By Casey Chalk.

"There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate The Catholic Church," famously opined Venerable Servant of God Fulton Sheen, "but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be." I'd go a step further: if there's one thing that people, regardless of their religious affiliation, feel competent and confident to speak on, it seems to be the Catholic Church. Everybody seems to know what it teaches and why, and, by extension, why it's dead wrong. Rarely does one hear people speak so dismissively about other religious traditions or institutions, say Buddhism, Hinduism, or even Islam, all of which our culture has decided to various degrees are deserving of a certain deferential respect.

Given the prominence of Catholicism even in 21st-century America - as well as the tens of millions of "former Catholics" (the second largest religious group after Catholics themselves) - one could say that familiarity breeds contempt.

Yet familiarity does not necessarily breed accurate knowledge, as Catholic writer and podcaster (and former Episcopalian priest) Andrew Petiprin argues in his new book, The Faith Unboxed: Freeing the Catholic Church from the Containers People Put It In. Over eight chapters discussing eight of these inaccurate "boxes," Petiprin sets the record straight in ways that even long-time, practicing Catholics may find surprising.

Petiprin begins by noting that the Church is not an ideology such as liberalism with its specifically progressivist and individualist bent; nor is it conservative in the sense that it is strictly traditionalist or perfectly aligned with the Republican Party.

Christ Himself repudiated those who placed their faith in the traditions of men. (Mark 7:1-13) As much as the Church upholds Holy Tradition as a source of divine revelation, she also possesses a certain revolutionary impulse in her repudiation of even long-standing cultural norms if they are opposed to the Gospel, whether we are talking about ancient Rome or indigenous peoples in the Americas.

Moreover, as Petiprin observes, the word "Catholicism" never appears in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, nor is it in any official Catholic document: "The Church is not a way to navigate reality, but rather the experience of reality. The Church is not a collection of ideas to lay atop human society, but the organization of humanity."

The Church is also not a "denomination." While Protestant denominations "come and go, come together, and break apart," the Catholic Church asserts herself as the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, and history has borne out that identity.

The Catholic Church does not even recognize "denominations" as such, but rather ecclesial communions that, via their sacraments ,enjoy various degrees of communion with her. Petiprin cites St. Paul as perhaps the earliest critic of this idea that the Church could be divided into denominations: "Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul." (1 Corinthians 1:13)

Is the Church an institution? Petiprin thinks not: "Human beings create institutions, whereas God created the Church." I might quarrel with denying the Church is some sense an institution (she is, after all, composed of humans), but he has a point that the Church is not solely a this-worldly institution, one whose role is strictly defined by her various social programs rather than the salvation she offers.

Such a conception neglects the fact that the Church is the body of Christ, with the Eucharist at its center: "The Catholic Church is the experience of the common destiny of man - eucharistic man - transformed into Christ by Christ, living in a present that intersects with eternity."

People may join clubs, but "joining" doesn't apply in the same sense to the Church. Though similar to a club, the Church demands a certain doctrinal and liturgical uniformity; she is also, to cite a phrase of James Joyce's, "here comes ev...