Baking Catholic

Last week we waded through the complicated waters of statistics and took a close look at one affirmation in particular: “98% of Catholic women use contraception” (here). A quick run-through of how statistics work and how they can be used—or misused—showed that “the 98%” was a poor estimate of the real beliefs and actions of Catholic women.

This week: why it doesn’t matter.

A master baker once invented the perfect recipe for chocolate cake. To preserve his masterwork for posterity, he carefully wrote it down, ingredient by ingredient. He described every step of the process. He taught the recipe to others. Throughout the ages, cooks studied the recipe, and culinary scholars wrote enormous volumes on how to repeat the ideal chocolate cake at different climates and altitudes. 

Other bakers tried again and again to reproduce the perfect cake, but they never got it quite right. Some cakes went a little flat. Others were too fluffy, too sweet, or not sweet enough.

How many of us have ever lied? Or run a red-light? 98% is probably a rather conservative estimate. But even if “98% of Catholics lie and run red-lights”, that doesn’t mean that Catholics lie, or ignore traffic regulations. It just means that none of us are the master baker.

We probably won’t ever bake the perfect cake. Our Catholic lives are spotted with non-Catholic moments. That’s unfortunate. Sometimes it’s tragic. However, the very fact that we can tell the difference means that “Catholic” doesn’t depend on what we think, do or say. The recipe is still valid, and much needed. Without it, we’re left without an ideal to live up to, without a measure for the quality of our cake.

Anyone who ignores the Catholic faith, and just focuses on Catholic people, be they faithful, faithless, or somewhere in between, is missing the point. A reality of being Catholic is that virtually all of us have non-Catholic zones in our lives. We fight to remedy those voids. What we bake is a testimony to our personal culinary skill—or lack thereof—as we try to follow the hallowed recipe. If we were better in the kitchen, more people would benefit from the master baker’s recipe. But even when we fall short, the recipe remains valid.

It doesn’t matter if “98% of Catholic women use contraception”, any more than it matters that 98% of Catholics have run a traffic light. The Catholic faith is still the same even if Catholics don’t always live up to it. The recipe is still there. And Catholics still have the right to try and live up to their ideal. They just need freedom to keep trying their hand at the perfect cake.

By Benjamin O'Loughlin