The Virtue of Questioning

Pioneering commenters Unapologetic Catholic and Talmida of Lesser of Two Weevils really got me thinking about the value of the questioning and choosing it takes to be a Cafeteria Catholic. It seems to me to be a much more conscious activity than following blindly.

Along those lines, I stumbled across the Catholic Educator's Resource Center, which featured an article The Blind-Obedience Myth by Michael Novak. At statement at the top of the article proclaims: "There is nothing virtuous in unquestioned obedience." This, I had to read!

After making a case that the Catholic Church does not arbitrarily punish (i.e., excommunicate) dissenters, Novak makes an interesting proposal for encouraging the Church's long term success:

Those churches that have chosen to modernize and to be "with it," following the advice of their own progressives, have rapidly lost members, weakened conviction in many others, and become adjuncts of the morality of the secular culture. Churches that have resisted the currents of "the new morality" — whose initial guise is often the refrain "It's all just a matter of opinion, so just choose your own version" — have tended to gain in high morale, growing numbers in the pews, and strongly committed new vocations to the clergy.

With our questioning and choosing, will Cafeteria Catholics be the key to a thriving Church?