What ever happened to the term “Cafeteria Catholic”? If you spent any time in Catholic spaces during the late 2000s or early 2010s, you probably heard it everywhere, to describe Catholics who “pick and choose” which teachings to follow. But then, almost overnight, the phrase disappeared.
In this video, Pedro Gabriel takes a closer look at why Cafeteria Catholicism faded from Catholic vocabulary, how the election of Pope Francis shifted the conversation, and what this tells us about our relationship with Church teaching today. This isn’t about reviving labels—it’s about understanding the integrity of Catholic doctrine and examining the ways all of us, at times, are tempted to pick and choose.
Pedro Gabriel, MD, is a Catholic layman and physician, born and residing in Portugal. He is a medical oncologist, currently employed in a Portuguese public hospital. A published writer of Catholic novels with a Tolkienite flavor, he is also a parish reader and a former catechist. He seeks to better understand the relationship of God and Man by putting the lens on the frailty of the human condition, be it physical and spiritual. He also wishes to provide a fresh perspective of current Church and World affairs from the point of view of a small western European country, highly secularized but also highly Catholic by tradition.
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