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Catholic history is filled with stories of heroes and saints who, in their time, were eyed askance. St. Joan of Arc was excommunicated and burned to death by a church tribunal. Some of St. Thomas Aquinas’ propositions were condemned after his death, damaging his immediate legacy. And multiple Catholics who fought for justice in the public square were viewed, in their time, as “bad Catholics.”
So history apparently has the power to transform “bad Catholics” into “good Catholics.” Maybe our image of what a good Catholic is changes over time. Or maybe we rewrite certain narratives to make the institutional church look better. Whatever the case, it poses the question: What do we mean when we talk about good versus bad Catholics? Is “good Catholic” even a helpful framing?
On this episode of Glad You Asked, hosts Emily Sanna and Rebecca Bratten Weiss talk to Matthew J. Cressler about whether it’s actually OK to be a bad Catholic. Cressler is an independent scholar of religion and chief of staff of the Corporation for Public Interest Technology. He is the author of Authentically Black and Truly Catholic: The Rise of Black Catholicism in the Great Migrations (NYU Press, 2017) and the creator of the webcomic series Bad Catholics, Good Trouble, about people of faith who confronted white supremacy and colonial violence in their communities. He’s written for U.S. Catholic and multiple other publications, including America, The Atlantic, National Catholic Reporter, Religion News Service, The Revealer, and Slate.
Learn more about this topic and read some of Cressler’s writing in these links:
- “Are you ready to be a ‘bad Catholic’ who makes ‘good trouble’?” by Matthew J. Cressler
- “Maybe we’re all cafeteria Catholics,” by Matthew J. Cressler
- “The saints who broke the law in God’s service,” by Ellyn Sanna
- “Baptism, not piety, is what makes us Catholic,” by Don Clemmer
- “The Censured Saints,” by George Hodges
- Matthew J. Cressler
