It Used to be Hard to be a Good Catholic
But no more, not with Bergoglio the Termite at the helm.
John Fante, Full of Life, HarperCollins 2002, pp. 86-87. Originally published in 1952.
I liked an atheistic wife. Her position made matters easy for me. It simplified a planned family. We had no scruples about contraceptives. Ours had been a civil marriage. We were not chained by religious tenets. Divorce was there, any time we wanted it. If she became a Catholic there would be all manner of complications. It was hard to be a good Catholic, very hard, and that was why I had left the Church. To be a good Catholic you had to break through the crowd and help Him pack the cross. I was saving the break through for later. If she broke through I might have to follow, for she was my wife.
It was indeed hard to be a good Catholic in the 'fifties and earlier. You had to do this and refrain from that. It put you at odds with the secular. But then, in the 'sixties, the Church decided to become 'relevant' to use a prominent buzzword of the era. The effect of the pursuit of 'relevance,' however, was to render the Church irrelevant. A church that is just another pile of secular leftist junk is of no use to anyone. Not to true leftists who have no need for a superannuated substitute. The true hipster scorns the oldster trying to be hip. Not to the young who seek order and structure and transcendent guidance. Such seekers are nowadays drawn to Islam. One such was John Walker 'Jihad Johnny' Lindh. He was baptized and raised 'Catholic' but ran off to join the Taliban. A more recent example is Jacob Williams, Why I Became Muslim.