Conscious Catholicism

There was a brief but important time in my life when I thought that everybody would subscribe to my version of high-powered Catholicism, if only they were given the right education and means to do so. I now believe that this was an impossible dream, as my attraction to such things is – in reality – highly eccentric. The amount of people that will live up to the demands of modern Catholicism and “take their faith seriously” will always be the significant minority.  And indeed, this has always been the case, the difference now is that there seems to be little room for the “cultural Catholic” in the post-Vatican II world of active and enlightened faith.

Among traditional and conservative Catholics, there is a persistent and shrill cry against the enemy of people who only go to church (often only twice a year) out of purely human or cultural obligation. These normal people rarely think of religious questions, unconsciously follow the ways of the world, and certainly do not read the Summa for fun and edification; yet still feel compelled to enter the doors of their local Catholic church for holidays or family functions.

What the traditionalist fails to realize about this way of life is that it really is what held together the traditional societies of pre-modern times. The only difference now is that simply attending to religious duty out of familial allegiance or cultural obligation means far less than it did even 100 years ago (especially in Western Europe and North America). For nearly everyone in traditional societies, adhering to the faith simply meant doing what everyone else did, and this was living according to cycle of religious feasts and fasts, and following the norms dictated by society, which were greater in number and often harshly enforced. Those who went above and beyond this became clerics and monks. But the average man would just go with the stream of society, and his more personal devotion was performed to gain heavenly intercession through the saints in order to put food on the table and avoid a horrid death at the callous hands of nature. Just living according to these norms at their bare minimum gave one a secured place in the community and the Church.

It is an obvious fact that today in the Western world, this entire way of life has vanished, except for the obligation to go to church (which is far less frequent) and dim echoes of folk tradition which resurface at Christmas and Easter. The “cultural Catholic” continues to do what he has always done, but without the norms and obligations of traditional society. Now to have the same place in the Church, the layman has to go above and beyond his society’s expectations and be intellectually active and devoted to niche sections of Catholicism.

The result is that Catholic traditionalists have now created an ethos based around what was previously the domain of the clerical class: obsessive focus on liturgy, study of theology/Scripture, and strict adherence to the Magisterium. While there is some good to these things (in moderation I’d argue), they really only appeal to a small minority of people: the educated and eccentric. It also feels anachronistic to call this style of Catholicism “traditional” since the concern of traditionalists are simply not the concerns of people who actually lived the faith in a traditional context.

For it seems that to be a “good” and “devoted” Catholic now means having all the answers to objections to the faith, attending aesthetic liturgies, reading the right books, enjoying high-brow art and entertainment and so on. And while the specifics of each of these things may differ depending on which crowd one finds themselves in, the fact that they are inherently elite interests and activities does not. Any movement which takes such things for its foundation is doomed to remain insignificant, which is the main reason that I think that Catholic traditionalism and conservativism will always remain in its ecclesiastical ghetto.

The underlying point here is that since we live in a spiritually barren world, nearly any practice of religion is going to suffer from the fact that it is conscious. When we start to re-examine what it means to believe and live a spiritual life, it is inevitable that we will start inventing a vision of what a perfect and purified religion looks like. I think that this is a dangerous attitude, not only because certain aspects will be overemphasized, but primarily because any attempt to create a perfect religious ethos will result in a system that is impossible for the average man to live, and these purified systems will almost always smooth over the more cultural and strange practices that accompany traditional religion. However, this raises some important questions: what does a good reform look like? Can it avoid the previously mentioned pitfalls? And how do people who are disconnected from organic tradition practice faith if the rhythms and customs of the past have died out?

There are many avenues I could travel down in this topic, but that is for another time. It just seems to me that the religion of average people is fast disappearing, and there will never be enough enlightened Catholic college graduates to replace them.