No True Scotsman Fallacy

[inocente]

You are talking about citizenship only. The same error that Flew made.

Neither you, a Baptist, nor Flew, an atheist, have the right to define whether a Catholic is true to his faith. That is for Catholics to decide. We decide by judging a man’s actions. We can tell from his actions whether he truly worships God or Mammon.

I’m not interested in deciding, I’m simply pointing out that no one can be a little bit Catholic, 93.734% Catholic, they either are or not.

But on another point, where in the CCC does it say that you, laity, mere laity, has any say whatsoever in judging who is and is not acceptable to Christ? Either Christ judges you and everyone else or you judge Christ and everyone else. When do you think Christ made you the shepherd that you get to decide for Him?

 

[Peter_Plato]

Sure they do. Whether or not individuals or groups accept this definition is another matter.

Perhaps, but whether they are capable of correctly making such a judgement is another story.

Charlemagne has a point, however, because “being” moral and “being” spiritual in the sense required by “being” Catholic is an interior disposition that may or may not be accessible to someone who is not a Catholic in this way.

Nagel, I think, is quite right that the answer to the question, “What is it like to be a bat?” can only be completely answered by a bat. That manner of being may not be explicable by a bat to any other creature in a way that fully encapsulates what “being a bat” entails. Ergo, “being a Catholic” may not be fully appreciated nor grasped by anyone who is not, no matter how much they think otherwise or have convinced themselves that they have.

I would suggest that Flew is correct on calling his depiction a fallacy, but that it because “Scotsman” as it is used by McDonald in his example is a fluid term, so the fallacy amounts to moving the goalposts. However, if a well-formed definition of “Scotsman” were settled on, the fallacy would no longer exist.

With regard to “true” Catholic, moral questions could, in theory, be asked and answered of and about Catholics, but a proper and complete answer still requires a definition of what a Catholic is. As is clear from this thread, there is some doubt about that.

Besides that definitional issue is the other problem, being “Catholic” requires an intentional and subjective disposition that would make being one akin to Nagel’s “being a bat.” It is because of that issue that your outsiders may not have the means to make a sound judgement about what “being” a Catholic, good or otherwise, true or otherwise, actually does involve.

At least one part of that is a moral question. Moral acts, according to good moral theory, depend upon the intentions or motivations of the moral agent involved. That is not an easy question to answer, objectively speaking. Therefore, determining a “true” Catholic, because that determination depends upon a moral dimension, would be a difficult one to make because at least part of the “evidence” - the intentional world of the individual - would be largely inaccessible.

Another aspect would be the spiritual dimension of what it means to “be” a Catholic, which opens a whole new can of worms. Being Catholic, unlike being Scottish, does involve certain interior spiritual dispositions or aspects which adds another layer making the question much more complex.

This does not seem to be the case with “true” Scotsman which has no essential moral or spiritual attributes that were originally part of the definition. In effect, Flew’s example could be just another rendering of the Black Swan fallacy.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

But on another point, where in the CCC does it say that you, laity, mere laity, has any say whatsoever in judging who is and is not acceptable to Christ? Either Christ judges you and everyone else or you judge Christ and everyone else. When do you think Christ made you the shepherd that you get to decide for Him?

We Catholics, unlike some Protestants, follow the Bible.

Saint Paul, writing to the Corinthians about a case of incest, teaches us our duty to judge, and even to judge harshly if need be. “It is widely reported that there is immorality among you, and immorality of a kind not found even among pagans—a man living with his father’s wife. And you are inflated with pride. Should you not rather have been sorrowful? The one who did this deed should be expelled from your midst. I for my part, although absent in body but present in spirit, have already, as if present, pronounced judgment on the one who has committed this deed….” (I Corinthians 5:1-4)

It’s clear from this passage that you don’t have to be an apostle or a bishop to judge whether others are living a Christian life. Do you think every Catholic in Germany would have been wrong to condemn Hitler? Would to God that more of them had! And the Protestants too, who seemed to like him a good deal more than the Catholics according to the voting percentages in the Catholic and Protestant sections of the country…

Morality is about learning to judge good and evil behavior, no?

 

[Peter_Plato]

I’m not interested in deciding, I’m simply pointing out that no one can be a little bit Catholic, 93.734% Catholic, they either are or not.

But on another point, where in the CCC does it say that you, laity, mere laity, has any say whatsoever in judging who is and is not acceptable to Christ? Either Christ judges you and everyone else or you judge Christ and everyone else. When do you think Christ made you the shepherd that you get to decide for Him?

