A bit of elaboration on my point below, buried deep in the midst of scores of comments…

First, let me point out that I was born in 1960, so that means my direct experience of pre-Vatican II Catholicism is…..nil. I know what I know through what people tell me and what I’ve read.

Second caveat: as a person very interested in history, I try to nurture an illusion-free vision of the past. I am anti-nostalgia and own no rose-covered glasses. When you know your history you know what a weak and tragically compromised witness the Christian Church has been to the Gospel since the beginning. We seem to always run up against our humanity. The mystery is that this seems to be the way God wanted it – the humanity that is, not the compromised witness.

So, you’re not going to tell me, for example, the Church today is in the worst shape it’s ever been. That’s nonsense. You’re not going to tell me either that up until 1965, everything was great. The chaos of the post-Vatican II years, the violent pendulum-swinging, didn’t come from a vacuum. All the people who were responsible for the post V2 chaos were formed and educated before V2. As David Carlin has written and mused over – something was going on in those years. I know not what, but something was obviously missing.

But the topic today (sigh) is labels and identity – a topic I usually try to avoid because I despise naval-gazing and think it’s not what Jesus calls us to do. But in times of division, I guess it’s inevitable and important.

As I said, I have no direct experience of the preV2 Church, but what I know I know from books: Flannery O’Connor, Frank Sheed, Graham Greene, Chesterton, Knox, Waugh, Merton…etc., etc. etc….

And what always strikes me when I read them is that as wildly different as they are, they all express a sort of unified and rather easily identifiable Catholic identity. There simply weren’t the labels – oh, there were the “Catholic Worker” Catholics, sure, and ultramontanists, etc…but as a whole, looking at the Church in the West…there were simply…Catholics.

The most frequent label that I find is, as I said below, that of the “bad Catholic.” And it’s my impression that most people, to some extent, put themselves into that category. The really, really, good Catholics were few and far between, in the popular mind – the pious lady down the street, the saintly 90-year old nun….etc.

It’s not that everyone thought that they were rotten and worthless and undeserving – it’s that everyone was clearly aware that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

This, perhaps, had its negative consequences – what doesn’t? So does the surfeit of self-described good Catholics we have now.

And if you doubt me, and if you doubt the worth of reclaiming this sense of humility and realism, I invite you to look in two place: Paul’s letters and the lives of the saints.

In Paul, we find this perfect balance: between understanding how precious we are in God’s sight, embracing the presence of Christ within us, yet always aware that we are weak and that it is not I, but Christ within me who is responsible for what is holy in me and the good that I do. We are loved immeasurably by God, but we are not God.

In the saints – canonized or not – you simply find none of this healthy self-esteem, I’m a great Catholic, God and His Church have to just accept me as I am because I’m special, and ultimately I’m the only judge of my life and faith. NONE. THEY DON’T BELIEVE IT. THEY DON’T LIVE THAT WAY. THEIR FAITH ISN’T ORIENTED THAT WAY.

And they are saints. They have healed the sick, embraced the abandoned, lived with the poor and seen Christ there. Because they know that as disciples, they are accountable, not to themselves and their own good feelings, but to God for how they have used this life, and they are always acutely aware that holiness is opening one’s soul more and more to let God fill it, not to be self-actualized on one’s own terms in one’s own comfort zone.

Sure, it can lead to neurosis and extremes of self-abdegnation, and forgetfulness of God’s mercy and a scrupulosity that is quite damaging. As I said, every perspective has its risks. But as a whole,If we’ve got to label ourselves, the understanding that in baptism, we are all Catholics, and we are unified as Catholic Christians through baptism, but that most of us – clergy and laity alike – are, to some extent, rather bad Catholics, even as we try to grow in holiness, seems a much more realistic, humble and firmly-rooted way than the alternative of “We are all good Catholics now.”