The cafeteria is closed!
The Curt Jester laments the poor catechesis these young people received. Whose fault do you think that is? Baby Boomers: Worst. Generation. EVAR. The Greatest Generation may have defeated Hitler and the imperialist Japanese but they really dropped the ball with their children. Case in point: this Baby Boomer priest laments the rise of "Neocaths." I am shocked and outraged that he left me off of the list. I am seriously shocked and outraged that a Catholic priest could write something like this:

John Paul II thus bypassed and reached over the heads of the educated baby boomers, influenced by Vatican II, in order to address an audience who were a tabula rasa, and to communicate to them a world view that the Vatican II generation would find problematic on many points. His tactic recalls that of Mao in China.

Words like "neocon" and "liberal" are inappropriate when discussing the faith. There are only two kinds of Catholics: orthodox and heterodox. There are some political issues that good Catholics can disagree on such as the death penalty or whether the Nanny State is the best way to help the poor. Cafeteria Catholics though... well, I'll let Nicol D of The War Room speak for me.

Joseph,

I hope you are well. You yourself make a grave error when you refer to yourself as a 'liberal' Catholic in your bio, if this is indeed your worldview. It shows a marked lack of understanding in what Catholicism really is.

Catholicism is neither of the left nor the right and Christ's teachings are much more complex than our modern day notions of liberal and conservative. Catholicism is a seamless garment view of humanity that values the human life from conception through life until death. The same philosophy that makes the Church call for the eradication of Third World death and fight AIDS in Africa is the same philosophy that makes them condemn abortion, same-sex marriage and the culture of 'the death of the family' that surrounds it.

Again you refer to being a 'liberal' Catholic? Catholicism is neither liberal nor conservative...to call it this is to fall into the same trap that you accuse the 'NeoCaths' of.

Any self-described Catholic who cares not for the sick or the poor is not properly following Christ or the Church's teaching.

Any self-described Catholic who lobbies for same-sex marriage and abortion has absolutely no understanding of Christ or the Church's teachings either.

Catholicism is not an easy doctrine and no one is forced to follow it. I reject the term 'Neo-Cath' as you describe it because the type of people you call this term...and you certainly use it in a dismissive, pejorative sense...in my experience are not what you describe. They very much care about the poor and work in the hostels and soup kitchens.

In my experience...and I am 34...'liberal' Catholics as you call it tend toward the cafeteria approach to Catholicism.

Obsessed with modernity and pop culture they have neither strength nor fortitude and will defend to their dying breath gay activists or abortionists but will not raise one squeal to defend Christ or His Church when faced with adversity. They love the trappings of the church (candles, incense and mass at Christmas) but think being a good Catholic is giving your child an extra helping of chocolate at Easter.

Does this sound glib? My experience with 'liberal' Catholics as you say, has been just that.

They confuse left-wing ideologies with faith and indeed have a latent hatred for faith and ridicule it when they see it in others. Many of the prominent ones become politicians (think Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin, John Kerry, Ted Kennedy) and spend the rest of their life in public service doing everything they can to renounce their faith in the name of modern secular humanism which is indeed, anti-Catholic.

They will wax eloquently about how if Christ was alive today he would be living in areas with large populations of homosexuals, prostitutes and criminals in large cities because Christ always courted the 'outcasts'. They then conveniently overlook that in the New Testament, after meeting with Christ, the 'outcasts', criminals and prostitutes he met with never went back to doing what they did again.

They shout out words like 'diversity' and 'inclusivity' and pledge allegiance to all that is politically correct...but Christ was neither diverse nor inclusive and most certainly not politcially correct. His inclusivity stopped at the door.

All were invited but he set down parameters, rules to abide by. That is of course, why he was killed. If Christ was so 'easy' and 'liberal' he would not have been a threat to the establishment. Easy people who say do what you will are not threats...kind soft spoken people who lay down a tough law to follow are.

Christ invited all but not many come, and coming to Christ's table involves much more than just singing a round of John Lennon's Imagine while chanting anti-war hymns and saying George Bush is a 'Nazi'. Yes, it involves giving and acknowledging poverty and the horrors of war; it also includes chastity, the sanctity of life and fighting against the corrosion of the family posed by same-sex 'marriage'.

It also means standing for truth. The truth that there is no way to Heaven except through Christ. A hard lesson, indeed.

I do not believe the 'NeoCaths' confuse politics and faith. Quite the opposite in fact. Born out of the sixties, 'liberal' Catholics confuse purtinism with dignity, promiscuity with freedom, neo-communism with charity and death with 'choice'. They are not the future of the church and I suspect they're breed is dying fast. They are the true old 'fogey's' as you might say. That elderly, ex-hippie, boomer generation who want Christ the 'licenser'; not Christ the Redeemer.

They reject the concept of Christ's Passion because to confront His crucifixtion would mean to confront their own sin...and they do not believe in sin. Rather, they have been duped into believing in the 'cult of the body' and the self. Any 'charity' work they do comes more from a belief in a large government controlling thier lives than it does in Christ.

They are also largely white and in the West.

They are not the future of the church and Pope Benedict XVI knows this.

You see friend, there is no such thing as a 'liberal' Catholic or a 'Neo-Cath'. There is merely Catholicism as a philosophy.

I am not a liberal Catholic.

I am not a Neo-Cath.

I am a Roman Catholic.

All the best and God bless.

Nicol D.