cafeteria Catholics

[Lynne Murphy]

Continuing on our discussion of religion, the cover story on Tuesday's
Salon (www.salon.com) is about Kevin Smith's new film _Dogma_, which the
Catholic League is protesting.  Here's a bit quoting some of the
Catholic League people, but there's lots more interesting usage of
religious terms in the article:


                                But it's still hard to understand why
Smith's movie -- or any work of any sort --
                                shouldn't be taken by Catholics on its
own terms. (To his credit, even Pat
                                Buchanan dropped into the Brooklyn Art
Museum last week to see Ofili's
                                painting. He decided it was offensive --
but noted that his training as a journalist
                                required that he see it for himself
before making any pronouncement.) When I
                                mentioned to both Donohue and McCloskey
that Kevin Smith says he is a
                                practicing Catholic -- noting that
they'd probably consider him a "cafeteria
                                Catholic," one who picks and chooses
from among the doctrines -- they both
                                dismissed his claim out of hand. "A
cafeteria Catholic is basically a person who's
                                saying that their Catholicism is their
own," McCloskey explains. "But it's not the
                                church's. And the definition of that is
the Protestant."

Lynne

--

M. Lynne Murphy, Assistant Professor in Linguistics
Department of English, Baylor University
PO Box 97404, Waco, TX 76798 USA
Phone:  254-710-6983     Fax:  254-710-3894
http://www.baylor.edu/~M_Lynne_Murphy