Exclusive Inclusive Community

The Washington Post has an article on a church actually called "Inclusive Community" which contains Catholic priests who left to marry and other cultural Catholics who don’t like the baggage of Christ’s actual teachings. As is usually the case the word inclusive can easily be substituted for liberal. Their views are never inclusive enough to believe all that the magisterium of the Church teaches is true. To not deny any teachings of the faith would be inclusive, once you start snipping some of you become exclusive by the very act of excluding them.

She grew up Roman Catholic, but like millions of others, Rebecca Ortelli came to disagree with church teachings on contraception, communion and priestly celibacy, among other things.

Many Catholics drift away from the church or join other denominations. But Ortelli, 57, wanted to maintain both her Catholic identity and her worldview. And she didn’t want to feel one was inconsistent with the other.

So 20 years ago, she did what a small number of defiant Catholics are doing. She joined a church with many lifelong Catholics of similar views, a church that borrows heavily from Catholic rituals even though it’s not part of a Catholic diocese.

"I don’t think I should have to give up my Catholicism. That’s part of who I am. It makes me who I choose to be," said Ortelli, whose church, in Nutley, N.J., is called the Inclusive Community. "I like some of the rituals that we have. They’re important."

The cultural Catholic phenomenon is kind of like the Urban Cowboy one. People dressing up in Cowboy hats and boots who have never ridden a horse or lived on a ranch. That by performing some rituals or putting on a cowboy hat you can call yourself either a Catholic or a cowboy. In some ways this shows the power of rituals and how they shape us, but rituals ripped from their context and roots become pretty empty and devoid an any real meaning. This might explain why their services receive a whopping 15 members.