I've read that the Pope has asked the bishops to poll lay Catholics on
such hot button issues as clerical celibacy and contraception. There's been a lot of discussion of how to go about this. My question has been raised before - who is a Catholic? Is someone who was baptized, given First Communion and confirmed but who hasn't been to Mass in 20 years a Catholic? What if that person has been away over the precise issues involved?
Fortinbras Armstrong
(4,473 posts)My mother is a Jew. She does not keep kosher and the only two times she has been to a synagogue in over sixty years was for a wedding and for a funeral.
Yet there is no doubt in her mind that she is a Jew.
hedgehog
(36,286 posts)TommyCelt
(838 posts)My father-in-law is Jewish.
He's never kept kosher or went to Temple, and even converted to Catholicism 20 years ago. He would still say he's Jewish without hesitation.
I think many American Catholics call themselves such as a cultural, rather than religious, identification. Culturally, this phenomenom seems stronger with Jewish folk, but it's part of being Catholic as well.
rug
(82,333 posts)goldent
(1,582 posts)had to add that