I'm not Catholic.
I was baptized and confirmed. But along the line I realized that I did not believe in one holy Catholic and apostolic church, etc. etc. etc.
But I'm realizing what a huge part of my life the Church still is. Being not Catholic takes as much energy as being Catholic did.
During the Schiavo case, misrepresentations or misinterpretations of the faith were making me scream...for example, the Schindlers' objection to cremation because Terri was Catholic. Catholics can be cremated. It's been that was since 1963.
And of course Pope John Paul II. I found myself crying watching the news last night, and realizing that part of why I was crying was frustration. His Holiness did so many good things and was in some ways a hero to me as a child, and I suppose that I ultimately felt betrayed by some of his more conservative stances, the political issues that first made me ask questions.
I was an altar server. Now, I grew up in a liberal parish. It was even too liberal for my liking sometimes...in religious education, I wanted the learn more about faith and less about how to be a nice person. I came to appreciate the social activism later...the emphasis on showing faith through service is, I think, one of the Church's strongest points. But anyway, before I really started thinking that deeply, I became an altar server.
Some of my relatives were...surprised. I'd hear things like "Monsignor would never allow that." And it turned out, neither did the Pope. There were official Vatican declarations during that time reminding parishes that girls could not be "altar boys." I don't know if this was a broader prohibition on the participation of women in the Mass, if women were allowed at the time to be lectors and Eucharistic ministers...we had that at my parish, but our pastor also shrugged off the altar girl ban, too.
Two things came from this...first, I began to consider the pick & choose method of following Church teachings. Second, I couldn't understand why the Pope didn't want me serving Mass. Because, you know, at 12 I was a true believer, and serving deepened that in ways I can't explain. But at 13, finding out that the very service that strengthened my faith was technically illegal, made me consider that being infallible wasn't the same as being right.
(I believe the ban on altar girls was lifted in 1994, although in 2003 there was some tightening up...girls could only serve if boys weren't available, or something. I think this was around the same time churches started going back to the Latin Mass.)
Anyway, I spent twenty years wrestling with how much I could disagree with, which rules I could break, and whether it was better to work on reform from within than to chuck it all. I wish I had a dollar for everyone who suggested I just become an Episcopalian.
The really funny thing is, it was in a serious study of the theologies of Catholicism and other Christian religions that I started thinking things like "Transubstantiation really makes no sense at all." I decided, if George Fox can base a religion on what makes sense to him, I might as well just do the same. Philosophies like Buddhism make more sense than the contadictory Christian religions, too.
I'm thinking, if the politics hadn't gotten in the way, I may never have questioned the faith.
So last night I watched the news and that was all. I was not praying for the Pope, I was not believing that anything divine was transpiring, I was not lighting a candle and I certainly was not going to Mass. And I realized...this has been like a divorce, and I was thinking "If only you had done x and y, we'd still be together."
Posted by Nic at April 2, 2005 06:05 PM