General Bias and Catholic Identity Tom Jeannot Gonzaga University
[email protected] In what follows, I will argue that what there may be left of our shared sense of Gonzaga's Catholic identity, operative as a gestalt, is devolving into incoherence. Since this is in the nature of a personal statement, I want to begin in a personal way by calling on my background (suitably whitewashed), to the extent that it is relevant to the question of Catholic identity. I check "Catholic" in the box that asks for "religious preference." I have been surrounded by Jesuits my whole life. Like many American Catholics, I confess that I'm wracked with ambivalence, sometimes tormented by self- doubt, often uncertain about the teaching authority of the Church and who has it1, too committed to John Dewey's idea of "democracy as a way of life" to be immune from the temptations of antinomian, antiauthoritarian sentiments and impulses, and often critical of the shadow-play of certain affiliations of the Church in recent decades with the politics of American fundamentalist Christianity, its characteristically American anti-intellectualism, its corresponding proclivities to violence, and its exclusivism and narrow sectarianism. The Church I grew up in seems different in various ways from the Church today, which has led me to cultivate a kind of exilic consciousness. The theology I imbibed with mother's milk is the theology of liberation. I figure that as a matter of personal psychology I'm not in this boat alone. Many of us are confused. Some of us have just given up and gone their own way.