CATHOLIC IDENTITY

When we speak of some people as being “very human” or others as “lacking in humanity,” what we mean is that the former are fulfilling the models or standards befitting human nature while the latter are falling away from them. Human nature, or “what it means to be human,” is not something that each one decides for oneself or that can be changed at will. It has an objective content, given by God when he made man “in his own image” (Gn 1:27).

Man is not a self-defining being in regard to his nature. He has not the right or power to define humanity. All he can do is to achieve true human identity, fulfill his potential to be human, or frustrate it. Human nature, from which alone can flow true human identity, is something given by God. What keeps man in God’s image or increases that image in him accords with human nature, giving him greater identity as a man. What lessens, disfigures, or spoils that image contradicts human nature and identity, and can in the end make a person unidentifiable as truly human.

Content of Christian Identity • Christian identity, similarly, has an objective rather than a subjective content. The requirements for achieving true Christian identity are clearly indicated in the Scriptures. To be a Christian means to follow and imitate Jesus Christ. As Jesus himself says, this involves being ready to bear the cross in a spirit of self-denial: “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Mt 16:24-25); “He must increase, but I must decrease” (Jn 3:30); “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20).

This gives us the key to Christian identity. It is achieved in the measure of one’s interior identification with Christ, a paradoxical process by which one in fact becomes more distinctively oneself, just as the saints were all one with Christ, approaching him from different angles, and are so different among themselves.
The norm and condition of Christian living, of acquiring the true identity of a Christian, is just the opposite therefore of self-seeking. Vatican Council II teaches: “Man can fully discover his true self only in a sincere giving of himself” (Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes, 24). The surest way to frustrate one’s true identity is self-seeking in its various forms: pride, vanity, envy, impurity, greed.

Much of modern education and professional psychological counseling is nevertheless imbued with the cult of self. To acquire real Christian identity, one must distance oneself from this philosophy. “Self-identification” and “self-definition” are formulas of individualism. As a recipe for life, they lead to frustration and loneliness. The willfully self-centered person is unrecognizable as a Christian.
This applies to all Christians, to all those who by Baptism are made members of the Body of Christ and of the People of God. But if all Christians are members of the People of God, what is the specific difference in being a Catholic? Does Catholic identity mean something more definite or definable than simple Christian identity? Are there external and objective standards by which Catholic identity can be determined?

Distinctiveness of Catholic Identity • With words taken directly from Vatican Council II’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, 31 and 14, the 1983 Code of Canon Law, in the opening canons of Book II on “The People of God,” distinguishes between Christian and Catholic identity. Christian identity comes from Baptism by which one is “incorporated into Christ” (Canon 204) and so, in the words of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, receives “the life that originates in the Father and is offered to us in the Son” (CCC 683). Catholic identity is possessed by “those baptized [who] are fully in communion with the Catholic Church on this earth,” being “joined with Christ in its visible structure by the bonds of profession of faith, of the sacraments and of ecclesiastical governance” (Canon 205).

Catholic identity, then, means membership in the Church, the People of God formed and sustained by the Holy Spirit. Vatican Council II says that for this People and each of her members the Spirit is “the principle of their union and unity in the teaching of the apostles and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and prayers” (Lumen Gentium, 13). “It is the Holy Spirit, dwelling in those who believe and pervading and ruling over the entire Church, who brings about that wonderful communion of the faithful and joins them together so intimately in Christ that He is the principle of the Church’s unity” (Decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio, 2).

Catholic identity consists in being in full communion with the Catholic Church – in her visible structure as it appears on this earth – accepting and enjoying bonds which link us more specially still to Jesus Christ that are defined as the profession of the same doctrine, the share and worship in the same sacraments, and the acceptance of ecclesiastical authority and discipline (Lumen Gentium, 14).
Catholic identity is not something static. It should grow; it can be lost. Growth in Catholic identity means an ever fuller and more intimate bonding and union with Jesus Christ, through the faith proposed by his Church, through the sacraments she administers, and through obedience to the dispositions of governance behind which one discovers his will (Lk 10:16).

Instead of growing as a Catholic of course, the opposite can happen and one can gradually suffer a loss of Catholic identity. This can occur if a person lacks the faith to appreciate the special union with Christ effected by full and wholehearted communion with the visible Church: if he or she begins to chaff against these ecclesial bonds that join us to Christ, resenting or resisting the demands they make on our mind and will; “picking and choosing” in the faith one professes, so that it is no longer the faith of the Church; neglecting the sacraments (especially Penance and Reconciliation and the Eucharist) or receiving or administering them unworthily, or participating in or celebrating the Sacred Liturgy without due reverence; ignoring legitimate Church authority or seeking to evade dispositions of government, especially of the Holy See.

No teacher or theologian has the right to appropriate the term “Catholic” for his views or to present them to the people as Catholic on his authority. The people have the right to know whether a theologian’s views are within the broad stream of Catholic thinking or outside, and it is the Church, not the individual thinker, which is competent to decide.
Loss of Catholic Identity • The Church cannot lose her identity. Despite the defects of her members, she will always be the holy Church. This is something that Jesus Christ himself has guaranteed. But each Catholic can acquire more and more solidly or gradually lose his or her identity as a Catholic. The application of this point goes beyond individual persons.

The Church is made up of things human and divine. The divine things – the sacraments, Revelation, Scripture, the Magisterium – never lose their sacred identity, even if misused by men. The Eucharistic Sacrifice always remains the Holy Mass, even if celebrated (with due intention) by a priest in a state of serious sin.
But many things in the Church are of purely human foundation: Catholic schools and other teaching institutions, chairs of theology, hospitals, publishing houses, newspapers, bookshops, etc. They can lose their Catholic identity, even while continuing to use the name “Catholic.” In judging whether a particular institution is retaining its Catholic identity, the same tests offered by Canon 205, noted above, should be applied: union with Christ through acceptance of the Church’s faith, sacraments, and ecclesiastical governance. If it happens that a particular institution shows a lack of union with Christ by failing to transmit the faith passed down to us through his Church over the centuries or if it does not heed his voice speaking through indications of Church government (“He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me” [Lk 10:16]), then it is undoubtedly losing or has already lost its Catholic identity. A Catholic name or a Catholic past are not sufficient to guarantee a present Catholic identity. This is something to be borne in mind in choosing books or schools.

Being true to one’s Catholic identity requires special courage in a world that tends more and more to look for, and even demand, identification with secular principles as a qualification for the free exercise of what it chooses to define as civic rights. It is not from the media or opinion polls, not from congresses, parliaments, or supreme court decisions, that Catholics must take their standards and their stand. It is from the Gospel. “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).

There is no conflict between being true to one’s Catholic identity and having the fullest respect for the human rights of others. On the contrary, it is precisely Catholics who keep faithful to Christ and to the identity (the principles and practice) that he calls for in his followers, who can alert their fellow citizens to the threat posed to their human identity – to the freedom and dignity of every single person – by many of the principles and legislative practices being proposed by modern states.

See: Assent and Dissent; Church, Membership in; Church, Nature, Origin, and Structure of; Conscience; Dissent; Ecclesial Rights and Duties; Magisterium.
Suggested Readings: CCC 836-856, 863-865. Code of Canon Law, 204-207. C. Burke, Authority and Freedom in the Church, pp. 60ff., 192-193.

Cormac Burke




Russell Shaw. Our Sunday Visitor's Encyclopedia of Catholic Doctrine. Copyright © 1997, Our Sunday Visitor.

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Last Updated: Sunday, April 01, 2001 03:24:19 PM