Our family is not just Catholic; we are (what Mexicans call) "muy Catholico." Very Catholic. Even Uber-Catholic. But we are not monotonous or uniform; we are diverse and multi-flavored. So, within my own family we entertain six contrasting cultures. Richard Niebuhr (Christ and Culture) famously contrasted five paradigms in which faith interacts with culture: Christ against/within/above/of/in paradox/transformer. Here are six specific cultures which demonstrate all five models:
1. Notre Dame University: wholesome, successful, self confident, politically moderate and balanced, high-achieving, good looking, bourgeois, football-loving, proudly (often Irish) American.
2. Franciscan University of Steubenville: charismatic, countercultural, enthusiastic, evangelical-allied.
3. Neocatechumenal Way: militantly counter-cultural, fervently communitarian, evangelical, radical, Christ Against Culture.
4. Conservative Catholic: First Things, rightwing-Republican-MAGA-tolerating politics, culture warriors, classically Catholic in liturgy, morals and belief.
5. "Ignatian Catholic": Jesuit schools, urbane and sophisticated, America, leftwing politics, progressive theology, Fr. Jim Martin S.J. and the "gay crusade."
6. Communion and Liberation: Italian, educated, sophisticated, confident, positive, congenial, solidly Catholic movement flowing from friendship in Christ.
1. Notre Dame Catholicism
My granddaughter is ecstatically happy as she approaches sophomore year; my daughter was valedictorian just over 20 years ago; my sports-obsessing son, with his football tickets, is as happy as his daughter. This is the highest possible synthesis of America-at-its-best and Catholicism. Consider football weekend: partying, fun, masses before and after the game and throughout the weekend, celebration, confidence. The university represents every dimension of American Catholicism: conservative and progressive, devotion and social justice advocacy, scholarship, networking, science, business...you name it! Its weakness is its strength: it attracts ambitious, confident, attractive people who for the most part accept as they triumph in the mainstream, meritocratic, careerist, materialist, bourgeois, suburban, American society.
2. Franciscan University Charismatic Catholicism
As a red-blooded charismatic Catholic myself, I am thrilled beyond words that one of my own, my granddaughter, as well as some great-nephews, is studying there. In their senior year, I brought most of my seven children there with high hopes but none were interested. I have already told the Lord: "Now I can go in peace!"
In the 1970s, as the mainline Catholic academy went progressive, charismatic (in both senses of "gifted" and "Pentecostal") Fr. Michael Scanlon (Franciscan) led the transformation of the then-failing school into the most fierce, reckless, pure expression of Catholicism in the country. It is Pentecostal but also Marian, TLM friendly, homeschool-welcoming, Theology-of-the-Body-believing, militantly pro-life, and vocation-encouraging. It now shelters political think thanks that are Catholic-friendly as conservative morally but economically liberal (care for poor, pro-unions, New-Deal-friendly). Next week my granddaughter will attend a wedding of a college friend; she reports that a common expectation is to be engaged by graduation. This is Catholic Counter-Culture on steroids!
3. Neocatechumenal Way
Born in the gypsy slums near Madrid over 60 years ago, this is an extraordinarily intense, militant, novel-yet-orthodox Catholic development. My second son with his wife and 9 children are passionately involved. It centers itself in faith, in family and small community, in simplicity/humility/praise, in a rigorous rule of scripture reading, prayer and sharing. It views modernity as a dystopia of Godlessness and is implicitly critical of the post-Constantine Church as inadequate to the apocalyptic reality before us. It is amazingly fruitful as it forms new communities, large families and many priestly/religious vocations. It is controversial but widely influential and this will only increase going forward.
4. Neo-Conservative Catholic
With my own two brothers, I belong here (but not exclusively). We read First Things, vote Republican because of the Culture War as well as a passionate positivity about American democracy/capitalism/legacy, and practice classic Catholicism around the sacraments and Church teaching. This view is highly compatible with the Notre Dame synthesis but more sharply ideological and so clearly opposed to the Ignatian option. It is compatible with Communion and Liberation but uncomfortable with the "far out" Neocatechumenal and Charismatic styles.
