Fishers of Men

 We’ve all heard it.

“I was raised Catholic”

“I went to Catholic school K-12.”

“My college was founded by Jesuits”

“The nuns used to hit us with rulers.”

“My father was Irish Catholic”

Etc., etc. Ad nauseam.

Traditional, orthodox (small ‘o’), and “conservative” Catholics  often employ these qualifiers. It’s curious, isn’t it? Why the superfluous distinctions? Aren’t all Catholics traditional, orthodox, and conservative? 

You would think so, if you’ve ever read the catechism. But in fact the largest bloc of those who claim Catholicism’s religious affiliation are in fact often none of these things. Two thirds of them do not believe in the True Presence. A majority do not feel any need for Confession, let alone acts of penance. 90% do not attend Sunday Mass weekly. Even more don’t think twice about contracepting or cohabitating. They are more closely aligned with secular Jews than those who believe and profess what the Church teaches. It gives material to comedians like Jim Gaffigan who described his wife as a “Shiite Catholic.”

As baptized believers, cultural Catholics are indeed part of God’s family and the corporal body of the ekklesia. They may hold their traditions as sacred, making the sign of the cross reflexively or choosing a church wedding.  They might even go so far as to say they are, in their own way, “religious.”

In a way, cultural Catholics remind me of young adults with a cell phone: they know how to punch in an address on their phone, but they can’t read a map. They can use a calculator app but can’t tell you the square root of 144 without it. They parrot talking points, but don’t think critically.

But it’s curious, isn’t it? On the one hand they check the census box (which is accurate), while believing what they want to believe regardless of if it contradicts the teachings of the Magisterium. Whether or not they are acrimonious towards those teachings, or simply ignorant of them, can vary from individual to individual. Cultural Catholicism is, for all intents and purposes, its own denomination.

Is this a failure of catechesis, or the product of it? In reality, the question itself is flawed and operates from faulty assumptions. Faith comes from the Holy Spirit to those who ask. The question is: have they asked for it?

There is a saying: you must desire Truth the way a drowning man desires oxygen. Indifference is worse than hate, for God would rather us be hot or cold. The lukewarm God vomits from his mouth. Grace is not cheap, as the Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer who colluded against and died at the hands of the Nazis noted. 

But cultural Catholicism’s M.O. is cheap grace. A friend sent me this savage meme last year at the beginning of Lent:

It’s sad because it’s often true. 

Is the Holy Ghost asleep at the wheel? Why are we outnumbered ten to one among our religious kin, our own people? The problem is not with God, nor the truths of the Catholic faith, nor in the marketing department, nor with the DRE. The problem is not even with cultural Catholics themselves and their peculiar denomination. The problem is our own lack of faith. The problem is that we have rested on our laurels and failed to be more faithful disciples ourselves. I’m the problem, it’s me.

At Mass this morning a woman around our age or a little older sat with a companion (her boyfriend? Husband? I wasn’t sure) a few feet in front of us. She was dressed in jeans and a flannel, and her companion looked like a biker-type guy. She was kneeling and gently urged him to join her, but he remained seated. 

As the priest began reciting the Confiteor inaudibly,  it was clear they were lost in what was happening. And by lost I mean they had no idea what was going on. But I could tell she was there at Mass sincerely and him, to his credit, out of obligation to her. I felt led to pray for her (and him) the entire Mass, and my wife was as well. 

When Mass concluded, I the Holy Spirit compelled me to remove my Miraculous Medal and St Benedict medal from around my neck and give it her, which I did. I didn’t want to assume too much but I was convinced she needed the grace, and I don’t think my assumptions were incorrect. She seemed surprised, but when they were leaving I noticed she was wearing them both.

Even stranger was when we bumped into them on the way to breakfast a little later. She said they were visiting from Texas, and that she hasn’t been to a Mass in Latin since she was a little girl, but that she saw it advertised and wanted to go this morning for some reason. You don’t say.

My wife told me later she had prayed that morning for a divine appointment. I believe that prayer was heard and honored, and that woman and her companion will fly back to Texas this week and grace will begin to seep into her life the way, slowly at first but with a force that will be impossible to keep out for long. If the power of that grace is anything like that which touched my wife and I and changed the course of our lives when we found a Miraculous Medal in a pew one day by happenstance and started wearing it, it should be…interesting. The first step on the path to towards conversion is often curiosity.

We don’t do the heavy lifting—we do what we are called to do by faith, and God wins the heart. It is an awesome privilege to be a child of God, whether traditional, orthodox, conservative or cultural Catholic, and a great responsibility to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. As disciples, we can’t rest on our laurels because the harvest is great. Wars are won one battle at a time. Games are won point by point. Grapes are harvested fruit by fruit. And men are fished out from the pit of Sheol by the awesome power of God’s grace when they are ready to seek truth the way a drowning man seeks air.