What is Catholic?

-- By AlexandraRex - 16 Feb 2012

The Creed of Catholicism

When I was seven years old I got kicked out of the weekly Catechism class I was taking in order to make my First Communion. I questioned the instructor’s description of purgatory. Her canned response came directly from the reading we were studying and when I wanted more, when I wanted to know how and not just what, she kicked me out of class for “talking back.” Fortunately my parents understood that the question stemmed from curiosity and not disrespect, and decided not to punish me for the transgression against the Catholic Church. They did make me go back to class the next week.

Eleven years later I sat in the back of a cathedral with gold-plated alter tables and ceiling-high stained glass windows while volunteers passed out pamphlets titled, “How A Good Catholic Should Vote.” The values upholding a “traditional” family and life left little doubt that in our two-party voting system, a dedicated Catholic could not in good faith vote for a Democratic candidate. While I was two years too young to vote in the upcoming presidential election, I was convinced that a travesty was occurring before my eyes. The Church was blatantly blurring the absolute separation between Church and State that our progressive nation was founded on.

Just last week I overheard a co-worker say that while she knew her view was controversial, she didn’t support abortion. As a young, 20-year-old female, she believed in “life” and her quick justification was, “It’s because I’m Catholic.” Alternatively, as an adolescent I refused to complete the final rite of passage of confirmation because “I was not a true Catholic.” But what then, is Catholic?

The Written Word

Professor Moglen says, “The truth will set you free.” But when it comes to religion, what does this mean? The truth that religion has been used, and was probably created, as a form of social control and dominion over people who grasped onto the idea of a better life because they had to? According to Richard McBrien, “Catholicism is distinguished from other forms of Christianity in its particular understanding and commitment to tradition, the sacraments, the mediation between God, communion, and the See of Rome.” This is effectively the creed of the Catholic Church, which “of course, [does] not describe or explain the events taking place…[it] simply furnishes the Devil and the Hell.”

Thurman Arnold’s The Folklore of Capitalism goes on to describe creeds with written constitutions (i.e. the bible) – “They furnish the limits beyond which controversy must not extend.” This then explains the reason I was kicked out of Catechism. While debate on the length of time spent in purgatory or the scenery on the walls may be tolerated, questioning the very existence of such an illusory place attacked the constitution of Catholicism itself, an attack that were the Church to allow, would undoubtedly undermine the organization’s foundation. For such a foundation is based on abstractions like “the body of Christ” and “life” after death and like the legal rationalizations behind law, can only be described in terms of further abstractions, quite an unsatisfying answer for a seven-year-old who assumes each action has a concrete purpose and each belief effectuates concrete action.

Social Control

If law is not an effective form of social control, is religion a better one? Morally speaking, perhaps not. Priests, the ultimate interpreters of God’s word, have sexually molested children (one assumes for ages despite the only recent attention given to the subject). “Believers” have murdered in the name of religion and plenty of criminals express devout faith. But then again, perhaps these outliers, like me, are simply attacking the foundation of the church and their transgressions should be proportionally penalized. Moral outliers aside, my experience with the Catholic Church seems to support some kind of control over, at the very least, political beliefs. For many devout Catholics there is never a choice of candidates in an election. Our two-party system coupled with Catholicism’s firm rejection of abortion and gay marriage have effectively removed believers’ free will, without most knowing or even understanding it. Members of our lowest socioeconomic classes continue to vote for a tax system that will make them poorer and the rich richer and against welfare programs that would help their families survive on a below-poverty income.

Felix Cohen would say that the meaning of Catholicism, or any religion, consists of its functional inputs and outputs. Functionally speaking, the Catholic Church seeks very real and practical consequences when it passes out “informative” election materials and actively seeks “true believers,” like my co-worker, to reject the devil known as abortion. Veiled under the ambiguity of faith and devoutness, the Church delineates between believers and nonbelievers. And even while I consciously reject the creed of Catholicism, I subconsciously believe that I cannot be Catholic because I do not espouse the ideals that the religion requires me to.

Belief

I continue to attend Church each Sunday I’m home and I sit, kneel, and stand for an hour, motions so engrained in my subconscious that I perform them without understanding or often even listening. But I enjoy it. In a world where life never stands still, where there’s always one more page of reading I could do or one more paper I could write, the hour of repetitive motion is relaxing. Recently advised to try meditating, I realize this is the closest I have ever come to emptying my mind. So does this make me Catholic? Probably not. I don’t fit into the prototype created by the creed and written constitution of the Church. But then again, Robinson, despite not fitting the mold of the criminal lawyer nor believing in the legal system of “equal justice for all,” was still a part of the legal system, whether he “believed” in it or not.