The CrossCurrents A Catholic Reflects on Faith in Our Times

Bernard F. Swain, Ph.D. www.CrossCurrents.us

Catholic ID since “Fish on Fridays”

The Saint Mary’s parish staff was halfway through its meeting when the May Procession came up. It was no big deal, just a brief discussion about logistical details. It was just one item in a fifteen-item agenda. It only took five minutes of a one hour meeting. Nobody on staff seemed especially concerned about it, nor especially excited either. They treated it like a quaint holdover, a nice thing to do for the old folks and the kids.

Still, it got me thinking about the “old days” before Vatican II.

Then a few days later I opened Thomas Groome’s book What Makes Us Catholic, and found him drawing a sharp line between Catholic life in the days of “Fish on Fridays” and Catholic life since then.

Some of us remember the “Fish on Friday” (FOF) era fondly and some of us are glad it’s gone – and millions of Catholics are too young to remember the difference. But aside from personal feelings, Groome makes a more objective point: the FOF era was packed with detailed behavioral patterns and pious practices that made it easy to answer his book’s central question: “What does it mean to be Catholic?” Now, he says, it is not so easy for Catholics to answer the question, since they lack many of those patterns and practices.

I think Groome is right. In fact, I think it explains why “Catholic identity” has become a major leadership challenge for the Vatican, in Catholic schools and colleges, and in many Catholic agencies. We struggle to answer Groome’s question in a way Catholics never did in the FOF era.

As a child growing in the 1950s, for example, I knew perfectly well that saying “I am a Catholic” meant not only fish on Fridays and May processions but also an entire way of life made up of so many things:

Ashes, palms, throat blessings, bells, incense, Latin, novenas, missions, 40 hours devotions, benediction, the rosary, bathtub virgins, doughnuts at Holy Name meetings, Sunday school, vacation school, nuns in habits, no work on Sunday, no pants or shorts for my sisters on Sunday, no hats in church for boys, no bare heads for girls, miraculous medals in October, holy water, retreats, “churching” ladies after they gave birth, indulgences, vigil lights, cassocks and surplices, confessionals with magic lights, confessions as regular as haircuts (both twice a month), “giving up” stuff for Lent, the Legion of Decency, Midnight Mass, mite boxes, my feast days on August 20 and October 4, Saint Joseph missals with the color-coded ribbons, learning Latin to serve Mass, birettas, CYO, LCBA.

You’ve probably already noticed that most of these easy markers of Catholic identity are gone today, or at least much less visible in Catholic life.

These things collectively marked Catholics as different from others, a difference emphasized by the concentration of most Catholics in large urban “Catholic ghetto” neighborhoods. Now, 40 years since FOF, Catholics have left the ghettos to join the multi-religious suburban mainstream. Now, we Catholics not only live where others live – we live like them too, because most of the easy markers of Catholic identity are gone.

We can mourn this loss of this easy identity, but that loss is also a blessing. For the tough truth is that the FOF version of Catholicism had a serious downside. While Catholic identity in the FOF era was mostly easy and clear, it was also mostly wrong.

To be specific: while Catholics of that era could name dozens of details that went into being Catholic and gave them a distinctively Catholic “way of life,” they often remained ignorant about the basics of Catholic faith itself. In fact, most of the list above gives very little clue as to what Catholic faith is really about.

For generations, Catholics grew up thinking their religion was about rules and rituals, assuming most of those rules were about morality, and suspecting the key to morality was sex. Even now I meet many Catholics who name “the Ten Commandments” as the pillar on which their faith is built. They are surprised to hear that Benedict XVI’s first encyclical God is Love spends 30 single-spaced pages explaining the basics of Catholicism without even mentioning the Ten Commandments.

As Fr. Bryan Hehir observed recently, before Vatican II it was clear that Catholic life was supposed to be built on two pillars: “Scripture” and “Sacrament.” Vatican II then clarified and affirmed a third pillar: “Service” (both charity work and working for justice). That’s a pretty neat summary of Benedict’s views as well. But many Catholics these days would be hard pressed to identify these “Three Ss” as the “ABC’s” of Catholicism.

So here’s the dilemma: the FOF style of Catholicism made Catholic identity easy to name, but did so at the cost of trivializing Catholic faith, reducing it to nonessential practices which overshadowed the basic foundations. Yet now, when most of these unimportant practices have been sidelined, Catholics find it hard to define their faith at all.

The obvious question is: isn’t there a better way? Isn’t there some way to give concrete expression to Catholic identity without trivializing it? We shouldn’t have to choose between a clear identity and a correct one. Can’t we give people some clear, easy ways to answer “What is Catholic?” while also retrieving the real meaning of Catholicism?

I think the answer is: yes! But we must be realistic: remember, the FOF version of Catholic identity took generations, even centuries, to develop. We’ve had just one generation since Vatican II to create a new version. So we should not expect our current practices to be as numerous, as rich, as emotionally embedded as the old version was. Not yet, anyway. We sing hymns at liturgy now, but nowhere near as well as most Protestants, who have a big head start on us.

The Baby Boomers’ children and grandchildren will not be as rooted to this new version as previous generations were to the FOF version, for the simple reason that the new version’s roots are themselves not very deep yet. And while the new things mark us as Catholics, they are not pervasive enough to make our whole way of life distinct from other people.

Even so, Catholic life shows every sign of developing new practices (or restoring old ones) that define Catholicism, while at the same time pointing us to the center of our faith, rather than to its sidelines. In parishes everywhere, we see the signs, and they are signs that tend to link our identity to the basics of Scripture, Sacrament, and Service in a way too many of the old signs failed to do:

Bible study, faith-sharing, Advent wreaths, Jesse/Giving trees, Operation Rice Bowl, Baptisms and Confirmations at Easter Vigil, the RCIA, Eucharist as both bread and wine, Eucharist in the hand, Baptisms at weekend liturgies, altar boys AND girls, applause in church, the sign of peace, Weddings at weekend liturgies, Eucharistic ministers to the sick, married Deacons, Reconciliation rooms, funerals in white that combine ancient ritual with active family participation.

Transitions are never easy, and a massive transition like Vatican II can distress three or four generations before calmer times return.

So we’ll need patience to develop our new version of Catholic identity. But we must never again allow the concrete details of our Catholic “way of life” to obscure the basics of Catholic faith. Our Catholic identity must be a true identity, even if it takes a while to find it again.

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2006

Send Your Comments and Questions to bfswain@juno.com

Dr. Swain’s opinions do not represent the views of this parish or any other official body.

Bernie Swain has devoted more than 30 years to adult spiritual formation in dioceses in the US, Canada, and France. Since 1991 he has maintained a private practice as trainer, teacher, and consultant to leaders in parishes and other religious organizations. He holds degrees in theology and political science from Holy Cross, Harvard, The University of Paris, and The University of Chicago.

His writings include Liberating Leadership (Harper & Row, 1986) and more than 200 articles in periodicals such as The National Catholic Reporter, Commonweal, The Miami Herald, The Catholic Free Press, The Pilot, Harvard Theological Review, and Liturgy.

A lifelong layperson, he lives in Boston with his wife and three children. Visit his website at:

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