This morning, I would have been almost on time for Mass. Fortunately, yours truly got so caught up with a Darrell Issa interview on the radio that Father Flapdoodle\u2019s homily was half-way over by the time I walked in. Listening to him tell us the story of his week made me wish I had listened to This Week a little longer.<\/p>\n
The above is included to demonstrate, dear reader, that I am not a devout Catholic. \u201cDevout\u201d is an emphatic. If someone goes to daily Mass or weekly confession or prays the rosary regularly, it is an appropriate way to describe him. I do none of those things and don\u2019t plan to start.<\/p>\n
For a better modifier, try grudging Catholic. I go to Mass weekly, at best, and complain about it \u2014 the ugly A-frame building, the awful homilies, the awkwardly worded prayers of the faithful \u2014 and manage to not eat meat about every third Friday in Lent. The Vatican says Catholics have an obligation to go to confession once a year, and so I do.<\/p>\n
And yet, during my recent seven-year sojourn in DC, I was often described as \u201cJeremy Lott, devout Catholic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Language shifts over time. Sometimes that works out well. The world \u201ccool,\u201d for instance, has no problem doing double duty describing a both a breeze and a temperament. Other times it results in unnecessary and unfortunate confusion. To call grudging Catholics \u201cdevout\u201d robs the term of most of its meaning and usefulness.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This morning, I would have been almost on time for Mass. Fortunately, yours truly got so caught up with a Darrell Issa interview on the radio that Father Flapdoodle\u2019s homily was half-way over by the time I walked in. Listening to him tell us the story of his week made me wish I had listened […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1078,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[8,165],"class_list":["post-259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventures-in-catholicism","tag-catholics","tag-father-flapdoodle"],"yoast_head":"\n