Gang Membership Cards For Catholics?
Sunday, February 5, 2012
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Card-carrying Catholics
Catholics are being encouraged to carry a 'faith card'. Could it catch on?
by Nelson Jones
02 February 2012
I'm intrigued by the proposal, revealed yesterday by the Telegraph's Martin Beckford, to issue all one million regularly practising Catholics in England and Wales with credit-card-sized "faith cards". One side carries a quote from the recently beatified John Henry Newman, while the other lists six things that good Catholics ought to do (number one is to share the faith, incidentally) and carries the injunction, "in the event of an emergency please contact a Catholic priest."
I assume that this refers to a medical emergency, rather than to a sudden crisis of faith or to a difficulty encountered while trying to explain the finer points of the doctrine of transubstantiation to an incredulous atheist.
Launching the scheme, Bishop Kieran Conry put the card in the context of modern society, in which it is common to carry cards "which reflect something of our identity and the things that are important to us." But it would surely have appealed to the fifteenth century Franciscan preacher St Bernardino of Siena, who used to carry around a plaque inscribed with an IHS logo, the better to impress congregations with reverence for the name of Jesus. He's now the patron saint of advertising.
According to the bishop, the card will remind Catholics of their faith and encourage them to share it. It isn't, though, a membership card. There's no suggestion that it would be necessary to show it before receiving communion in an unfamiliar church, for example. Perhaps they're missing a trick, there. Given the complexity and specificity of the rules surrounding who is and isn't permitted to receive the sacrament, it might be considered surprising that the system continues to function largely on trust. A smart card would provide an excellent way of keeping track of which Catholics were in good standing with the Church, as well as preventing Anglicans from surreptitiously availing themselves of communion, as Tony Blair used to do while he was prime minister.
Nor is it, yet, a loyalty card, although I can imagine enterprising Catholic-friendly businesses offering discounts to its bearers. It's not uncommon, after all, for some clubs and societies to negotiate discounts on behalf of their members, or universities on behalf of their alumni, while many businesses spontaneously offer discounts to students, pensioners or local residents. At a time when the Catholic Church is seriously worried about falling congregations (the pope himself warning the other day that "in large parts of the world the faith is in danger of dying out like a flame that has no more sustenance") some such incentive scheme might prove useful.
More seriously,...... more
See full text for significance.
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