Thanks. I saw that you’ve posted this in the Nicholas Forum. I usually like to be told that you’re doing stuff like that… but my referral logs also see it :-)

All the best to you, Huw.

True enough. I had an uncle who converted to evangelical Protestantism only to come back to Catholicism without much fanfare. I have also know die-hard evangelicals who carry around pictures of the Virgin of Guadalupe in their wallet. Religion in Latin America is a lot of times not about doctrines and which side of the line in the sand you stand on, but rather it forms who you are as a person.

One reason I cannot stand the conservative Catholic Internet, for example, is because of their worship of the Pope and bishops. As a Latin male, I cannot help but think that such sycophancy is a bit effeminate: “ellos quieren que yo sea el monaguillo del cura” (they want me to be that stupid priest’s altar boy). (I don’t mean this at all in any homophobic sense.) While I do go to Mass every Sunday and sometimes am edyfied by it, another part of me is spiritually sitting in the town plaza smoking a cigarette, telling dirty jokes to my buddies while I wait for my wife to get out of Mass. You know, how Catholicism is like in Mexico for my compadres.

We have always been used to the Church being a mess, of the priest being a money-grubbing distant and shady character who is probably doing bad things with his maid, and so on and so forth. Catholicism is part of the Latin soul, but so is anti-clericalism. Personally, when I used to go to the early Spanish Mass in my parish as a teenager, I used to stand in the back with the young men who had just come over from Mexico. They didn’t receive Communion, and they seemed pretty distracted during all of it, but they were there because they had to be there. It was just part of who they were. That is where I remain to this day I suppose: in the building, but right by the door.

I don’t want it to be - ritual magic is that. Religion is not ritual magic (well, outside of WASP culture, anyway :-))

I’m not complaining about the inconsistency. I’m noting that such was identical and, given that, why bother with any other problem? Wouldn’t it be easier to go someplace chaotic but with less problems?

Arturo and I understand what Fr Ernesto means. It’s like with a wonderful New York-born ethnic-Italian family I know: they don’t practise and in fact are not overtly religious but thanks to the culture there’s a Catholic sensibility about so much of what they do. (How long that will last beyond this generation is a valid question.) They would never join, go to or identify with a Protestant church. Italians, other Latin people and indeed other Mediterranean people have lived with the hypocrisy of the clergy for more than 1,500 years and just ignore it and enjoy life. It’s the southern European version of tolerant conservatism. Like I say, we sin and know it but don’t try and bend the church to say it’s OK. (Because we know the church and the universe don’t work that way.)