Being “Catholic” may or may not be identical to “acceptable to Christ.” These may be two very different issues. In theory, depending what it means to be “Catholic,” it is very possible that the two are quite different questions.

In addition, the question of appearances is always germane. Humans, for the most part, rely on the way things appear to be to the senses and have a much more difficult time with the reality of the way things are. This is important, again, because being Catholic involves intention and disposition, among others things which are internal to human beings and very difficult to assess merely by appearances. Jesus judges with complete access to all that is relevant.

As to, “they either are or not” with regards to being Catholic, are you saying that the same either / or paradigm refers to being “good” in general - either you are or are not “good?” There is no such thing as being somewhat good, then? Or “good” in some respect but not others where the category is a complex one?

I suspect that qualitative determinations are always amenable to fine gradations in terms of how much of the quality is being exhibited by any particular individual having that quality. It doesn’t make much sense to say of any object being assessed that it is either good or not with regard to its class - good car, not a good car; good horse, not a good horse; good computer, not a good computer; good Catholic, not a good Catholic; all border on meaningless precisely because the “fine line” is not so easy to lay down.

If “true” Catholic means something like “good” Catholic, then I highly doubt your either/or way of answering the question is an appropriate one.

 

[Peter_Plato]

But on another point, where in the CCC does it say that you, laity, mere laity, has any say whatsoever in judging who is and is not acceptable to Christ?

If this were true then we would be incapable of following Christ and being “Christian” in any sense of the word because it would be impossible to determine what behaviours, dispositions, attitudes, etc., were acceptable to Christ.

What applies to others applies to oneself. If we were unable to to judge what was acceptable to him we could not judge what we ourselves ought to do to be acceptable to Christ. Any option would be just as good as any other and whatever we did could, according to your theory, be as good or “acceptable to Christ” as any other since we are incapable of sound judgements with regard to such things.

What does “priesthood of the laity” mean to you? Does it mean anything at all, or does it mean that the laity are mere house dogs who simply follow the lead of the hierarchy?

It was interesting that you should raise this point at all since on another thread* you claimed full autonomy for individual conscience and denied that hierarchical order within the Church had much validity at all. Your claim, as I recall, was that Baptists have no real hierarchy and you insisted that individual conscience held authority above any interpretation of Scripture that was not in accord with one’s conscience. Funny how your entire perspective changes when you want to make a single point.

---

• Yes, I recall the rules about what happens on one thread stays on one thread.

I am just wondering about whether consistency is at all important to you. Or whether you truly buy into the belief that since we cannot know what is acceptable to Christ (according to your thesis,) that that entails anything is acceptable to Christ including being as inconsistent as you want to be? And how does that comport with your either/or regarding Catholicism? One must be “either Catholic or not,” but the paradigm does not transfer to “either acceptable to Christ or not,” because everything is “acceptable to Christ,” ie., because we cannot know what is acceptable to him or not, everything by default just is BECAUSE it becomes a matter of individual conscience. Is that what you mean?

 

[schaeffer]

I’m afraid I have to heartily disagree with this. A true Catholic is one who is true to the teachings of the Catholic Church. As Maritain pointed out, all the others behave like pagans and worship idols of their own making.

I don’t know where on earth you got this notion that a baptized Protestant is really a baptized Catholic in disguise. I’m certain he does not think of himself as a true Catholic.

So if a person has not been baptized Catholic, or perhaps baptized at all, if they follow all the teachings of the Church, are they then a true Catholic.

I understand there is baptism by desire.

Can someone be a true Catholic even if they don’t receive the sacraments, seeing that being a true Catholic has to do with the way one behaves and believes and not on the sacrament of baptism?

What % of Catholic perfection is required to achieve the level of “True Catholic”?

If one tries but fails and finds themselves repeatedly falling into sin, but believes all the Church teaches, are they “true Catholics” or does one have to be really good at it first?

 

[schaeffer]

At least one part of that is a moral question. Moral acts, according to good moral theory, depend upon the intentions or motivations of the moral agent involved. That is not an easy question to answer, objectively speaking. Therefore, determining a “true” Catholic, because that determination depends upon a moral dimension, would be a difficult one to make because at least part of the “evidence” - the intentional world of the individual - would be largely inaccessible.

this is where things get tricky.

