19 readers participated in this month’s poll. I was surprised by some of the results. For example, an overwhelming number of participants understand “catholic” as meaning “universal”. I expected that in our OC/IC context more people would have viewed it in terms of a particular church. The, sacramental, Roman, and “orthoxy” options are interesting because unlike the other two these are rooted in popular perception rather than historic theology/definitions. I expected that the number of those choosing Roman would have been higher – but that could merely be a relfection of the make up of those visiting the blog – from what I can gather the majority of “regulars” here are OC/IC folk.

“Universal” vs. “Particular” hmmmm . . . . I’m a “particular” kinda guy myself, I’m not a fan of “universal” because it leads to some pretty whacky theology, and ideologies. Earlier this year I wrote a post on my own thoughts on why I prefer “particular” over “universal” – but I’m interested to know how people see the idea of “universal” working in our very particular OC/IC context. How can we be “universal” when we have a very bad habit of eating our own young?