A reader writes:

I just wanted to ask you as a convert to Catholicism, what do you think when you meet a person/people especially cradle Catholics, who say “I am Catholic, but I don’t believe this teaching or that teaching?” I have been in “controversy” with members of my family who say they are Catholic but espouse “cafeterianism”. Thanks for any input.

I think this.

That said, I should also note that the phenomenon of Cafeteria Catholicism is by no means an affliction limited only to cradle Catholics. We converts have our blinkers as well and are quite as ready to amend the Faith to suit our political tribal allegiances as any cradle Catholic who has never given much thought to the Faith beyond regarding it as a sort of ethnicity. Chesterton remarked that the Faith is the only thing that saves a person from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age. But that, of course, is only true when we want to be saved from that degrading slavery. I suspect we all have places in our lives where we’d just as soon the Faith left us alone and stopped challenging cherished and comforting assumptions.