If a person is baptized Catholic, but then does not practice the faith…some would say they are Catholic, but lapsed, dissenting, or perhaps even ignorant, not knowing that as infants they were baptized.

Some would say these people are not true Catholics because they don’t believe or practice.

But then some of those people might actually believe, but not attend Church or receive the sacraments, but behave according to the moral teachings of the Church. According to the Church, those people are still in mortal sin because they do not attend Mass etc.

Then you have people who are perhaps married to a Catholic, or were baptized Protestant, or not baptized at all, but attend Church and receive the sacraments without anyone around them realizing they never went through the formal process of joining the Church, or were baptized (validly). They appear to be true Catholics, but their actual standing is hard to determine…they may be valid via desire or ignorance of the process.

Or someone may hate the Church and not believe any of it’s teachings but attend Mass, receive the sacraments,and follow the moral teachings etc just to keep peace in the family, or keep up appearances, or get in good with the boss at work who is a devout Catholic.

Another person may believe with their heart and soul, and truly try to follow the teachings of the Church, but because of addiction, mental illness, or some true weakness of spirit fail time and time again, be truly repentant, go to confession, only to fall again.

So, will the TRUE Catholic stand up!

Because the Church itself has some categories about desire, intent, invincible ignorance etc, there is that area in which it is hard or perhaps impossible for the average person in the pew to know whether or not the person sitting next to them (or who they see going into the porn store) is a true Catholic or not.

but I do understand, that it IS possible, that some lay Catholics might have been graced with a particular brand of spiritual discernment which allows them to “see” who is and who is not a true Catholic.

There are cases of saints and visionaries who were able to tell when a priest walked or drove past their house, or whether or not a particular item had been blessed or not. So that situation would not be unprecedented.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

but I do understand, that it IS possible, that some lay Catholics might have been graced with a particular brand of spiritual discernment which allows them to “see” who is and who is not a true Catholic.

freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2645044/posts

These maps show that many Catholics in Germany were eminently endowed with “spiritual discernment” in Germany in 1932. So I put it to you that such discernment is not just possible, but in many cases very real.

There are people who are baptized Catholics, and by baptism have the channels of sanctifying grace opened to them. They can cooperate with this grace, as they vowed to do at Baptism and Confirmation, in which case they have been true to their baptism, or they can refuse to cooperate, in which case they have not been true to their Catholic baptism.

As Maritain (quoted earlier) put it, there are those who are Christians in their head but not Christians in their heart. That is a failed Christianity, a Christianity that is not true to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, who is more interested in our true love than in our false profession of love.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

So if a person has not been baptized Catholic, or perhaps baptized at all, if they follow all the teachings of the Church, are they then a true Catholic.

Perhaps I don’t understand you?

How could a person follow all the teachings of the Catholic Church and not be baptized? One of the teachings of the Catholic Church is that one should be baptized.

 

[inocente]

We Catholics, unlike some Protestants, follow the Bible.

Saint Paul, writing to the Corinthians about a case of incest, teaches us our duty to judge, and even to judge harshly if need be. “It is widely reported that there is immorality among you, and immorality of a kind not found even among pagans—a man living with his father’s wife. And you are inflated with pride. Should you not rather have been sorrowful? The one who did this deed should be expelled from your midst. I for my part, although absent in body but present in spirit, have already, as if present, pronounced judgment on the one who has committed this deed….” (I Corinthians 5:1-4)

It’s clear from this passage that you don’t have to be an apostle or a bishop to judge whether others are living a Christian life. Do you think every Catholic in Germany would have been wrong to condemn Hitler? Would to God that more of them had! And the Protestants too, who seemed to like him a good deal more than the Catholics according to the voting percentages in the Catholic and Protestant sections of the country…

Morality is about learning to judge good and evil behavior, no?

You are conflating morality with belonging to Christ.

It is not for you to judge who belongs to Christ. It is not for you to pronounce on the faith of others and put them in danger of faltering. I belong to Christ, I don’t belong to you. Christ died for me, you didn’t. I live or die for Christ, not for every layman who sets himself up to judge whether I love Christ. So keep your judgments about who belongs to Christ between you and God. For you, just as I and everyone else, will be judged on this by God.

A Catholic who knows the bible will recognize what I just wrote above as a paraphrase of a well-known passage. But your claim that every Catholic follows the bible is highly dubious - how in heaven’s name could you possibly know that?

 

[D0UBTFIRE]

Ugh, I see this a lot. I only read the OP, not the next 4 pages, but I see this with born again Christians when they convert to Catholicism or Atheism or anything else… the other evangelicals say they were never truly born again.

