[Inspired by https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1AB2H9GrXP/?mibextid=wwXIfr about the papal origins of credit unions]
I’m Christian. I’m Catholic. But that doesn’t identify me, because so is every person in western cultures. That’s what western cultures have been for centuries. Find me a flavor, a norm, or an institution in western culture that’s not *fundamentally* shaped by Catholic Christianity. Bad or good.
The Reformation that led to schisms wasn’t even The Great Schism. And Roman Catholicism born of the Constantinian reformation in the 300’s wasn’t small-c catholic Christianity. It was Christianity’s wrestling with the orthodoxy question. It’s even really indisputable whether Paul’s Christianity differed from The [original] Way of the Apostolic heirs. It did, without reasonable doubt. Jesus was an apocalyptic preacher, and the apocalypse still awaits.
These cultural and institutional movements are – and have always been – both bad and good. Just as I am, have been, and will be both bad and good. So, perhaps that *is* my identity. But I shan’t countenance that label unless joined by atheists, agnostics, and by all in The West.
The profoundest of profound is always paradox, isn’t it?
Woke virtue-signalers who explicitly denounce Christian heritage are… as the Inquisitors were: Get in line with the true, or be cancelled. As the Reformers were: We have the solution. A book. Without works. We are protest-ants.
Let’s – we Catholic Christians – mobilize and stand up for truth and justice! [Eye roll.] Cuz we’ve always gotten it right. [Another.]
If we’re gonna be Catholic apologists, we’re gonna be wrong again. Eventually. One way, or another. If you think we’re called to be activists – cuz Jesus was – I call bullshit. You’re forgetting HOW Jesus empowered his cause.
You’re forgetting the Messianic expectations he abjectly disappointed. And if you forget that, forget Jesus. He was so adamant about his cause that he… did nothing but submit to the fate suffered by any (and the countless many) ideological activists – zealots – who opposed the cause of the Sanhedrin, or worse, The Empire (horrifying crucifixion).
MLK Jr and Gandhi did as Jesus did. And as other exemplars did.
NOT most of us. Not nearly all of us. Not I, and not you. So, pipe down.
Odds are, you and I are way wrong about The Way.
Odds are, we who are ostensibly righteous (in our own minds) are no more righteous than atheists and virtue-signalers. And Auschwitz prison guards. Hmm… yeah, I did just lump anti-racismists, DEIists, trans-rights activists, staunch pro-vaxers, Trump-haters, and the entire cadre infected with the woke mind virus into the same moral category as other Marxists, including Nazis and communists. That’s what we right and righteous Catholics do. [Eye roll.]
Odds are, political ideology is not ideal. C’mon, even Jesus admitted that. Give unto Caesar…?
If we think Yeshua called us to ideology,… uh… uh-oh.
Ideally, none of us is objectively very lovable… us sinners, every one!
It was identity politics itself which the Messiah stood on its head.
Jesus was crucified (and led there by Jewish religious hypocrites) BECAUSE he stood identity politics itself on its head. He preached turning it upside down.
And “Catholic Christian” is nothing more than a political identity. Full of right always tainted with wrong. Like me. Like you.
Put your money where your mouth is. Entirely. Which means nothing should be coming out of your mouth or mine. If we are hypocrites, we “lead” Jesus to the same fate. Let’s not crucify him again. Even if he would willingly suffer humiliating death billions of times to get the attention of every sheep strayed from the fold. As he does. Which is why he had to rise. For perpetual conquest of death.
Ours.
…
I’ll tell you, the only reason I “know” I’m right is because I “know” I’ve been wrong. That’s my identity, and yours. Do we really “know” anything that isn’t actually paradox?
We might aim at the highest, but most often miss. We might wish to be the salt and the light, but are often also the dark. Of all the things which that Jesus character seemed to be telling us, nothing is more preeminent than that. Except that… We are loved without conditions. Good thing, since we’re so often hypocrites, and so often wrong, in one way or another. Or MANY ways.
If you’re a skeptic inclined to believe that this Jesus character never existed, you have nearly every credible historian standing against you – nearly unanimous consensus, there can be no doubt that this Jesus person actually existed. All the other stuff about him is suspicious, yes. Even to this Catholic Christian. Hell, even legends about St. Francis, Einstein, Churchill, and my grandfathers and me are conflated. But there’s no question by any credible scholars whatsoever that some Jesus dude indeed walked the Earth – as certain as Galileo and Trump.
To continue skepticism, let’s say that virtually everything said about him is nonsense. Even if true (and let’s say it is all nonsense), you’ve got a real problem. Nearly everything that is good in our culture has arisen in his name! Yes, even the wars, death, and suffering. But those aren’t the “everything good” in his name. These are:
Two millennia of history means Catholicism has its dark chapters. Yet the stellar pillars and the most just institutions in western culture… healthcare, education, humanitarian aid, science itself, homeless shelters, food kitchens, The Enlightenment, matrimony, sexual ethics, credit unions, …
These were NOT institutions that were BOUND to emerge from intrinsic human goodness. There are many cultures where some are less abundant, or some altogether absent. Each of these unquestioned institutions, including the rule of law, transcends even the goodest of human goodness and is larger. That may be what Christ-in-all means. We Catholic Christians who know our darkest also know – by sheer grace, and nothing more – that we are light and salt.
How, I ask, CAN we know one without the other.
That makes me careful about what I will pronounce to know. My identity has nothing to do with right. And everything to do with loved.
You, my friend, are – before and above anything else – that. Which, to me, is apocalyptic.
.
Neil D. 2025-09-09
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