5. Ignatian Catholic
The Catholic Academy and prestigious, notably Jesuit, institutions in critical mass, after the Council now 60 years ago, have embraced leftist politics, cultural progressivism and theological liberalism. My oldest granddaughter is now an editor at America after graduating from Columbia University, her brother is a senior at Fordham, her sister is at U Penn, and little brother at Xavier Jesuit HS in Manhattan where her father is in leadership. Most of my six sisters and their families would be most comfortable in this camp: urban, Democrat, liberal. As an ardently charismatic-culture-war grandfather, I am delighted that my grandchildren...in this NYC, Jesuit, progressive, urban space...have largely gravitated to the most Catholic friendly dimensions of that world: Catholic Worker home, farm worker unions, care for the poor, gun control, homelessness, environment, respect for women and minorities. That they are also influenced by Communion and Liberation has helped with this.
6. Communion and Liberation
Strong in Italy but small in the USA, this is a significant, sophisticated expression of classic, Italian, highbrow Catholicism. It has about it a striking spontaneity, freedom, confidence, positivity and organic fluidity as it nourishes friendship in Christ and wholesome, passionate, intellectual conversation on personal experience and our shared cultural/political world. It is completely at home in the Church and regards modernity with a Vatican II-type welcome, confidence, and acceptance although not without prophetic criticism. It tends to an open-to-but-critical-of engagement with the other five models here.
Conclusion
Of the six, the Neocatechumenate is an outlier as radically, intensively, militantly, counterculturally Catholic. I have spent time with them and am immensely admiring. The charismatic (my preference) is second as pronouncedly Catholic and countercultural. Communion and Liberation is culture-critical, but in a manner that is congenial, non-combative, generous, non-defensive, welcoming, nuanced and sophisticated. The other three are each embracive of a distinctive Americanism: the Ignatian of progressivism, the neo-conservative of free-enterprise capitalism, and Notre Dame of the moderate middle. There is serious dissonance between the Ignatian on the left and the three on the right, while Notre Dame and CL are open towards both ends of the spectrum.
Happily, notwithstanding a significant political/theological rupture, our family has enjoyed for several decades harmony that is especially remarkable considering how strong we are in our religion and politics. This is for several reasons:
1. We continue from our parents and family an immense affection and respect for each other, even across differences of viewpoint.
2. We are primarily Catholic in our communion with Christ and his Church in its essential objectivity of worship/morals//belief and so we do not exaggerate our differences.
3. We are for the most part serene, safe, intelligent and generous enough to appreciate the other side of most debates and so not polarize and demonize each other.
4. Almost 20 years ago as a family, with friends, we opened a residence for low income women. This shared work of charity has united us more deeply than certain beliefs divide us.
5. Feminine influence: my own immediate and extended family are both more matriarchal. It is not just the numbers: we brothers are outnumbered 6-3 by sisters; my son 5-2 by daughters. It is also that these 11 women, along with our wives, are strong, influential women who set the tone for the family. Additionally, both groups are very close and collegial. As a group they are disinclined to dispute, competition and conflict. And so a pleasant, wholesome harmony abides.
Most of the family, to be sure, does not live in these six specific, strong cultures, but a more middle class, parish-and-school-based normality. Of the six models above, the moderate Notre Dame is probably the ideal most strive towards in contrast to the stronger accentuations of the other five.
Additionally we are influenced by many other Catholic cultures. We ourselves are friends with the Latin Mass community in Jersey City; the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal in the NY area, Maryknoll priests, Felician sisters of Lodi, Caldwell Dominicans, Convent Station Charities, the Lasalle Christian brothers; the Cursillo movement and the Communio school of theology in Washington DC. We are admiring of the Catholic Worker movement. I have been personally impacted by a number of Jesuits, although mostly of the moderate or even "old school" type.
The Church...in America, in NJ...is a sublime symphony, a banquet of delights! It is a big table!
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