The Full Feast: Rethinking “Cafeteria Catholicism”
There is something deeply funny, both in the sense of ha-ha and in the sense of hmmm, about the phrase “cafeteria Catholic.” It pops up with the frequency of potluck Jell-O at parish socials, and with much the same wobbly understanding of what constitutes a meal. Who first paired “Catholic” (all-encompassing! universal! everything bagel, hold the nothing!) with “cafeteria” (choose your own adventure: yes to mashed potatoes, no to the mystery meat, maybe to the cling-wrapped dessert), I cannot say, but it sounds suspiciously like the work of an Irish-American with an eye for alliteration and a volcanic sense of humor.
But let’s not be too quick to toss the salad of faith and personality, or ladle scorn like gravy on the nearest “cafeteria Catholic,” as if there were a separate table for the “real” Catholics in the great lunchroom of God. Chesterton, that rotund bard of paradox and pies, would have grinned and asked for seconds, on both mystery and meatloaf, reminding us that the very scandal of Catholicism is its insistence that “we want not a church that is right where we are right, but a church that is right where we are wrong” (Chesterton, Orthodoxy). And yet, there is a point hidden beneath the custard tart: to cherry-pick your dogmas is to miss the feast.
The problem with “cafeteria Catholicism” is not, as some suppose, a matter of fussy eaters declining their vegetables. It is, rather, a fundamental misunderstanding of what the meal is for. Doctrine, in the Catholic sense, is not a pile of rules or the theological equivalent of a school lunch line designed by committee. No, doctrine is more like a symphony than a menu. Each note needed, each theme echoing, each instrument keeping time with the others. “Catholic doctrine is not an arbitrary compilation,” writes Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI), “but a living organism, each part shaped by the whole, and the whole making sense only when all its parts are present” (Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity).
Chesterton again: “The Church is a house with a hundred gates; and no two men enter at exactly the same angle. But once inside, they are in a house, not a tent with flapping sides.” There is, in other words, an inside-ness. A coherence. A unity of belief underneath the apparent variety, so that even the odd doctrines (transubstantiation, confession, papal slippers) begin to make sense as organ stops in a single, bracing piece of music (Chesterton, The Catholic Church and Conversion).
To say “I follow some teachings, but not others” is like claiming you’ll play Beethoven’s Ninth, with the violin section, but not the brass. The music falls apart. The harmony collapses.
Behind the buffet mentality lurks a suspicion that faith is, at root, arbitrary, a collection of pious opinions you can assemble into your spiritual combo meal. Peter Kreeft, prolific philosopher and apologist, wryly insists this is like treating the periodic table as a suggestion and not a structure: “You do not get water by picking hydrogen and skipping the oxygen. The ingredients matter. Catholic truth is not a pile of opinions. It is a living unity” (Kreeft, Catholic Christianity).
Frank Sheed, the great lay evangelist, once argued that the faith, for those who really enter it, “feels less like a set of fences than the whole open countryside. It is larger on the inside than it looked from a distance” (Theology and Sanity). Doctrine delineates reality as it is, not as we might wish it, and the adventure is in learning to trust the shape of things as God has revealed them, a landscape we are invited to roam, not a cafeteria line we are doomed to trudge.
Why does this fullness matter? Why not nibble at dogma, keep a polite distance from the brussels sprouts of Mariology, or the broccoli of moral teaching, while piling your tray with the cheeseburgers of mercy and the apple pie of social justice?
The short answer: because being a disciple isn’t about agreeing with a set of ideas, it’s about trusting Someone, and having the humility to believe that Someone (namely, Christ) knows the meal better than you do. “We are not saved by our opinions,” writes C.S. Lewis, with his Anglican lilt that nonetheless resonates deep in the Catholic marrow. “We are saved by grace, by obedience and trust in Him who is the Way, the Truth, the Life” (Lewis, Mere Christianity).
Fulton Sheen, beloved for his wit and his loud eyebrows, used to say that “the truth is like a lion: you don’t have to defend it, let it loose and it will defend itself.” But he also added, with pastoral twinkle, that “to accept some truth and reject others is not humility but pride, the pride of wishing to edit God’s menu” (Sheen, Life Is Worth Living). The feast, for Sheen, was not a test, but a gift. “God doesn’t want you to eat only what you like, He wants to feed you until you become what you are: a saint, stuffed and glowing with grace.”
There is, let’s admit, something understandable in the cafeteria urge. The teachings of the Church are hard. They stick in the throat sometimes. They demand an assent that looks suspiciously like surrender. When Jesus says, “Eat my flesh and drink my blood,” even his closest fans are tempted to slip out the back door (cf. John 6:66). Nobody knocks on the door of the Church hoping for a crown of thorns. More often, we come in search of donuts and coffee, and that’s not nothing (praise God for weak coffee and strong grandmothers!).
And yet, humor and humility are allies here. If faith is a journey, then confusion is not a sign of failure but of moving forward. As Peter Kreeft winks: “If you never bump into anything you disagree with in your religion, it’s probably just yourself you’re worshiping” (Kreeft, Jesus-Shock).
The response, says Joseph Ratzinger, is not to scold, but to invite; not to thin the meal, but to show its beauty. “The Church proposes; she does not impose. But she proposes the whole Christ, the whole faith, the whole banquet of truth” (Ratzinger, God and the World).
So here’s the secret of the feast: it is not that you must finish every dish, or that you will love every flavor on the first forkful. It is that the Chef knows how all the pieces fit together, and invites you not just to eat, but to be nourished. “Taste and see that the Lord is good,” says the Psalmist (Psalm 34:8), and the Church hums the refrain at every Mass: Behold, the Lamb. Behold the feast.
Ask not what dogma you can dodge, but what delights you have yet to savor. The saints remind us, by laughter or tears, by mountains of books or the silence of prayer, that the whole menu is grace. The Church, Chesterton concludes, “is the only thing that can save a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age” or, for that matter, a picky eater forever circling the steam table, never sitting down to dinner (Chesterton, The Catholic Church and Conversion).
So take your tray, dear reader, but don’t linger at the entrance. Step into the feast, all of it, and you may just find, strange thing!...that the meal you resisted is the one you most needed, and that the Table of the Lord is, after all, home.
References
Chesterton, G.K. Orthodoxy. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995.
Chesterton, G.K. The Catholic Church and Conversion. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996.
Kreeft, Peter. Catholic Christianity. Ignatius Press, 2001.
Kreeft, Peter. Jesus-Shock. Ignatius Press, 2008.
Sheed, Frank. Theology and Sanity. Ignatius Press, 1993.
Sheen, Fulton J. Life Is Worth Living. Ignatius Press, 1999.
Ratzinger, Joseph. Introduction to Christianity. Ignatius Press, 2004.
Ratzinger, Joseph. God and the World: A Conversation with Peter Seewald. Ignatius Press, 2002.
Lewis, C.S. Mere Christianity. HarperOne, 2001.
