Envoy Magazine October 1999 with the article under the title of "It's sweet and sour for Sweden's catholics"

The article "Catholic Identity" starts with telling that Catholics in Sweden are a minority compared to conditions in the US. I describe the situation in present day Sweden by standards of morals. I discuss the sense of alienation devout Catholics experience. I give examples of this from my own life, concerning our oddity and what the temptation of self-righteousness consists of for us. The final paragraph deals with how alienation is something all devout Christians experience. We all need Gods grace to do our best, and God loves more than we ever could. Swedish Catholic identity only matters if it brings me closer to God. / Lisa

CATHOLIC IDENTITY

Reading through an old issue of Envoy I came across the Mission Statement. Apart from the verse from 1 Peter 3:15, which really calls us all to be able to defend our Faith, what caught my eye was the figure "60 million". There are 60 million Catholics in the US. That's more than 7 times the entire population of my country, Sweden. There are about 165.000 Catholics in Sweden by the way, and I'm one of the approximately 5.000 who have converted to the Catholic Faith, that is, I'm not an immigrant cradle Catholic.

Sweden is a nominally Protestant country with a state church, The Church of Sweden ("Svenska Kyrkan" in Swedish). There are also several so called Free Churches, which would correspond to Pentecostals, Baptists, Methodists etc. The largest of these Free Churches is ironically enough the Roman Catholic Church.

Sweden has been a good place to grow up in, at least for us who were born in the early 70s. My country has enjoyed peace for almost 200 years and although we pay among the highest taxes in the entire world we also have general health insurance and college education available for everybody - state organized funding with loans and housing makes this possible. Sadly enough Sweden is a very secular country. I won't get into the politics of all the social reform from the 1940's and onwards - that is a separate story - but a few facts will give you the picture. Sweden has a high divorce rate, more than 50%. Abortion has been legal since 1975, and performed up to the 18th week, and even later, if there are "strong reasons". Contraceptives are available and often distributed free in public schools (and almost all schools in Sweden are public). Most of the people who actually do get married do so several years after their two, excuse me, 1.5 children are born. Many people co-habit and never marry. It's become so common that there are special laws for people who co-habit, which are similar to the laws concerning married people. Those people even refer to there partner as their "sambo", (which is an abbreviation of "sammanboende" with the literal meaning cohabiting), that is, their cohabitor so to speak. There are very few at-home-moms or home makers. I could go on, but I think you see what I mean.

Still I love my country. I am proud to be Swedish, and being baptized as an adult in the Catholic Church I am trying to establish for myself and for my children an identity as Swedish Catholics.

I am sure most of us who call ourselves Catholic or devout Christians have at one point or another experienced a feeling of alienation in the contemporary world. Actually, I do all the time. Sometimes I get so tired of how shallow people are and how little they question their existence, how ungrateful and indifferent their behavior is towards their Maker . . . and when my thoughts have wandered like this for awhile I reach first one conclusion, or should I say disillusion: 

-It's no use talking to anybody who doesn't believe in God because I don't understand them and foremost, they do not understand me or the world as it is supposed to be.

Then I think again, or should I say, my Guardian Angel yanks my ear, and I reach another, more profound conclusion:

-Get down from that high Catholic horse and stop moping!

Yes! This is something I fight all the time, that severe temptation of self-righteousness as a member of an exposed minority, that is, being a Catholic in very secular Lutheran Sweden. (You see, the leopard never changes its spots and in many ways Swedes still are extremely Lutheran in a superficial, secular way. Don't think too highly of yourselves, enjoying life is sinful and so on.) And sometimes I wonder, am I really that misunderstood? Well, in many ways, yes. My husband, who is also a convert, is the "oddball" at the bank where he works. Most of his married colleagues have children the same age as ours, but the colleagues themselves are more than 10 years older than us, which in most cases means they have thought it more important to pursue a career first than to have children right away. Most of our non-Catholic friends (and all of our immediate family) think we are more or less crazy, fanatical or simply a little bit stupid since we get up early every Sunday to go to Mass. And especially since we don't have a car and go by subway with two small children. (It is not dangerous to take the subway in Stockholm, Sweden on a Sunday morning, I might add.)

I could go on about this too. How strange my husband and I are, how odd and peculiar, what a statistical abnormality. And there goes that same old self-righteousness again. And I really don't want my Catholic identity as such to be based on this feeling of being one of a misunderstood chosen few who sigh and get annoyed at contemporary society all the time.

Being a devout Christian and Catholic, will always look odd to the world. "What are those crazy people doing, claiming that God became one of us and that He still dwells among us in a wafer? Why do they want so many children, why do they get involved in activities that take so much of their free time?" But the point is, we should not get a kick simply out of being the oddballs, of being the minority. And here in Sweden we are truly a minority, and Catholicism is really considered something exotic, the Church an ancient, non-enlightened and dangerous elephant of an institution. If you happen to be a cradle Catholic, well, then it's not really your own fault, and then you are most likely also an immigrant and then the Swedes will make an effort to understand your strange practices, which they still don't expect you to take very seriously. But - if you have chosen this willingly - you are in trouble. The crusades were practically caused by you personally, the Pope is horrible and how can you be so cruel as to not allow poor Mrs-underdeveloped-country-woman-and-mother-of-twentyfive get access to contraceptives? Hm.

Why do I get the feeling that this is not unique, and that many of you American readers have experienced the very same thing? It is rather simple, isn't it? Yes, we are all as devout Christians a minority, whether we can be categorized as one of 165.000 Swedes or one of 60 million Americans. BUT, we are all still sinners and we all need the grace of God. And He loves all those majority people more than we ever could. So Swede or American, don't get on any high horses. I am proud to be a Swedish Catholic and I struggle every day with us becoming a Catholic family, with being a good wife and a good mom, and I fail, and I get up. But proud is still not the final word I use when it comes to my Faith. I am forever grateful to the Lord for having given me this Faith, which I am not worthy of. And I will pray and fight for as long as I live to keep this Faith and hopefully pass it on to my children and help anyone whom the Lord calls me to witness to. And that is way more important than sulking over the contemporary world. This Catholic Swedish identity only matters if it brings me closer to God!

Lisa Wetterberg