I saw someone trying to pin this on me recently because I’ve basically mentally left Catholicism after having been in it for 5 years and this someone makes it sound like I never really was Catholic to begin with.

I see it when someone who is Catholic says something that someone else who is Catholic disagrees with and they both point the finger at each other and claim the other isn’t really Catholic…

The whole Catholic In Name Only nonsense…

I’m guilty of it. But now that I “see” it, I can’t un-see it and it drives me nuts.

Ugh, this really irritates me!

Or in politics. The accusations of RINO!

 

[schaeffer]

Ugh, I see this a lot. I only read the OP, not the next 4 pages, but I see this with born again Christians when they convert to Catholicism or Atheism or anything else… the other evangelicals say they were never truly born again.

I saw someone trying to pin this on me recently because I’ve basically mentally left Catholicism after having been in it for 5 years and this someone makes it sound like I never really was Catholic to begin with.

I see it when someone who is Catholic says something that someone else who is Catholic disagrees with and they both point the finger at each other and claim the other isn’t really Catholic…

The whole Catholic In Name Only nonsense…

I see this a lot too.

I’ve heard some devout Catholics explain that anyone who “left the Church” was never a true/real Catholic in the first place, because it they had been, they would never have left.

I assume that goes for priests who left as well.

Which brings me to another thought that came to mind due to a recent thread on bad popes. There undoubtedly were some very bad men who were popes, who were truly immoral persons.

They behaved in ways truly reprehensible for a person of any faith or no faith.

They were popes…elected by the cardinals and given the authority by Christ himself to declare dogma of the Church…

I understand and accept that no matter their personal choices, their declarations of dogma are totally correct, that it not in question.

What is in question is it possible for the Pope, due to their gross personal immorality to not be a true Catholic.

 

[inocente]

Being “Catholic” may or may not be identical to “acceptable to Christ.” These may be two very different issues. In theory, depending what it means to be “Catholic,” it is very possible that the two are quite different questions.

No one is acceptable to Christ, but He loves you just the same.

But also, are you saying there’s a religious definition of means to be Catholic, and a separate secular definition of means to be Catholic?

*In addition, the question of appearances is always germane. Humans, for the most part, rely on the way things appear to be to the senses and have a much more difficult time with the reality of the way things are. This is important, again, because being Catholic involves intention and disposition, among others things which are internal to human beings and very difficult to assess merely by appearances. Jesus judges with complete access to all that is relevant.

As to, “they either are or not” with regards to being Catholic, are you saying that the same either / or paradigm refers to being “good” in general - either you are or are not “good?” There is no such thing as being somewhat good, then? Or “good” in some respect but not others where the category is a complex one?

I suspect that qualitative determinations are always amenable to fine gradations in terms of how much of the quality is being exhibited by any particular individual having that quality. It doesn’t make much sense to say of any object being assessed that it is either good or not with regard to its class - good car, not a good car; good horse, not a good horse; good computer, not a good computer; good Catholic, not a good Catholic; all border on meaningless precisely because the “fine line” is not so easy to lay down.

If “true” Catholic means something like “good” Catholic, then I highly doubt your either/or way of answering the question is an appropriate one.*

Good car, not a good car, etc. are judgments about objects and animals, not about human beings.

It’s still a fallacy if you say “no good” in place of “no true”. If no Catholic would do X, then it makes no sense to add the adjective. It’s an easy way to exclude others: she’s not a true Catholic becomes code for she’s not really a Catholic. It becomes an unofficial excommunication, a cutting off done by laity. How are laity policed to avoid it being used to form cliques?

 

[Charlemagne_III]

You are conflating morality with belonging to Christ.

It is not for you to judge who belongs to Christ. It is not for you to pronounce on the faith of others and put them in danger of faltering. I belong to Christ, I don’t belong to you. Christ died for me, you didn’t. I live or die for Christ, not for every layman who sets himself up to judge whether I love Christ. So keep your judgments about who belongs to Christ between you and God. For you, just as I and everyone else, will be judged on this by God.

A Catholic who knows the bible will recognize what I just wrote above as a paraphrase of a well-known passage. But your claim that every Catholic follows the bible is highly dubious - how in heaven’s name could you possibly know that?

