Being a Real, Crunchy Catholic

Best. Article. Ever.

The author defines "Crunchy Catholic" a bit differently than I have been defining it over here, but man, is he dead on or WHAT?!

Please Read It.

It's that good.

And, its like the man described my soul.

Some favorite excerpts include:

Crunchy Catholicism likes to touch and see. It craves a religion fully loaded with accessories; it wants to wake up and smell the incense. Derided as superficial or merely reactionary by neo-gnostics and "noble simplicity" aficionados, the Crunchy Catholic's love for bells, beeswax, and basilicas, for shiny censers and stone statues, is really rooted in a joyfully incarnational religious sensibility. Crunchy Catholicism likewise wants to remember -- to gather round us like a familiar blanket the saints and martyrs, the stories of great battles and simple souls, keeping them alive and relevant in our practice of the Faith today.

Crunchy Catholicism distinguishes. Ours is a both/and religion, we're fond of saying, and true as that is, there's a lot of either/or-ing to go through first. Crunchy Catholicism takes a sword and cuts the world into its necessary contraries: life and death, good and evil, heaven and hell. Valid and invalid, too -- you're baptized or you're not, you're married or single, ordained or lay.

That's because Crunchy Catholicism holds that Church teachings are a true (if imperfect, for we do not yet see "face to face") statement about the way things are....... Crunchy Catholicism recognizes that we Catholics are cooking with gas, practicing with live ammo, firing on twelve cylinders. One second, wafer; next second, Eternal Master of the universe. No qualification needed -- or possible.

It follows, then, that Crunchy Catholicism engages the intellect. Crunchy Catholics like saying the Creed; they savor the formulae from Nicea and Chalcedon; they mop up theology and apologetics until their eyes bubble.

If He is infinitely ineffable, He is also infinitely knowable. Crunchy Catholicism, while not forbearing to love and serve God, wants to know Him.