Fr. John A. Perricone: The Beginning of the End of Recreational Catholicism

By Fr. John A. Perricone, Crisis Magazine, Sept. 20, 2024

Fr. John A. Perricone, Ph.D., is an adjunct professor of philosophy at Iona University in New Rochelle, New York. His articles have appeared in St. John’s Law Review, The Latin Mass, New Oxford Review and The Journal of Catholic Legal Studies. …

While Recreational Catholicism—the tangled knot of the therapeutic, political, theatrical, and ego-massaging trend besetting the Church—has had its day, we are now on the cusp of a resurrection.

Recreational Catholicism? Let me explain.

It is an attribution identifying the current stage of collapse in the Roman Church. Its coinage is meant to convey the tangled knot of the therapeutic, political, theatrical, and ego-massaging trend besetting the Church, all of which produces a kind a zombie Catholic, who is daily fed on what Huxley called in Brave New World the “feelies”: engineered pleasures that maintain their victims in a state of floating euphoria.

Its principal vehicle is the liturgy, where Sunday “celebrations” are carefully planned by Liturgy Committees for maximum effusions of non-threatening messages of “welcoming.” While normal men gag on its oozing sentimentality, certain kinds of Catholics crave it. Sunday after Sunday. It is like a narcotic, you see. …

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