Ha! I am not (Roman) Catholic. In fact, someone earlier was excoriating me for being “protest-ant.” Too funny. I can’t win no matter what I do.
Anyway, to your larger point, Christianity either means something or it doesn’t. Now I don’t want to get you wrong, so I hope you’ll bear with me because I’m just trying to get this right. You don’t like Catholics defining Christianity. OK. Who gets to define Christianity? Anybody? Maybe the Founder?
Or is this like the Constitution arguments we’re having with the left right now? How dare we conservatives resist the infinite expansion of the Commerce Clause by trying to limit it to the actual meaning ascribed to it by the Founders?
I don’t buy into the lib/postmodern premise that you can redefine anything on a whim as long as it suits your purposes. I agree with you that Christianity casts a bigger net than any one denomination. I disagree that it is so broad and meaningless it can encompass anything at all, up to and including the poly-theo-evolutionary system known as Mormonism. It is substantively a different religion than Christianity, and it is simply dishonest to pretend otherwise.
Politically, people can do with that what they will, and they will anyway. It just stuns me how deep the postmodern aversion to truth has become, even in conservative enclaves like FR. Making categories and putting useful labels on them is how we humans navigate the murk of reality. Switching those labels around with a reckless disregard for their meaning is like removing road signs from dangerous intersections. Sooner or later, there will be heck to pay.