Catholic Identity

A fascinating round up of Roman news from John Allen.  The whole thing is well worth a read, but I was especially struck by the following:

...For those who have been following Catholic affairs, the prospect of some Catholic charities throwing in the towel on formal institutional sponsorship bears comparison to conversations taking place in other arenas.

Some women’s religious communities in the United States upset over the current Apostolic Visitation, for example, have pondered the prospect of “going non-canonical,” continuing under some other guise but not formally tied to the institutional church.

In the wake of a recent case in Phoenix in which the local bishop declared a hospital no longer Catholic, some church-affiliated hospitals and health systems find themselves asking if the challenges associated with their connection to the institutional is really worth it. Would it be easier, they ask, simply to declare themselves “in the Catholic tradition” but independent of the church?

It remains to be seen how real any of those prospects are, especially given that in each case, responsible people on both sides of the relationship seem committed to holding things together. Still, it’s tough to avoid the impression that we’re entering a period in which questions over Catholic identity are no longer theoretical. Increasingly, people and institutions within the church are being forced to choose.

Whether that amounts to a regrettable fracturing of Catholic unity, or a long-overdue calling of the question, may be open to debate. In any event, it seems to be the temper of the times...

Well, I've got to say, there's few things like the feeling of suddenly realizing home is not home any more, that you're in the midst of a battlefield and there's incoming all around you when you thought you'd actually arrived in the family estate. In other words--what about the lay people who trust the appellation "Catholic" and then find themselves in for the fight of their lives for their faith and the Church?  If I wanted to be Protestant, I'd go and be a Protestant.  I do not expect to discover people working at a Catholic institution who want nothing to do with the Church, can't stand the Pope, can't stand the hierarchy, wish the Church would "catch up with the times" and all the rest.

I guess what I'm really saying is let the bottle labeled "Catholic" contain something that's joyfully Catholic, not something bitter because it wishes it weren't.  People tend to feel really betrayed when they take a drink.