Let me start off by saying that I am a member at a small, pseudo-fundamentalist, blue-haired Church. I probably disagree with most of the congregation who are caught up in the Evangelical subculture more than they are in the wide ecclesial society.
Their bias is starkly noted in many of the hymn books in the back of our church pews. I noticed this months ago, and sometimes it is hit or miss. We say the Apostles Creed every Sunday at Church (to the bane of a few). The text is found in our pew hymn books. Sometimes when getting to the creed, I see that somebody has put white-out over the capital "C" in Holy Catholic Church.
Aside from the extreme ignorance of this, it is sad for another reason besides the disdain for the Roman Catholic Church. Whoever has made this their mission of Church graffiti, has completely undercut their whole mission.
To remove the capitalization from Catholic is the same thing as removing the capitalization from "Church". Evangelicals normally ascribe high authority and clout to Church by capitalizing the word. To remove this and replace, in blue pen, a lower-case "c" would be preposterous to the Evangelicals.
Yet the Holy Catholic Church does not refer to Roman Catholicism and to compare little "c" and big "c" is misleading distinction. Anytime we drop the "C" from Church or Catholic, we are dropping our respect in authority. We demote the terms.
As an academic, I don't care if catholic or church is capitalized. Frankly I am so used to it presented in either form I don't even notice, unless it has been changed with BLUE INK!!! But for someone who has been offended enough to change it, imprinting their own misguided theology on the Free Methodist [c]hurch, the plan backfires. We denigrate the word Catholic we denigrate the word church.
Mister graffiti artist; miss misguided theological importer; mister or miss whoever you are changing these hymnal books, I hate to say that you have completely sabotaged your own battle.
Conclusion: To make a distinction between [C]atholic and [c]atholic is to make a distinction upon the authority of the [C]or[c]hurch.
(This post sounded a lot better in my head...I wish I could write better...but maybe someday my readers ((if there really are plural)) will actually read a decent piece of prose.)
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