Thoughts on a couple of old posts

Sometime ago there was discussion at Catholic and Enjoying It! on Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly as “tribal Catholics”. I put in a half-hearted defense of my fellow Long Islanders with the observation that, when it comes to Catholics in the public square, I’ll take what I can get. Not exactly a resounding hurray but I was thinking about this lately. The charge is that Catholics like Hannity and O’Reilly, and many other Catholics, are Catholic due to upbringing and they are ignorant of their faith. Their faith is not strong enough to overcome the political and cultural biases they have. I would agree with this idea. Recently, a Crisis magazine article began with this quote from the fictional Cardinal in Godfather III: “Look at this stone. It has been lying in this water for a very long time, but the water has not prenetrated it…The same thing has happened to men in Europe. For centuries they have been surrounded by Christianity, but Christ has not penetrated, Christ does not live within them.”

We long islanders live in a very middle class, upwardly mobile area where religion is quietly tolerated but expected not to get in the way of our financial and social goals. People easily spend money for parties on baptisms, communions, confirmations, and weddings-but very few see them as deeply religious sacraments. I grew up with an image of the “Bible Belt” as a place where people were nuts about religion and that we were more sophisticated than that. Of course, the truth is that we never really examined our faith much, and I suspect Catholicism is 95-99% cultural with most Long Island Catholics. This would also explain the Potemkin Village post of Fr. Johannsen at Thrown Back. Our diocese fits the description.