Christian suggestion

[Greg Pulliam]

In my Episcopal Church upbringing, we referred to ourselves as
"Catholic Lite--Same Great Ritual, with 1/3 the Guilt"


>At 05:49 PM 11/8/99 -0500, Lynne Murphy wrote:
>
>>An ex of mine was a Lutheran of German-Norwegian (Illinois-N. Dakota) stock,
>>who, whenever she saw a Jello salad would gesture boldly and exclaim "Behold!
>>The food of my people!"  This joke got started because of the
>>ubiquitous jello
>>salads at Lutheran "covered dish" (i.e., potluck) suppers in that part of the
>>country.  So, perhaps one can be a little bit culturally Lutheran, if not
>>ethnically so.
>>
>>Several people  I know and I refer to ourselves as "culturally Catholic".
>>(Others refer to themselves as "recovering Catholics", of course.)  The idea
>>behind cultural Catholicism is kind of like ethnic Judaism--we were
>>brought up
>>with ritual, righteous guilt, mysteries, and such that we're not
>>altogether sure
>>that we want to get rid of.  Be an atheist?  That's fine.  But give up
>>icons and
>>incense and Latin?  Well, that's a bit harder.  They're so cool...
>Cultural Lutherans can't give up Bach and Buxtehude, or the wondrously
>inspired singing of small-town church choirs....  But the preaching and the
>guilt?  Ah, that's another matter.  In fact, I was tempted to write
>earlier, in response to the puzzlement over Mormon and Orthodox Jewish
>early marriages, that Lutherans (and probably Mormons) were always
>lectured, citing Paul, "It is better to marry than to burn."  Not much
>subtlety there.

-
Greg