American Catholic: Oxymoron

If you're an American Catholic, you're an oxymoron . . . or maybe just a moron, I'm not sure.

Don't take offense. I'm an American Catholic. I'm content to be oxymoronic, and I feel like a moron sometimes. I love America and I love Catholicism. And that's kind of like loving diet foods and Big Macs, loving your wife and your secretary, beating your kids and hugging them, enjoying football and the Detroit Lions pre-2023. You love two incompatible things.

It's not impossible, of course. It can be accomplished in different ways. One love may trump another for a few days, then the other one roars back. Both loves might be compromised or hold a low position in your heart. You might not truly love both but just think you do.

Or one might reconcile the loves the best he or she can, preserving the best of both without harming either.

Reconciliation. That's the path the American Catholic must choose. America isn't Catholic-friendly. From Puritan disdain for anything Catholic and Protestant usurpation of the Maryland Catholic aristocracy in colonial times, to the founding fathers' contempt for Catholicism (John Adams scorning: “Is there any instance of a Roman Catholic monarchy of five and 20 million at once converted into a free and rational people?”), to the nineteenth century attacks on Catholic churches and orphanages, to the rise of secularism and sex (sexuralism?) in the twentieth century that has made evangelical Protestantism more like Catholicism's brother than an enemy army.

No, America and Catholicism don't mix well.

But that's alright. America is built on freedom, and Catholicism thrives in freedom. Well, it should thrive in freedom, assuming a handful of things: People are rational, people value truth, Catholicism is true, and Catholicism does a good job of getting its message out. The first three assumptions are accurate. The fourth one isn't.

I can't explain why Catholics do a poor job of getting the word out. It has done a pretty good job at times. All those pro-Catholic movies in the 1950s resulted from outsiders seeing what Catholicism was really about. The monk Thomas Merton's contemplative autobiography Seven Storey Mountain was a hit. Dorothy Day attracted godless Communists and blue-collar workers with her peaceful brand of Catholicism. Even as late as 2000, Americans were drawn to the example of Mother Teresa.

People are drawn to whatever they find attractive. If we expect people to be drawn to Catholicism, we need to make it attractive. In order to make it attractive, we need to make ourselves attractive.

That means, first and foremost, making ourselves virtuous, to become walking examples of the grace-resulting ways of the sacraments. Few things are uglier than a daily communicant with a bad temper (fortunately, few things are rarer). Few things are more disgusting than the professional who's too "saintly" and God-occupied to do his job well.

But virtue alone won't work. The American Catholic must also stand out from the crowd. If the virtuous Catholic is merely like other decent Americans, other Americans are less likely to be drawn to the Catholic part of his character. They won't see that it's the Catholicism that makes the saintly person good. They might think it's his family history, or natural disposition (a sort of insult to every person who has striven for goodness), or his monetary security.