about certain things because we are different. That’s how God made us. 

But what’s not okay is to believe that our way is the only Catholic way on the non-doctrinal questions and practices where the Church actually does allow for difference. It’s also not okay to define ourselves by those differences, by our own personal preferences and pragmatic conclusions. We are not our preferences. We are the Lord’s. Our relationship with Him is supposed to define us. Our relationship with Him is supposed to unite us. Our relationship with Him is supposed to remake us. It’s supposed to remake us into the One who dwells with us in the mess. Or, more accurately, into the One who dwells within the mess that is us.

Yes, the Church on earth is a mess. So are we. Rather than run from it, let’s own it. And as Catholics—no adjectives, no qualifiers—just Catholics, beg Christ for the grace we need to become less of a mess. We don’t need labels. We need Him.  

What I’m Reading (when I manage to stay awake)

The Color of Water James McBride’s stunningly beautiful memoir about identity, motherhood, and faith, first published in the 1990s. I power-read it during the kids extra long Sunday afternoon nap two weeks back, and was blown away by the personality of his mother, the power of their story, and the beauty of the writing;

“The Best Time Management Advice is Depressing But Liberating” An interview with author Oliver Berkman from The Atlantic that is helping me make peace with my never-ending to-do list;

“When Harlots Ruled the Church” A sobering, yet strangely helpful reminder, from Church historian Sandra Miesel, that the Church has seen far worse days than these.

“How God Pursues Us Through the Intellectual Life” Rachel Bulman beautifully explores God’s call to women to love Him not just with our hearts, but also with our minds.

What Our Family Is Reading

“Adventures with Barefoot Critters” and “Counting with Barefoot Critters” If I could pick a series of children’s books to live in, it would be these. Teagen White’s illustrations are as charming as they come, and Toby loves studying them even by himself. Bonus points for helping him learn letter and number recognition.

“Last Stop on Market Street” Technically, this is for readers age 2-6, but every time Chris reads it to the boys, he tears up. Written by Matt de la Peña and illustrated by Christian Robinson, this sweet story of a little boy’s bus trip with his grandma helps children (and adults) learn to see the holiness of the ordinary and the dignity of their neighbor.

What I’m Cooking

Crispy Oven-Pulled Pork I’ve made this gluten-free, dairy-free recipe from Smitten Kitchen for three different sets of houseguests this summer, and will be making it again on Labor Day. You should too!

Pepperoni Penne Carbonara

Cook Time: 15 Minutes; Serves 4

This untraditional fast comfort food is about to become a new staple in our house, after I cobbled it together this past week in a desperate attempt to sort of replicate Stephanie Weinert’s amazing bacon carbonara recipe.

You’ll need:

• 6 ounces pepperoni, thinly sliced and quartered

• 1 pound penne (or any pasta)

• 2 eggs

• .5 cup shredded Parmesan

• 2 Tablespoons Olive Oil

• .5 cup fresh basil, roughly torn

• Freshly cracked pepper

• Crushed red pepper (optional)

1. In a large bowl, combine 2 eggs and the parmesan; beat with a fork and set aside;

2. In a large pot, bring salted water to boil; add pasta and cook until al dente (firm to the bite);

3. While the pasta cooks, heat oil in a pan; add quartered pepperoni, and fry until it just begins to crisp;

4. When the pasta is cooked, drain and then add immediately to the bowl of eggs and cheese; stir thoroughly (the heat of the pasta will cook the eggs); add pepperoni and cooking fat to the pasta and eggs; stir until mixed; season with pepper;

5. Serve pasta garnished with fresh basil and a sprinkling of crushed red pepper (if desired).