How Cafeteria Catholics Think

Apr 29

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Ready to strike, but...willing?

Interesting article on the National Review Online. The idea of the article is that the polls saying the Catholics were more and more inclined to disobey their bishops in matter of homosexuality ended when the controversy on the HHS mandate. As the author eloquently puts it:

[Cafeteria Catholics ] do not take kindly to being bullied by bishops, but — and here’s the shock to the Obamaites — they also don’t much like it when bishops are bullied by someone else. Nobody likes a bully, and Obama showed himself to be one in this controversy.

Leaving aside for a moment I don’t think the US bishops bullied anyone, and if they did they did it with the Truth, which can never be “bullying”, I would add my own personal interpretation to the matter.

In my eyes, something slightly different appeared. If you ask me, a cafeteria Catholic is more like a dormant orthodox Catholic, who is so poorly instructed – by his own clergy – that he thinks it natural to be allowed to question Catholic teaching; when he is properly informed about it, that is.

The Cafeteria Catholic thinks so, because this is the world he sees everywhere around him, and he was never taught to stop and reflect Christianity doesn’t work that way.

At some point, though, this will end. At some point, the bishops will stand and will tell them what is what, in no uncertain term. At this point many dormant Catholics will become real ones, because few organisations have power over their own followers as the Catholic church, when the clergy only does the work properly.

I have no doubt whatever that, if the effort continues unabated, at least 10% of those (soi-disant) Catholics who would have voted for B. O. will ditch him on this matter only. This might, alone, be fatal to him. More importantly, I think that 10 or 15 years of continuous hammering about these themes will cause the Church to gain an extremely strong support among Catholics about all main moral issues, as young people become voters and old hippies fill the graves.

The Jesuits re-conquered Poland to Catholicism in one generation, and made such a thorough work of it that the consequences are felt to this day.

The Church is an extremely powerful aircraft carrier. If the people in charge want to use it.

Mundabor

Posted on April 29, 2012, in Catholicism. Bookmark the permalink. 6 Comments.

  1. Benedict Carter | April 29, 2012 at 11:36 am

    All true enough. Yet I think “Cafeteria Catholics” are made up of two sorts: one being wholly irredentist and who oppose Catholic Moral Teaching because they simply don’t believe it. This sort is growing in number very fast I reckon, and can be seen even in the comment pages of a Catholic newspaper such as the Catholic Herald in England, where one can only be shocked at the total ignorance of the Faith displayed by “Catholic” commentators, and their rejection of it when presented to them.

    • Mundabor | April 29, 2012 at 10:12 pm

      Ben, my impression (but I am Italian, and possibly biased by our own cultural situation) is that the “dissenters” who go around posting are a vocal minority, nor representative at all of the great mass of the neglected flock.

      I also have more than the impression that almost all these people are dissenters for a reason: either they are homosexual, or want to remarry, or such like.

      Like the open poofs, they post everywhere to give the impression they carry more weight than they do, because they feel uncomfortable with their own problems and want the general public to approve them and, in the case of the homos, because they have a huge ego (this is why so many of them become actors, or politicians: they need a stage, and approval to reassure them they are not wrong, as they still well know they are).

      M

  2. Benedict Carter | April 29, 2012 at 10:49 pm

    I am becoming more sure by the day that the sodomites and other renegades are quite deliberately targeting Catholic blog sites to push their demonic agenda. You may be right in that these people are a small number. But their effect on the Catholic sheeple is horrific: and where are the Bishops and priests, the guardians of the flock? Nowhere to be seen.

    • Mundabor | April 29, 2012 at 10:53 pm

      Ben,

      I think you might be right in saying they target Catholic sites. Still, I am not sure the effect is horrific, though I agree they might give an excuse to cowardly politicians to exaggerate their importance.

      In my experience, a catholic doesn’t change his idea on who is a pervert just because he reads these people posting; people can value the information, and discount it accordingly. Whenever I heard a person expressing him/herself in favourable term toward homos, I have noticed – by digging, which I invariably do – they are agnostics or atheists.

      A Catholic is at least embarrassed and if he doesn’t put up the fight, I don’t think he changes his mind because of a couple of fags posting around. At least this my personal experience in an Italian cultural context.

      M

      P.s. every one and then someone tries here. They land in my “trash” folder faster than they can say “pervert”.

  3. Benedict Carter | April 30, 2012 at 4:15 am

    The beauty of pre-moderated blogs! 🙂 Trouble is, on the more open fora, the Catholics who find their way there are already semi or more secularised before they get there.