Liam has never
liked tags. From toddlerhood on, I have been snipping off the labels of his
clothing. Carter’s, size 3T; Healthtex, size 5; Gap, size 8 — they all end up
in the trash basket.
When Liam first
started asking to have his labels cut off, I resisted.
“Itchy!” he would
say, his pudgy hand pulling on the back of his shirt. “Make go away!” But I
hesitated. How would I know what size the clothes were, without labels? What
about the friends to whom I passed the clothes when Liam outgrew them? They
would have no idea of the brand or the size.
“It’s not so bad,”
I tried to explain to two-year-old Liam. “You’ll get used to it.”
But Liam held
firm, and eventually I cut the labels off — as much to curtail the whining as
to stop the itching.
In the past six
months, Liam’s demands for tag-cutting have slowed, but I’m thinking about
labels once again. I’m noticing that within the Catholic Church, people are
labeling themselves.
“I’m an orthodox
Catholic,” a new acquaintance recently told me.
“That parish is
known to be really liberal,” another friend explained.
“I’ve heard that
parish is more conservative than Rome.”
“I’m a progressive
Catholic.”
“They’re cafeteria
Catholics. They take what they like and leave the rest.”
Interestingly,
Jacob’s godmother would classify herself as a progressive or liberal Catholic,
while Liam’s godmother would shudder at that label— and would say she leans
conservative. And I would trust both these women with my sons’ lives — both physically and spiritually.
From where I sit,
with close friends on all points of the Catholic spectrum, I see a lot of
Catholic beauty, manifested in different ways. Conservative or orthodox
Catholics really know their Church. They have an incredible appreciation of the
sacraments. I know one mother of four who takes all the kids to Reconciliation
weekly. “It’s so good for all of us,” she says. These Catholics understand the
value in Eucharistic Adoration — of sitting or kneeling quietly in the Real
Presence of Jesus. Most families who consider themselves orthodox Catholics
have taken the brave step of raising children outside of mainstream American
culture. These Catholics tend to look for — and find — other families with
similar values. They build community with these other families through home
schooling or potluck get-togethers. While their kids may not be able to sing
even one lyric of a pop song, many would have no problem rattling off the
mysteries of the Rosary. I love that.
The Catholics I know
who would consider themselves liberal or progressive are all about living the
Gospel. They show up at meal programs with their kids, ready to serve. They
take Catholic social teaching to heart and will often be found at voter
registration drives, in prison ministry and building houses with Habitat for
Humanity. Like their orthodox sisters and brothers, these Catholics also are
raising children outside of the mainstream. They have kids who not only know
the lyrics to a U2 song, but could also explain to you why Bono is lobbying for
African AIDS funding and debt relief. The progressive Catholics I know bristle
at the term “Cafeteria Catholic.” While they may not be in lockstep with Rome
on every issue, they take seriously the Church’s teaching on primacy of
conscience and look to Jesus’ example of not allowing religious tradition to
stand in the way of what God requires. In their presence, you can feel the
passion of the Holy Spirit. I love that.
But while I love
these people, I dislike the labels. To me, the label “orthodox Catholic”
implies that the person with the label is somehow “more Catholic” than the
person in next pew. Orthodox Catholics might argue that they more closely
follow “all” the teachings of the Church, but who among us can judge how we’re
following the teachings compared to our neighbor? Perhaps an orthodox couple
follows Pope Paul VI’s teaching on not using artificial means of birth control,
but struggles with the teaching by Pope John XXIII on doing their part to work
for economic justice. Perhaps an “orthodox” Catholic is so focused on political
issues surrounding protection of the unborn that he or she misses other issues
that are equally “Catholic”— issues surrounding education, poverty and
immigration where the church’s stance is similarly unequivocal.
The label
“progressive” can be just as divisive. While “orthodox” implies that perhaps
others don’t follow the rules, “progressive” implies that the Catholic in the
next pew may not be progressing at all. “Progressive” suggests that others are
staying static or even going backward and too often includes a disdain for the
traditional. Progressive Catholics are sometimes smug in their certainty that
they are correct — that they’ve figured out where the church needs to go in the
future. Quick to serve the poor and work for justice, they can be reluctant to
slow down enough for the church traditions and sacraments that may give them
the nourishment they need to do their work even better.
The problem with
the labels is that they make it too easy for us to dismiss a whole category of
people. When it comes down to it, while each of us may lean a bit more to one
side or the other, we’re all muddling through life, as best we can, trying to
follow the teachings of Jesus. There is so much we can learn from one another.
How about a rosary in the car, on the way to the meal program? Twenty minutes
of Eucharistic Adoration before a rally for better educational opportunities
for the poor? Stopping for the Sacrament of Reconcilation on Monday, then helping
with a job-training program on Tuesday. Certainly, there are those among us who
do all these things. There are those among us who live out so many aspects of
what it means to be Catholic that they are hard to categorize. Orthodox,
conservative, progressive, liberal — no label really fits right now.
Later, though, we’ll call them saints.
