Joseph Varacalli in Bright Promise, Failed Community Catholics and the American Public Order:

“Much of the individual success of Catholics in America, as such, has come at the expense of either abandoning or privatizing the Catholic faith, or in other cases, redefining it to mean something else, as in the case of much of what passes for ‘liberation theology’. Furthermore, such a trade-off was, in many cases, sociologically unnecessary. It was the result of ‘resentment’, that is, accepting the definitions of reality of one’s own anti-Catholic oppressors, rather than out of any (alleged) intrinsic requirement to abandon the faith (e.g., in order to become a scientist or sociologist) or extrinsic political or status consideration (e.g., in order to move into the cultural center).”
To this scholarly analysis, I could only add: Yes! Yes! Yes! Do you know how many times I have seen in writing or heard Catholic people act like they had to prove that they really did not believe what the Church taught in order to be accepted by the intelligentsia???? Many lectures I have heard or articles I have read are Catholics trying to prove themselves to unseen critics that they are not Mary-worshipping, statue-crazed, rosary-praying, abortion-hating, Jesus-believing fools. My local parish has an ongoing lecture series whose speakers have been all apologizing for the Church’s teachings rather than explaining them. This is why I am attracted to traditional Catholics, they teach, explain, live the faith without compromise, without apologies, and without fear.