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People can be nominally Catholic without doing a particularly good job of actually believing in and practicing the tenets of the religion. In fact, this is sort
by philwelch 4y ago
People can be nominally Catholic without doing a particularly good job of actually believing in and practicing the tenets of the religion. In fact, this is sort of the rule rather than the exception in much of Europe and North America.
- School-Cotton 4y agoIME a lot of French people consider themselves to be “Catholic” if they’ve been baptized, even if they’re completely atheist.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoThe way to think about this is that people affiliate themselves with tribes for multiple reasons. One can philosophically not care at all about the beliefs of Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, etc, but for the purposes of interacting with members of their tribe, and signaling to other members of their tribe that they are in that tribe, they might still describe themselves as being “Catholic” (or whatever).
- School-Cotton 4y agoExactly, and it’s reinforced by the fact that the two main ethnic groups in France (“ethnically French”, and North African Arabs), are distinguished by religion: the former are mostly Catholic, and the latter are virtually all Muslims. So the lines between religion and other markers of identity are blurred.