Reclaiming the Culture That Made Us Catholic

For too long, Catholics in the United States—myself included—have treated the Church as an extension of our political identities, a sociological distortion that has carried the language, loyalties, and resentments of the culture wars straight into the sanctuary.

The result is a Catholic community that is, I think, no longer a true community at all, one increasingly unable to pray together, disagree together, or even imagine one another charitably. Friendships have fractured within parishes over presidential politics or minor policy disputes, as if our baptismal identity were secondary to the partisan labels we carry.