ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Catholic identity that there seem to be two separate Catholic identities-an imaginative, story-telling identity and a rules identity. More Catholics find their identity in the resurrection, the Eucharist, the Sacraments, the poor, and the Mother of Jesus than in support for the Church's teachings on abortion, birth control, gay marriages, and infallibility. A strict comparison between the two is not possible, because the "rules" ask what a good Catholic believes is proper in cases of abortion, birth control, gay marriage, divorce, and infallibility while the imaginative identity asks what stories are "very important" for their own personal Catholic identity. By any measure, the religious image identity is the more powerful of the two but neither loses their absolute importance when compared to the other. Nor is it surprising that images are more powerful than rules, Eucharist, resurrection, and Mary are more powerful than birth control and gay marriage rules.
