Catholic Guilt
People talk all the time about 'Catholic guilt'. I have even joked about it myself. But honestly, I just don't feel much Catholic guilt. After all, I was raised in the 'I'm ok, you're ok' spirit o'Vatican II Catholic Church. A 'post guilt' Catholicism as it were.Last night as I was going through some family papers and found an echo of the old Catholic guilt machine in a church bulletin from 1957. The bulletin was saved because it includes the banns before my parent's wedding. However, what I really found fascinating was the window into the average 1950s parish on an average week.
The absolute best entry was this:
We wonder why forty public High School students have consistently missed the Religious Instruction Classes on Tuesday evening from 7:00 to 8:00 P.M. Their inconvenience in attending the classes could not be so much greater than that of the 110 faithful students each week. It is difficult to see how those students of their parents can lightly cast aside so serious an obligation of religious required by the laws of the Church. Can a detailed course of religion mean so little to them?
I can't imagine any parish including something like this today. It could be an interesting experiement to try... but I don't think the results would be pretty.
The first problem with an entry like that in a modern bulletin is that religious instruction for public school students in this diocese ends in 8th grade. The standard seems to be one hour a week during the school year until confirmation in 8th grade... and that's it. No further religious education offered - let alone encouraged. I wonder when it was decided that at age 13 we knew all we needed about Catholicism and were free to go.
Secondly, in my lifetime I have never seen any reference to the laws of the Church in a bulletin - let alone our obligation to follow them. Well, perhaps there have been references in the bulletin at St. John Cantius, but that's a special case. I am talking about the standard parish bulletin in a standard suburban parish. Try as I might, the only obligations I can recall being raised are to the building fund, and to volunteer with the local 'peace n' justice' organizations.
Finally, I am most impressed by the straight up 'calling out' of both students and parents for failing to attend religious education classes. I just don't think it would work in many parishes today. We are all too steeped in the post Vatican II world where nothing is really required of us by the Church. If a priest actually pointed out that we were failing in our obligations the Church the negative reaction would be swift.
I will admit that I often look back at the solidly Catholic world that my parents were raised in and I am nostalgic for something I never experienced (I was born in the 70s). However, I have to admit I am only nostalgic for half of that experience. I would have liked the religious education classes that lasted through high school... but I don't know if the Catholic guilt would suit me all that well.
Labels: Vintage
posted by Mary Martha @ 2:58 AM
5 Comments:
excellent post!
i cannot add anything. i am glad i read it.
Our priest has posted the rules of fasting and abstinence for Lent in the bulletin and frequently has homilies on the proper way to receive communion and going to confession! Before him I'd never seen a priest actually talk about those things (which is pretty sad)!
I was about 18 or so when the book, "I'm Okay, You're Okay" appeared on the shelves of so many Catholics and Protestants alike. Some well meaning person gave it to me to read, so I'd feel "okay" about myself. How tragic the slippery slope of "self-help tripe" has become! It's like putting a band aid on a large, gaping flesh wound!
I came across a simple little cartoon (in The New Yorker [could it be?]) a few years ago. It was a crucifix, in what looked to be a narthex of a Catholic Church. Two men in suits beneath it were looking up at Jesus. One man had a bible in his hand and was saying to the other: "If I'm okay and you're okay, what's he doing up there?"
That was the MOST POWERFUL, poignant cartoon I'd ever seen and to think it was in New Yorker was the most mind-boggling! I'd love to find it again, but I've not been able to retrieve it in all of my research.
There's "good guilt" which we all need more of in this selfish, narcissistic culture and then the guilt that leads to despair..selfish, prideful guilt that says "my sins are too big for God's mercy." An "insult to God" as Mother Angelica says.
Good guilt is surely needed to give us contrition for our sins. But, in this "I ME MINE FIRST" culture, we're enamored with the face in the mirror, thinking we're okay. And when we don't feel "okay" we find some book or person to tell us how okay we are. We're too thick of head and too thin of skin. We want OUR needs met and we attempt to make God all soft and cozy to meet our needs. Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy.
PAX,
susie
JMJ
We get the rules of fasting and abstinence for Lent in our bulletins, and reminders that holy days are actually obligations for Catholics...but that's about it. Definitely no guilt. I think I could use a little guilt...and I've always been a fan of bringing back some mild public shaming (like the bulletin insert you quoted). But maybe we have no sense of shame anymore--we've destroyed our societal norms for behavior so it's hard to tell people they are not living up to what we expect of them when we don't actually expect much of anything.
I am a 58 year-old re-vert to Catholicism, and I read your post with interest. As someone who did just what I felt like doing for over 30 years in contradiction to Church teaching I have long understood so-called Catholic "guilt" is only a deliberate hoax, a fabrication, originated mostly by 50s & 60s Catholics who resented terribly being told what they couldn't do and hated Catholicism for "making" them feel the least bit bad about it if they did it anyway.
Add to the mix the long-term efforts of a secularized media and entertainment industry that has made lots of money ridiculing "Catholic guilt" as a way of encouraging the further decline and degradation (read that as "sexualization") of society.
The result is the disappearance of shame from our culture, which was a tremendously powerful force in our society that applied intense ("so intense I can't stand it" or guilt) pressure and penalties on those who engaged in public drunkeness, cavorting with prostitutes, getting a girl pregeant, stealing from your mother, cheating on your wife (and therefore your children), etc. One was socially shunned for these and other transgressions, and it was a price to high to pay, even for those naturally inclined to atheism who saw no other reaosn to capitulate to the big, bad Catholic Church.
In a word we now have successfully eliminated "appropriate" guilt, and we put the screws to our collective selves as simultaneously we celebrate the oft-desired and long-anticipated death of "Catholic guilt", our perfect nemesis who used to make us feel SO badly about ourselves.
Now we have more sex outside of marriage than we ever dreamed possible, more unwanted pregnancies and abortions, STDs are rampant (and HPV virus is ravaging the wombs of unspeakably high percentages of our young female population), and "hooking up" has come to mean that 10 year olds are having oral sex instead of meeting later at Starbucks. Oh, and besides, we all know that oral sex isn't even sex anymore, according to one of our past presidents.
Well, we got our way. We sure showed them, didn't we?
Best of all, we got what we said we wanted all along: we finally feel really good about ourselves.
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