The Essential Malady

A few years ago when the term “fake news” began being spread, Donald Trump was quick to use it against his shameless enemies in the media — particularly CNN. The media reacted as you would expect and stopped using the term because it was immediately turned on them and very effectively.

I’ve had conversations with Catholics before about the labels we give ourselves. There are plenty to choose from including: Conservative Catholics, Orthodox Catholics, Traditional Catholics, Devout Catholics and Faithful Catholics. Someone I know responds to such labels with, “why not just Catholic?” They have a point. You see people who accept and endeavour to follow the teachings of the church faithfully don’t need any extra adjectives to describe what they are. They are simply Catholic.

On the other hand there are plenty of other types of Catholics. There are some who view their inherited faith as an ethnicity and identify strongly with it despite having nothing to do with it. There are those who are somewhat more invested but one wonders why as they constantly seek for it to change to suit them and not vice versa. Then there are the lukewarm who have got their children baptised and occasionally attend Mass for Christmas or a wedding but are otherwise not living the Faith in any meaningful way. There are also the wolves within who are actively to hostile to the church but are clothed in enough wool to fool all but the most vigilant sheep. As you could expect, there is a lot of crossover in all the groups mentioned.

Now I want to be clear that while one can easily split the Catholics who are faithful to church teaching into different groups, it is really not necessary in this case. None of these groups are deliberately breaking or rejecting church teaching as are the others so it is not necessary for my purposes in this post to distinguish them.