“What does it mean to be Catholic?”: Part three of my conversation with Alicia de los Reyes

“What does it mean to be Catholic?”: Part three of my conversation with Alicia de los Reyes May 5, 2015

at Surprising Faith:

Alicia: What do you think it means to be Catholic? Your Catholicism seems much more intellectual than mine ever was, and I considered myself a fairly committed Catholic. Does Catholicism require us to understand some/most of it? Or is it enough to go through the sacraments and say that you believe in the Nicene Creed (even if you don’t think about it all that hard)?

Eve: I don’t really think I have much of a definition of what it means to be a Catholic, other than “baptized in the Catholic Church.” The definition from Monty Python’s “Every Sperm Is Sacred” has a lot of wisdom in it (as does that sketch in general, lol):

You don’t have to be a six-footer,
You don’t have to have a big brain.
You don’t have to have any clothes on;
You’re a Catholic the moment Dad came.
So yeah, we have a responsibility to submit our intellects to the Church’s guidance and wisdom, but that doesn’t mean we are ever going to understand everything or even most things.

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