Is it bad to be “Culturally Catholic”?

Go to any number of faithful young Catholics today and talk to them about someone you know who is “culturally Catholic.”  It is bound to recall in them a certain type of person.  In talking to young Catholics in many different places across the country, almost everyone seems to have a similar idea of what it means when someone is described as a cultural Catholic.  It is often used to describe people who were raised Catholic and maybe still practice their faith in some sense, but mainly seem to go through the motions.  They “do” Catholicism because that is just what one does in the environment in which they were raised or still belong.  It gets used in a negative sense because these cultural Catholics seem to have not had a true, interior conversion of heart, mind, and lifestyle to the Gospel.   

When used in that sense, of course being ‘culturally Catholic’ comes across as negative.  Jesus calls us to follow him as his disciples and he asks for a total transformation of life.  Merely going through the motions and checking off the box of requirements is not enough to be his disciple.  It is also these Catholics that give much of Catholicism a bad reputation: these are people who often don’t truly practice what they claim to believe. 

Do a quick Google search of the phrase “culturally Catholic” and much of the same comes up.  The Google AI-generated overview states, “A cultural Catholic is someone who identifies as Catholic in some way, but has a primary religious identity other than Catholicism.”  Article after article describes this phenomenon of people having some sort of Catholic identity, but not truly practicing their faith.  Books have been written about this phenomenon, often concerning ways in which to win them back.  This gets all the more complicated when avowed atheists such as Richard Dawkins refer to themselves as cultural Christians. 

Rethinking a Common Assumption

However, I think it is time we need to reevaluate how we use the phrase “culturally Catholic.”  There are two main problems with our current use of this phrase that I would like to highlight.  The first problem is whether these people whom we refer to as “culturally Catholic” are indeed culturally Catholic or something much different.  The second problem is that our current use of this phrase has created a negative connotation with the idea of being culturally Catholic.

Are we actually culturally Catholic?

I would argue that what we are witnessing with people we refer to as ‘cultural Catholics’, for the most part, is while having been raised Catholics, they are culturally something else.  Maybe you would call them culturally secular or culturally secular-materialist or culturally pagan or culturally neo-Gnostic.  However you want to describe these people that we often refer to as culturally Catholic, I think the one thing (generally speaking) they have in common is that they aren’t indeed culturally Catholic.  Our non-Christian materialistic secular culture is so strong today that it is extremely hard to not be heavily influenced by it, let alone be swept completely away by it.  We live in a post-Christian culture here in the Western world.  Many Catholics today ascribe to the teachings of the Catholic Church, but their worldview is anything but Catholic.  They do not see and understand the world as Catholics ought to.  Rather they see reality and live more like secular materialists. 

We must recognize and stop referring to people as ‘cultural Catholics’ who aren’t culturally Catholic at all.  Just because someone was raised Catholic or their family is Catholic does not mean they are culturally Catholic.  It just means they are Catholic.  If someone was raised Catholic and goes to mass on Sundays (or some frequency of Sundays), but outside of that Catholicism has little influence on their lives, then how can we rightly call these people culturally Catholic?  If someone doesn’t ascribe to the teachings of the Church (what we often call ‘cafeteria Catholics’, for like a cafeteria they pick and choose what seems appealing to them), does not live according to the liturgical life of the Church, never reads the Bible, has virtually no authentic Catholic community, is completely unaware of the rich tradition of the Church’s life from its intellectual history to its artwork to its devotions, then this type of person is clearly not culturally Catholic. Just because someone may have been raised in a faithfully Catholic home and may still not eat meat on Fridays during Lent, doesn’t automatically mean they are culturally Catholic at this point in their lives.  In my experience, most often when I hear someone get described as a cultural Catholic, I find that these people have very little, if any, contact with the culture of Catholicism in their daily lives.

What is Culture?

It would be beneficial here to make a quick remark on what is meant by the phrase culture. Whole books have been written about this, so at the risk of over-simplifying I will give a brief overview by highlighting three different authors who have dealt with this question.  In his book Christ and Culture, H. Richard Niebuhr defines culture as, “that total process of human activity and that total result of such activity to which now the name culture, now the name civilization, is applied in common speech. Culture is the ‘artificial, secondary environment’ which man superimposes on the natural. It comprises language, habits, ideas, beliefs, customs, social organization, inherited artifacts, technical processes, and values.”  According to this definition, it would be hard to define someone as culturally Catholic whose only real encounter with Catholicism is going to mass once a week or less.

The British poet T.S. Eliot wrote a book titled Notes Toward the Definition of Culture, where he described an innate tension between culture and religion.  “I am obliged to maintain two contradictory propositions: that religion and culture are aspects of one unity, and that they are two different and contrasted things.” He goes on to say that culture is “the way of life of a particular people living in one place. That culture is made visible in their arts, in their social system, in their habits and customs, in their religion.”  Arts, habits, and customs are all an integral part of culture, so what happens when someone has little to no Catholic arts, habits, and customs in their lives?

Patrick Deneen, a political philosopher at the University of Notre Dame and author of Why Liberalism Failed, describes how culture is connected to the words ‘agriculture’ and ‘cultivate’.   It is organic and grows naturally over long periods of time.  This leads him to call our current American culture more of an anti-culture than a true culture.  If culture must develop slowly over time, then our current “pop culture” which is constantly changing is the opposite of what true culture is.

What these three authors show is that culture is all-encompassing.  The culture of Catholicism comes from its teachings, its liturgical life, its artwork, its devotions, its music, its literature, etc.  I think most of the people we refer to today as cultural Catholics have little idea about most of these areas in Catholicism.

Reversing a negative connotation

This brings me to my second point.  Not only should we stop referring to so many people as being culturally Catholic, we need to start seeing the idea of being culturally Catholic as a good thing.  We don’t need less cultural Catholics, we need more!  There is indeed a culture to Catholicism, and it is a good and beautiful thing.  From the natural rhythm of life that the liturgical year establishes to the beauty of the Church’s art and music to its rich intellectual history to its pious devotions, this all creates a certain culture - a culture that is designed to so form the environment around us that we naturally become Catholic.  We need more people who are truly formed and imbued with the culture of Catholicism. 

Parents will intuitively understand this.  As a parent, I want to organize my family, household, and lifestyle in such a way that my children naturally become Catholic.  From how we decorate our house, to how we pray together, to how we arrange our lives according to the liturgical calendar of the Church, I want to create a culture in our household that Catholicism becomes so immensely formative, attractive, and natural to my children.  This is what we should mean by cultural Catholics.  These are Catholics who are so formed and live by the culture of Catholicism that being Catholic is very natural to them. 

We need to reclaim the idea of being culturally Catholic as a good and positive thing, one which we are trying to promote.  It is not currently used in this sense, but it is time, as Catholics, that we start using it correctly and reclaim this idea. One side effect of using the phrase “culturally Catholic” in a negative sense is that it subconsciously gives people the idea that culture itself is a bad thing.  This is understandable given the post-Christian culture in which we live, however, it does not come from the Christian ethos.  In each of our own lives and with our families we can immerse ourselves in Catholic culture and rightly call ourselves and our children ‘culturally Catholic’.  One of the most powerful ways to evangelize non-believers is to introduce them to the culture of Catholicism and our evangelical efforts should strive earnestly to create more cultural Catholics.

Niebuhr, H. Richard. Christ and Culture. New York: Harper and Row, 1956, 32.

Eliot, T. S. Notes towards the Definition of Culture. London: Faber and Faber, 1962, 68,120.

Deneen, Patrick. Why Liberalism Failed. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2018, 68-71.