From left, Archbishop Joseph Kurtz, of Louisville, KY, vice president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Archbishop Timothy Dolan, of New York, president of the USCCB, and Monsignor David Malloy, general secretary of the USCCB, talk together at the beginning of a meeting session, Wednesday, June 15, 2011, in Bellevue, Wash. (Ted S. Warren - AP) There is a “cultural war” within Catholic America as several factions battle over a single question: What is “Catholic identity” and who has it?

Bishops rail at universities for not promoting Catholic identity through their choice of a graduation day speaker, the head of the Catholic League considers the National Catholic Reporter a sponsor of “dissident voices” and calls laity seeking reform “rogues” and “rebels.” Other Catholics denounce cardinals they disagree with and say that Catholics who support Ayn Rand endorse “heresy.”

I call this a “cultural war” because the conflict is among believers; this dispute is about the kind of faith and the degree of belief within today’s American Catholic culture.

There are three ways that soldiers in this culture war have battled to define Catholic identity.

The first measures Catholicity by adherence to the teaching of the pope and bishops. Certainly, accepting Catholic doctrine is required to be a Catholic – if you believed in Methodist or Mormon doctrine, for instance, you would be a Methodist or Mormon. But unfortunately for this way of thinking, the Magisterium can never completely define Catholic identity. The verbal formulations of doctrine address the intellect, but Catholic identity opens more widely to include daily devotions like morning prayers and nitty-gritty moral choices like how to plan a family.

Some statements and decrees by bishops have confused pastoral welfare for others with the personal power to excommunicate. Consider the recent threats made by the Archbishop Vigneron of Detroit against the American Catholic Council for proposing a mass as its closing event. Meanwhile, crossing the diocesan boundary twenty-five miles away, the same meeting would have been OK. Hospitals are also threatened for not being Catholic enough. Another bishop interrupted Catholics discussing Faithful Citizenship by stating this voting guide of the USCCB was invalid in his diocese. America’s Catholic Theological Society just voted 147 to one to denounce the bishops for not following their own rules when investigating errant theology. Religious identity, I think, can scarcely be defined by agreement with what a particular – even peculiar – bishop says at any given time.
Pope Benedict XVI (C) attends a meeting with the Caritas international assembly at the Vatican on May 27, 2011. Pope Benedict XVI on May 27 called for the international Catholic charity Caritas to defend "non-negotiable values" in defence of human life -- a reference to abortion and contraception. Caritas is a network made up of 165 agencies supporting 24 million people and employing more than one million people around the world, including 600,000 volunteers. (OSSERVATORE ROMANO - AFP/GETTY IMAGES)

The second option applied by those define Catholic identity by attendance at Sunday Mass within an established parish community. This marker separates those who actively participate in parish life by Mass and collection envelopes from those who do not. Unfortunately, parish societies, choirs, meetings and even Mass are more like icing on the cake than like the cake itself. If you go to church once a week for two hours you have six and eleven-twelfths of the rest of week to answer for in your Catholic identity. Moreover, there is an undeniable age factor in parish Mass attendance, with the grey hairs dominating over the 20 to 30-somethings. Not surprisingly, parish priests usually address their sermons to the older but larger crowd but then cultural references in such sermons lack resonance with a younger segment of the Catholic population. Just as the church offers Mass in languages like Spanish and Polish to include specialized groups, there is a need for sermons in the “youth language” of today. But when you add the generational cleavage in attitudes towards homosexuality and same-sex marriage, the “youth-language” Sunday sermon becomes divisive. All too frequently, a preacher’s choice is to rest with a bland recitation of clichés that blurs rather than sharpens Catholic identity.

The third measure is the embrace of the sacraments and sacramentals. Feeling the need for confession, making sure your children are baptized, confirmed and make First Holy Communion, or seeking a Catholic funeral mass and burial for your parents are, to me, the basic marker for Catholic identity. Add to that the rosary at the bedside, the crucifix over the bed or the picture of Our Lady of Guadalupe in the hallway and you make palpable the expression of Catholic identity. People would not seek the sacraments if they did not have faith in the power of the priesthood or recognize the social dimension of the practice of the faith in a parish church. While some of these attachments to pictures and statues may be cultural, the images and practices are daily reminders of our belonging to the Body of Christ.

The union with others in receiving the sacraments and cherishing symbols of our faith would seem the most solid approach for measuring Catholic identity.