Maybe it’s just too early for me this morning, but I don’t understand your post.

Sure, here’s a few, asking essentially the same thing in a few different ways:

Do you believe Jesus left us a way to know what is his true teaching, other than just our own noggin?

Did Jesus do anything or say anything to indicate he was going to pass on teaching authority?

A three-parter:

- At the time when Jesus was on Earth, who would you have asked to find out what Jesus taught?

- Right after Jesus ascended into Heaven, who would you have asked to find out what Jesus taught?

- This evening, who would you ask to find out what Jesus taught?

The question “Are you Catholic” can never be reduced to a set of doctrinal points – even one as central as the Real Presence – without reference to the fact that we follow a Person, Jesus Christ. We therefore follow all he did and taught, including his decision to establish earthly shepherds. We are not a faith purely “Of the Book” so to speak, although Scripture is our highest written form of teaching. Teaching will always need to address new human developments as they arise – IVF and so forth – therefore Jesus established a living, teaching church. Any poll question that does not address the nature of teachers is simply asking people what do they personally *prefer*.

For purposes of public opinion polls can you give me, say, five questions (or as many as you like) the pollster should ask to determine if a person who self-identifies as a Catholic is “really” a Catholic?

Georgetown University did some surveys not too long about what Catholic believe and don’t believe. Of Catholics who attend Mass once a week or more, 91% believed in the Real Presence and 9% believed in some kind of symbolic presence. Are people who self-identify as Catholic and attend Mass once a week or more not “really” Catholic if they don’t believe in the Real Presence?

The point I’m making is that these opinion polls are only meaningful to a completely relativistic culture, and provide utterly useless information when considered with that Scripture. Would you agree that the title of a category is meaningless unless there are any un-arguable criteria at all for what goes into it? Even pollsters on some level seem to understand that there is an actual set of teachings that they automatically draw from, and measure against, when they frame their questions.

[David Nickol] “If somebody identifies himself or herself to a pollster as a Catholic, but one who doesn’t believe or follow what the Church teaches about contraception or same-sex marriage, the pollster doesn’t get to say, ‘Well, thanks for your opinion, but you’re not really Catholic, because you disagree with the Church.’”

Why doesn’t the pollster ‘get’ to say this? Agreed, they don’t say it – but they indeed should if they want to get a meaningful answer. Otherwise it’s akin to asking a bunch of apples how they feel about being oranges.

Maximilian was suggesting that – look out – there might be a lot less Catholics than you might think who believe as you do – all you Catholics might want to re-evaluate which horse you want to back! I hinted that I don’t. I’m also perfectly willing to ‘take the argument to its logical conclusion’.

[David Nickol] “Good polls will also ask questions about mass attendance and so on, and that helps separate the more observant from the less observant. But is just absurd to claim that the slightly more than 50% of Catholics who approve of same-sex marriage aren’t “really” Catholics. You can call them dissident Catholics, or bad Catholics, or apostates, or whatever you want. But in public opinion polls they count as Catholics.”

And then what exactly does that poll actually tell you? Now I know your position on same sex marriage already – no need to re-state all that. David, you have the heritage, but you’re not oblivious to the teaching that you’ve rejected, so you’re not a fully practicing Catholic. You’re a fully practicing something that needs a different title. That’s not meant to be a mean statement. It’s simply pointing out that it’s intellectually incoherent to say that Catholics can believe both “A” and “not A” in any article of faith whatsoever. I hold to the teaching lineage that comes to us through Peter. You don’t even believe in that, by your own admission – but you’re then going to have to explain what your own teaching lineage is; like it or not, somebody taught you, somebody formed you, you accepted someone else’s foundational principles. I’m pointing out that to lump us both together in the same category in a poll – and then for all intents and purposes have our two data points neatly ‘cancel’ each other – “Polls say Catholics are evenly divided on the issue…” is silly and worthless as real data.

I am no nihilist, your belief that only the Catholic Church may bestow these titles is predicated on the idea that it is the one, universal church – a belief that I do not share.

Not at all. I am just trying to point out the absurdity of the argument that if you disagree with the Church hierarchy on an issue, you are not a real Catholic. If they were to say that, yes, there are only 10 million Catholics in the world, then that would be a perfectly consistent position, but I think they will be unwilling to take their argument to its logical conclusion.