Being a Bad Catholic

To a person not deeply immersed in the Catholic-nerd culture, the tagline of my blog must seem very odd.

Dear non Catholic-nerd, Allow me to explain why I, and the rest of the Church Militant, are bad Catholics.

Besides being a less-than subtle nod to Marc Barnes' excellent blog on Patheos called (you guessed it) BadCatholic, this small two-word label is also a reference to another excellent bad Catholic, and a Theological and Philosophical expression at the heart of the Catholic religion and Catholic Theology.

In the famous interview of Walker Percy by himself (Ok, ok...maybe not so famous), Mr. Percy asked himself what kind of Catholic he considered himself to be. He answered himself, "Bad."
Now, I have not read much Walker Percy, but after reading that, I don't feel like I need much more persuading. It's on my to-do list, folks.

What Mr. Percy was hinting at was not simply a quirky remark. His acknowledgement that he is a "bad" Catholic recognizes what I have seen as a central theme in Catholicism, one that I think not many people really get.

Catholicism, in my experience, is at its heart a gradient of perfection. Where man may be imperfect in many ways, he is measured by the perfection of God. St. Thomas in his famous Summa Theologica (ok, ok, probably not so famous to anyone but a philosophy nerd. Cut me a little slack) says this:

"All created perfections are in God. Hence He is spoken of as universally perfect, because He lacks not" ~Summa Question 1, Article 2

 That phrase: "Universally Perfect" used to describe God--and in doing so, describing also the perfect man, which is Christ--, is also what the word "Catholic" really means:

catholic (adj.) 

... from Church Latin catholicus "universal, general," from Greek katholikos, from phrase kath' holou "on the whole, in general," from kata "about" + genitive of holos "whole" (courtesy of www.etymonline.com / my emphasis)

 Where we normally use the term to describe a whole Church, a church of all nations, to describe a person as Catholic is to describe them as "whole" or "universal", which is to actually describe a person as perfect, for perfection is to be whole.
Using that end, that description, there is only one person in this world that can be described as such: Christ. In being perfect, Christ was whole, Christ was Universally human, perfectly human. And in being so, He can be described as Catholic. And of course, this Catholic Church is assembled around Him. The root word for Church comes from Greek as well:

ecclesiastic (adj. 

...from ekkalein "to call out," from ek "out" (see ex-) + kalein "to call" (Also courtesy of www.etymonline.com)

 So, drawing conclusions, the Catholic Church is a universal calling or gathering of people centered upon somebody that is, in themselves, universally perfect.

Now, this perfection that belongs to Christ is, at its heart, infinite. Think back to Pre-Calc in High School. In a graph, an asymtote that is located at 1 will come as close to 1 as the human mind can comprehend, but yet will never reach 1. It will come to 0.9999999999, but it can never be said to be 1.

This gradient that the line creates is kind of like how holiness is. We, as Catholics, strive to become like Christ, to be truly "universally perfect". Now, as humans, we will never be perfect on our own. We mess up, we fall. But just like that asymtote, we will try to reach that number 1.
So Walker Percy said it right when he said we are Bad Catholics. Anything that is imperfect cannot legitimately be called perfect, just as 0.9999999 cannot be called 1. But as we are in the process of being perfected in this Catholic Church, as we are "called out", we enter into the Catholicism of Christ. Just as the asymtote of the line cannot be called 1, it comes so close that we call it 1 anyway.
Well...that metaphor may be a heresy, I'm not sure.

Anyways, we're not perfect like Christ, so we enter into the Church in order to share in his Perfection, to grow nearer and nearer that 1 in order to eventually become it. Thus are we Bad Catholics: not perfect yet!

Pax! Please comment and correct me where I need it!