Well, obviously all Catholics do not follow the bible. I was talking about the inherent obligation of Catholics to follow the Bible. I do not judge who belongs to Christ. Did I say I did? Point out to me where I said that. What I said is that we are entitled to judge the conduct of others by their deeds, as Paul judged the man guilty of incest. I have never said that you or anyone else does not belong to Christ. That would be stupid. But there are some who do not belong to Christ, and some who do. Do you deny that, or are you going to do what Peter Plato complained of, and say that we all belong to Christ and we are not to discern that some do and some do not?

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Ugh, I see this a lot. I only read the OP, not the next 4 pages, but I see this with born again Christians when they convert to Catholicism or Atheism or anything else… the other evangelicals say they were never truly born again.

I saw someone trying to pin this on me recently because I’ve basically mentally left Catholicism after having been in it for 5 years and this someone makes it sound like I never really was Catholic to begin with.

I see it when someone who is Catholic says something that someone else who is Catholic disagrees with and they both point the finger at each other and claim the other isn’t really Catholic…

The whole Catholic In Name Only nonsense…

I’m guilty of it. But now that I “see” it, I can’t un-see it and it drives me nuts.

Ugh, this really irritates me!

Or in politics. The accusations of RINO!

The bottom line is that if you are a Catholic you are obliged to accept the teachings of the Church. That is what distinguished Protestants from Catholics. They are free to think as they like and they deny any doctrine is infallible except the ones in their heads. But if a Catholic thinks like that, he is not thinking the way a Catholic is supposed to think. Perhaps that is what turned you off from Catholicism? You would not accept the discipline of obedience to Christ’s true Church, and so you decided it couldn’t be the true Church? Then why did you join it in the first place?

 

[inocente]

If this were true then we would be incapable of following Christ and being “Christian” in any sense of the word because it would be impossible to determine what behaviours, dispositions, attitudes, etc., were acceptable to Christ.

What applies to others applies to oneself. If we were unable to to judge what was acceptable to him we could not judge what we ourselves ought to do to be acceptable to Christ. Any option would be just as good as any other and whatever we did could, according to your theory, be as good or “acceptable to Christ” as any other since we are incapable of sound judgements with regard to such things.

What does “priesthood of the laity” mean to you? Does it mean anything at all, or does it mean that the laity are mere house dogs who simply follow the lead of the hierarchy?

It was interesting that you should raise this point at all since on another thread* you claimed full autonomy for individual conscience and denied that hierarchical order within the Church had much validity at all. Your claim, as I recall, was that Baptists have no real hierarchy and you insisted that individual conscience held authority above any interpretation of Scripture that was not in accord with one’s conscience. Funny how your entire perspective changes when you want to make a single point.

---

• Yes, I recall the rules about what happens on one thread stays on one thread.

I am just wondering about whether consistency is at all important to you. Or whether you truly buy into the belief that since we cannot know what is acceptable to Christ (according to your thesis,) that that entails anything is acceptable to Christ including being as inconsistent as you want to be? And how does that comport with your either/or regarding Catholicism? One must be “either Catholic or not,” but the paradigm does not transfer to “either acceptable to Christ or not,” because everything is “acceptable to Christ,” ie., because we cannot know what is acceptable to him or not, everything by default just is BECAUSE it becomes a matter of individual conscience. Is that what you mean?

Straight back into your pseudo-psychological nonsense, now even jumping threads to do it. Please stick to the subject, I’ve told you many times you are not a psychotherapist, you are just pixels on the internet, go play on twitter if you can’t stop yourself making personal remarks.

I quoted this earlier, I’ll try again:

*I never knew you;
which must be understood consistent with the omniscience of Christ; for as the omniscient God he knew their persons and their works, and that they were workers of iniquity; he knew what they had been doing all their days under the guise of religion; he knew the principles of all their actions, and the views they had in all they did; nothing is hid from him. But, as words of knowledge often carry in them the ideas of affection, and approbation, see ( Psalms 1:6 ) ( 2 Timothy 2:19 ) the meaning of Christ here is, I never had any love, or affection for you; I never esteemed you; I never made any account of you, as mine, as belonging to me; I never approved of you, nor your conduct; I never had any converse, communication, nor society with you, nor you with me. The Persic version reads it, “I have not known you of old”, from ancient times, or from everlasting; I never knew you in my Father’s choice, and my own, nor in my Father’s gift to me, nor in the everlasting covenant of grace; I never knew you as my sheep, for whom, in time, I died, and called by name; I never knew you believe in me, nor love me, or mine; I have seen you in my house, preaching in my name, and at my table administering mine ordinance; but I never knew you exalt my person, blood, righteousness, and sacrifice; you talk of the works you have done, I never knew you do one good work in all your lives, with a single eye to my glory; wherefore, I will neither hear, nor see you; I have nothing to do with you.

