There’s a habit that has crept into Catholic life. If you aren’t seeing it, you aren’t looking or paying attention. And once you see it, you won’t be able to unsee it.

Catholics treat the Church like a political party.

The pattern is obvious and it shows itself throughout Catholic life. Catholics come in with a political framework already in place, and then they start filtering, selecting, and prioritizing Church teaching based on what already fits their political framework.

We’ve been doing it with “Jesus” for decades. Whatever we find in the Bible that doesn’t accord with our errant preconception of Jesus, we overlook, toss away, ignore, or explain it away with a statement like “I’m sure he didn’t mean it that way.” But whatever fits what we think we know about Jesus, that’s what we focus on, and even magnify beyond even the parameters of the scripture itself.

Read the rest at

https://www.theforge.fm/p/when-catholicism-becomes-a-political

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