Can one be Catholic while believing in the past Catholic Church, but not the present?

Can one be Catholic while believing in the past Catholic Church, but not the present?

When a person is baptized into the Catholic Church, the person always remains, in some way, shape or form, related to the Catholic Church. You can not leave. It is impossible to defect from the Catholic Church, as the Church will not recognize such a defection.

Officially, you can not stop being a Catholic, even if one consideres themselves a former Catholic. The sacraments, especially the Sacrament of Reconciliation is still open to them, in case they decide to come back to full communion.

The Holy See confirmed at the end of August 2009 that it was introducing changes to canon law and as a result it will no longer be possible to formally defect from the Catholic Church. This will not alter the fact that many people can defect from the Church, and continue to do so, albeit not through a formal process. This is a change that will affect the Church throughout the world.

Catholic author Daniel Ford links being a lapsed Catholic with rejection of Catholic teaching, either totally or by being an "à la carte Catholic":

Quotes from Daniel F. Ford, The Lapsed Catholic Catechism: "Lapsees are à la carte Catholics who pick and choose what suits them, if anything does, from the long menu of past teachings from Rome and/or other religious traditions. Some even continue to participate in orthodox Catholic rituals – e.g., getting married in church and attending the church funeral rites intended to honor the departed and comfort the family and friends left behind. Some Lapsed Catholics are out and out atheists or agnostics. They look at arguments about God's existence as W.H. Auden did: 'All proofs or disproofs that we tender are returned Unopened to the sender.' The actor Martin Sheen has described himself as 'one of those cliff-hanging Catholics. I don't believe in God, but I do believe that Mary was his mother.'" - Lapsed Catholic

In the end the Church remains a Mother to all her children whether practicing or fallen away.

The following articles may be of interest to some:

• Want to leave the Catholic Church? Officially, you can’t.

• Cafeteria Catholicism

It depends on whom you ask and what you believe to be the foundation of the faith. There are a few enumerable alternatives.

First one is that the Catholic faith is metaphysical and that the temporal Church is subservient to this metaphysical and timeless faith. It is said, not only by theologians and apparitions but also by councils, popes, the Bible and God Himself that in the end the Church will apostatize and fall away. This will happen all at once, but will only be noticed by those who care about the integrity of the faith.

According to this thinking, the Church came to an end when according to its laws, Angelo Roncalli was illicitly and therefore invalidly elected in 1958. This was followed by a collapse that made the Church entirely into a human and political institution, culminating in the council (1965) or the new rite (1969), depending on who you ask. Said differently, this new system of belief states that Christ by His incarnation actually began the elevation of mankind as a whole into a divine status and therefore what is human or political is now also divine.

According to this, you're only Catholic if you entirely believe in the Church that was and you are not Catholic if you believe at all in the system that replaced it.

Second one is to believe that the Church is always changing and that mankind is going through a spiritual evolution, in which the Catholicism of old was only a phase. This can be stated or emphasized in a few different ways. One of them is that the Church is not represented by a set of beliefs but is an institution that inerrantly reflects the time we're now living in, also recognizing that some people may need time to follow it on its path.

This is a kind of "you may not like what she's doing now but she's still your mother" thinking. I don't think you should expect any logic from this position, except that if mankind has actually been elevated to a divine status, represented by Catholicism but shared by all the other denominations and even religions, then to be human is to be Catholic. Either openly or secretly, clearly or distantly.

I believe this has something to do with a concept called an indelible mark. In pre-1958 Catholicism it meant that even though you could always apostatize, it would be a greater fault to have known God and the Church once than having never known either. In the new thinking, to not be religious is to reject an important part of one's humanity, and since you have once experienced what it is to be human by being an adherent of some religion, there is no real and final way to un-experience it. You can never disbelieve in God or gods, only run away from them.

Third one is to believe that in 1958 began a series of changes or crises in the Church, some of which are good, some are bad, but sooner or later the seemingly endless strife between liberals and conservatives will cease and the Church will be one once again. Until that happens, all the faithful are expected to trust the Church, trust its leaders and representatives, not add to the strife, not rock the boat and avoid putting too much stock in one's own thinking. The Church may only appear to err and this only temporarily. It's inerrant not because of what it says but because of what it is. Like everything else in humanity, it has had its fair share of bad leaders, good leaders, weak leaders and strong leaders. And finally, not everything it says is intended to be understood or scrutinized by everyone.

So either a) the Church has defected decades ago, b) you would defect by disagreeing, c) you can only struggle with what the Church says but never seriously disagree, i.e. be taken seriously, d) the Church is undergoing change and it's too early to judge anything, e) the Church is evolving and Nostra Aetate was where it was in 1961 or f) some position or two I may have missed.

For full disclosure: I believe in the first option and study a site called Betrayed Catholics.

There's no yes-or-no answer. If you ask "am I a catholic," you have to specify in what sense.

I assume you mean, "Am I a Catholic according to Modern catholicism?" The answer is yes. Anyone who knows about catholicism would agree that one can be a Catholic without fully accepting every aspect of modern Catholicism. In fact, there are things that Catholic scholars do not all agree on.

It would be problematic to be or become a clergyman. Deacons, priests and bishops are bound by their word to believe everything the Church teaches to be true, and also to believe (with a wording that I now simplify to “believe”) what “Rome” teaches with a bit less authority. As I am a deacon, I am bound by this, and in my understanding the authority of Nostra Aetate is of such a level that I have to accept it. All with nuances and room for interpretation but grosso modo, yes, I should accept it.

It would also be problematic to be or become a (official) catholic theologian. If you wish to teach theology on a catholic university, you cannot teach what is not catholic teaching.

But, your question was if you can be a catholic and not believing everything the Church teaches, in any form and authority. The answer is yes.

I could give a long (and no doubt interesting in my eyes :) explanation about the different authority of different texts, but I don’t think that would go to the core of the matter.

Maybe the core is closer to this: when the prodigal son decided to go his own way, he didn’t stop being a member of his family. I am sure he felt he was right, and maybe his father was wrong, but his father didn’t try to stop him. He allowed his son to go his own way, and then waited for his return without knowing is he would ever.

Our Holy Mother the Church, is sometimes not understood very well. Sometimes we think she makes mistakes, says things that are untrue. Sometimes we make ourselves believe that it isn’t her, but “people within the Church”. But whatever our reasoning, whatever our believes, she allows her children to walk their own path. And even when we don’t feel we are her children anymore, she just waits for our return, hoping we one day will fully return. She doesn’t kick us out very easily.

So yes, you can call yourself catholic if you are baptised in the Church. Even if you do not believe all she teaches. That is not to say you shouldn’t accept what she teaches, or at least try to. But even if we don’t see ourselves as sinners, she already knows we are. Not believing what she teaches may also be a sin (there is a lot of theological nuance here, I ignore now) but what better place to be as a sinner than with her?

The thing is, if you believe what the Church taught before 1961, you know you should be in the Church, not outside. Where would you go? You can stop believing so, no doubt, and become a protestant or atheist even. But you cannot believe what the Church taught before 1961 and also believe there is salvation outside the Church. So you are stuck with her my friend.

Please, call yourself catholic.