Catholic or not?

"To be a Catholic, you must have a Baptism or Reception Certificate from a Catholic Church." So says the application form for the St John Fisher Catholic Primary School. I suppose that when making application to a "catholic school" you might have to accept its definition of what "catholic" means, but I am not entirely comfortable with the Roman Church's appropriation of the word. I've always thought it rather odd to see a couple of signposts in a town, one saying "Parish Church" and the other saying "Catholic Church". More seriously, accepting other people's terms can be difficult. We recognise going into non-European Union countries that we are at least "other passports" and may even be "aliens". (I couldn't bear it if I could no longer join the EU queue when travelling into mainland Europe.)

If sent to prison, though still pleading innocence, we may be considered guilty and a prisoner rather than innocent and free. There were plenty of German Jews who thought of themselves as German and never gave a thought to being Jewish until the Nazis put a label on them. An ordained minister from an evangelical church in the City, who undoubtedly would not call himself a priest though the bishop would have used the words in the rite, recently spoke of those present "who know the Lord Jesus Christ", with a pretty clear message that some of us didn't.

The thesis that I want to propose is that within the Christian community people should be allowed to define themselves as long as that self-definition does not exclude others, but I see at once that that will not work. I have already created a problem by referring to the "Christian" community for some who would say that they are Christian would swiftly exclude a lot of people who make the same claim. And the catholic school does the same, indicating that you cannot be catholic unless you are catholic in their terms. If asked whether St Bartholomew's is catholic or protestant I usually reply that it is Church of England and that the CofE says of herself that she is part of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church. If I put up a full descriptive label, listing the characteristics of St Bartholomew's (and giving percentages, like food labels), I would need to say Anglican, episcopal, catholic, orthodox, evangelical, biblical, apostolic, liberal, liturgical, and more and more, until it became meaningless. So perhaps I should just resist all labelling. Except that I can't when someone wants to get a child into a school and I have to answer specific multiple-choice questions and I don't want to choose any of the answers provided.

Catholic - yes, as I understand it. Non-catholic - yes, as you understand it.