For their 14 November 1969 issue, the editors of Commonweal asked a number of well-known Catholics various questions about the contemporary Church. They asked Garry Wills the following two questions: " Is there such a thing any more as Catholic culture? Would we be better off with it or without it?" Here in fullis how he answered:

Bingo, large families, fish on Friday, novenas, crustily spangled copes, Tantum ergo before the monstrance, clouds of incense, altar boys dropping the priests biretta with a plop, pinging of xylophone chimes at Consecration, girls with kleenex hairpinned to their heads, kitchen matchboxes stuck in the sand under the red-cupped candles, the teen-ager in her formal teetering up a ladder in May with flowers for the plaster brow, churchings, car blessings, name-saint days, Dies irae on all Souls (and ducking in and out of church all day for the indulgence), plastic holy water dips at the bedroom door, the Sacred Heart in a heavy frame, scapulars like big postage stamps glued here and there on kids in the swimming pool, J.M.J. at the top of school work, the sign of the cross before a foul shot, Sunday movie in white shoes and pants left over from First Communion; baptism in the spittle of repeated Exorcizos, letters dated by the saints day, the clank of beads (each as big as a marble) when a nun approached, food-chiseling in Lent (ne potus noceat), the stored candy eaten in marathon gluttony after noon on Holy Saturday, priests mumbling their breviaries in the light of a Pullman mens lounge, debates as midnight neared on Saturday night about the legitimacy of using Mountain Standard Time to being the pre-Communion fast.Tribal rites, superstitions, marks of the Catholic ghetto--and, all of them, insignia of a community. These marks and rites were not so much altered, refined, elevated, reformed, transfigured, as--overnight--erased. This was a ghetto that had no one to say "Catholic is Beautiful" over it. Men rose up to change this world who did not love it--demented teachers, ready to improve a students mind by destroying his body.Do we need a culture? Only if we need a community, however imperfect. Only if we need each other.

How would you answer the questions today?