Gill’s Exposition of the Bible*

 

[Charlemagne_III]

It’s still a fallacy if you say “no good” in place of “no true”. If no Catholic would do X, then it makes no sense to add the adjective. It’s an easy way to exclude others: she’s not a true Catholic becomes code for she’s not really a Catholic. It becomes an unofficial excommunication, a cutting off done by laity. How are laity policed to avoid it being used to form cliques?

What you seem to be saying is that Catholic laity are not supposed to know or think.

But they do. They know what the Church teaches, and they know what Christ taught.

And when they see Catholic politicians telling the public that the Catholics bishops don’t understand about abortion, they understand that these politicians are not presenting the true Catholic position to the public. They are either lying or insufferably stupid about Catholic theology. They are in effect cafeteria Catholics, just as most Protestants are cafeteria Protestants. One is true to the Protestant faith to pick and choose one’s beliefs. One is not true to the Catholic faith who does the same.

You’ve said it yourself in other threads. Baptists do not have a creed.

 

[Peter_Plato]

No one is acceptable to Christ, but He loves you just the same.

But also, are you saying there’s a religious definition of means to be Catholic, and a separate secular definition of means to be Catholic?

No. The point was that being Catholic in a definitional sense of being part of the Catholic Church may be quite a different matter than being acceptable to Christ.

As to “no one is acceptable to Christ” there is the little issue of the final judgement, which could be what “acceptable to Christ” signifies. Or are you saying that no one is “acceptable” but everyone will walk straight into heaven no questions asked and with absolutely no reference to the kind of life the person has lived? Otherwise, I am puzzled by how Christ will make the “judgement” call since no one is acceptable but he’ll have to be quite arbitrary and selective about who he allows in if not everyone is to enter - I recall something about narrow the way. Perhaps, your understanding is that the narrow way has been replaced by a superhighway since the Gospels were written?

And I am not quite sure how your view accords with the Gospel requirements to repent and be redeemed or saved, if what we are being saved FROM is inconsequential to begin with, since no one is acceptable but all will be accepted.

As usual there seems to be a whole lot of conflating of ideas occurring in your posts which makes taking them appear, at least at face value, a tad problematic. This does, however, explain why I engage in the apparently futile attempt to analyze your points from a psychological angle - it does seem a waste of time, granted, but absent that there remains no basis left from which to find any consistency at all in your free ranging and wildly disjointed points.

 

[D0UBTFIRE]

The bottom line is that if you are a Catholic you are obliged to accept the teachings of the Church. That is what distinguished Protestants from Catholics. They are free to think as they like and they deny any doctrine is infallible except the ones in their heads. But if a Catholic thinks like that, he is not thinking the way a Catholic is supposed to think. Perhaps that is what turned you off from Catholicism? You would not accept the discipline of obedience to Christ’s true Church, and so you decided it couldn’t be the true Church? Then why did you join it in the first place?

Not sure if your questions are rhetorical but you can see my recent threads if you care to know my case. I think the main thread is titled “Just have faith” vs evidence.

I joined because I thought it was the One True Faith…because I thought the Resurrection was a real historical event. I have too much doubt about that at the moment to view the Church in the same light. It’s the very fact that I can’t view the Church in the same light that makes me feel I need to leave Catholicism. It’s been drilled in my head too many times that someone who doesn’t believe everything the Church teaches isn’t really Catholic.

 

[Peter_Plato]

It is interesting that Paul in his letter to - coincidentally - the Romans (who were not at that time Roman Catholic ) writes:

For he is not a real Jew who is one outwardly, nor is true circumcision something external and physical.
He is a Jew who is one inwardly, and real circumcision is a matter of the heart, spiritual and not literal. His praise is not from men but from God. (Romans 2:28-9)

Now replace “Jew” with “Catholic” and “real” with “true” and we have the topic of this thread, which Paul did not, evidently, think was a fallacy. Perhaps replacing “circumsion” with " “Baptism” makes the entire passage even more germane.

For he is not a true Catholic who is one outwardly, nor is true Baptism something external and physical.
He is a Catholic who is one inwardly, and real Baptism is a matter of the heart, spiritual and not literal. His praise is not from men but from God.