I attended a high school that specialized in the arts. There were numerous options for those wishing to study creative writing, but the majority of them were directed through a fabulous Jewish woman named Judith. In one of her classes, she commented on the American fascination with Catholics. Not only did Catholics appear in nearly half of the stories written for her classes, but it was always the non-Catholic students who wrote those stories.
I note this because it is a reflection of the state of Catholic America. I am not a Catholic in the religious sense, but I am in the cultural sense. The concept of being 'culturally Catholic' is one of many things that non-Catholic Americans have trouble understanding; I can leave the communion of the church, but I can never divorce myself from my Catholic-defined upbringing.
Another issue with being an American Catholic is what pundits have recently described as "cafeteria Catholicism," the tendency of Americans to pick and choose which parts of Catholic doctrine they believe. As the vast majority of these pundits come from protestant backgrounds, they cannot understand the American Catholic mentality. As Catholics, we acknowledge the theoretical concept of the pope as infallible. As Americans, however, we know that he is on the same level with other Cardinals (according to official Catholic doctrine) and we realize that popes have been wrong before, leading to the very real possibility that this pope is wrong. Of course we're pick and choose Catholics; we understand that even the top seat of our religion is immensely flawed in a way that most denominations can't admit.
Maybe it's because American Catholics come from particularly proud backgrounds, like the Irish or the Italians, but even those of us who have completely abandoned the church understand each other better than we do you crazy people raised in protestant Christian traditions.
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tired