Why I Haven't Left the Catholic Church

Recently, I received a text from a friend asking for my input on a dilemma she's been having. Her story is not an unfamiliar one: She was raised Catholic, but, like many others, has come to question her faith as an adult, especially since becoming a parent. Understandably, she doesn't want to pass on a particular belief system to her children simply because it is the one she was raised with. She told me that her daughter hadn't been baptized since she and her husband weren't sure whether they were going to raise her Catholic. She asked if I would explain to her why I've decided to be a member of the Catholic Church specifically, as opposed to another denomination or no denomination at all. Since I've been a lazy blogger lately, I figured I could kill two birds with one stone and share my response with you.

*Disclaimer (of course I need a disclaimer, it's the 21st century!): The following is an email, not an essay. I wrote it in the span of about 30 minutes - as quickly as I could while my daughter was distracted, which never lasts for long. So if you're looking for some nitty-gritty theology with a thesis, supports and footnotes, you're gonna be looking for a long time. There's a lot more I could have said but didn't simply because there wasn't time. This email was meant to defend Catholicism specifically, not Christianity as whole (In other words, I don't try to explain why I believe in the resurrection, the deity of Jesus, etc.). It is not meant as an attack on other denominations. I'm proud to have been raised in and remained a part of an ecumenical Christian community and I am a big supporter of Pope Francis' devotion to Christian unity.

Without further ado, I give you "Why I Haven't Left the Catholic Church"...

Hello at last! I'm gonna try and answer your questions as well as I can with Sophie running around trying to get my attention. Obviously this is an important topic so I wanna make sure I'm not skimping on anything...

First, real quick, about the whole Baptism thing... The way I see it, is that even if you aren't sure whether you believe it actually does her any good, it certainly won't do her any harm. Worst case scenario, it does nothing for her, but you get to have a nice celebration of her life with friends and family (and hopefully get some gifts/money out of the whole thing, haha!). And those members of your family who are still practicing Catholics will be happy and peaceful. Best case scenario, you get all that plus some special graces from God! Almost everyone does some kind of version of Baptism whether they are people of faith or not (Usually they call them Dedication Ceremonies for people who aren't faith-based), so why not do the same for her and not worry too much about the fact that it's a Catholic one? Anyway, that's just my two cents on that.

The question of why I'm a Catholic is a pretty big one. I think it's easier to answer the question of why I haven't LEFT. I went through a stage in college where I felt like it was enough to just be a Christian and not a Catholic, but here are some things that ultimately made me decide to stick with Catholicism:

- It's the only denomination that can't be traced back to anyone except Jesus (i.e., Martin Luther started the Lutherans, John Smyth founded the Baptists, etc.)

- Very few institutions in history have survived as long as the Catholic Church. I'm a big believer in the saying, "The proof is in the pudding". In other words, results speak louder than doubts. In the case of Catholicism, the fact that it has not only survived so long, but survived in spite of all the persecution and doubt that it's had to battle, convinces me even more that it has something real to offer. 

- There are definitely teachings that I don't understand, but I've come to realize that that's OK. I don't understand most of the things my doctor does, but I still trust him with my life (literally) because I understand that he's the expert, not me. Are there doctors who screw up sometimes, even BIG time, even costing some people their lives? Yes. But that's not because science and medicine are flawed, it's because the doctor is a human being and human beings are all flawed. We would never decide to abandon medicine because there are some bad doctors out there. And no one would ever say that they refuse to see a doctor until they understand everything the doctor does, because that would require going to med school yourself, which would be ridiculous. I look at church leaders the same way. Do they screw up sometimes, even BIG time? Yes. But that isn't because the faith is flawed, it's because church leaders are human beings and are flawed just like the rest of us. I wouldn't abandon the faith on account of some bad leaders. And I'm not going to refuse to commit to Catholicism until I understand everything about it (That would take years and years!) The good news is that, while a bad doctor can cost you your life, a bad church leader doesn't have to cost you your soul, because God is merciful and knows your heart, and Christ has already won the victory over sin and death through the resurrection (That whole concept isn't unique to the Catholic denomination either). 

- While I can see why people have trouble with the symbolism and statues and sacraments, etc... I see it very differently. I don't see it as idolatrous or distracting. To me it's just the opposite. God made us physical beings. He didn't have to do that, but he did. So to say that physical manifestations of faith - such as the sacraments, statues, candles, incense, and all the jazz - to say that those are idolatrous and distracting doesn't really add up for me. Can people use them that way? Of course (again, flawed human beings!). But we flawed human beings can find a way to distort pretty much any good thing. In reality, every other denomination has its own physical manifestations, even if it's just the simple fact that they worship in physical buildings, have ceremonies, use musical instruments... We can simplify things as much as we want, but at the end of the day, we are literally incapable of worshipping in a way that is purely spiritual, because WE are not purely spiritual (and neither is God, for that matter!). And we certainly cannot live the Gospel in a way that is purely spiritual, because to neglect the physical needs of people would be to directly disobey Christ. The sacraments and such have always served to make me feel closer to God because I AM a physical being, and so IS Jesus. It's like keeping photos of your loved ones around the house, doing a toast in honor of someone who can't be there with you in person, or hanging onto the belongings of family members who have passed away. It keeps me grounded and humble.

- I almost forgot... MIRACLES! You just can't find them anywhere else the way they appear in Christianity (all denominations), but especially in the Catholic Church. All the incorruptibles, apparitions, stigmata... Even if you don't believe that ALL of them are legit, it's pretty hard to make the case that ALL of them are lies. If you research into it a bit, it really will blow your mind the kinds of things that have happened!

And there you have it. Later on I may post a Part 2: my follow-up email with thoughts on Mass being boring.

Breakdown

Ok, I realize two posts in one day is beyond self-indulgent, but I'm gonna play the pregnancy card because I really need to have a good virtual cry...

Today I had a mini breakdown. It hit me when I got the mail and found FOUR bills (two from two different billers) that we had already taken care of (or so we thought) over the phone. The root of the confusion lay in the fact that we had moved and so our property taxes are all screwed up. ANYWAY, the point is, we've been on the Dave Ramsey diet and working really hard at it, and after finally just having established our emergency fund, we're already going to have to dig into almost half of it - either that, or go through a series of phone calls that we'd already made previously trying to fix this mess, which frankly, I'm too pregnant to bother with and Bryan is too wound up with the transition from Apple to his new job (which I now realize I have COMPLERELY neglected to announce on either of my blogs - tune in next time I guess). 

The bill thing came on top of three straight days of heartburn, by which I mean after EVERY BITE or SIP of ANYTHING I chose to consume. Water, bread, snacks, doesn't matter. Swallowing = Pain this week. 

Bills and heartburn were on top of several days of crazy back pain and difficulty breathing, courtesy of trimester #3. And according to my 28 week email update, from here on out I should be expecting to gain another POUND A WEEK until the baby arrives, which can only mean more discomfort and pain. 

Insomnia had also reared its ugly head. The kicker is, I can't fall back on my reliable friend Tylenol PM too often since you're not supposed to take aspirin on the regular during pregnancy. Which prompts me to ask... Any suggestions?? 

And while I'm asking favors, anyone wanna borrow a 17 month old who's going through some personal stuff? Anyone? Cuz that's happening too. Today she had a total meltdown when I took the pen away and did one of those 5-seconds-between-inhale-and-exhale moments that nearly made me utilize mouth-to-mouth, and I am in no way CPR qualified. 

Anyway, I was pretty much just an emotional wreck for the above and other reasons I won't bore you with, but I will say this... Dumping this much on you makes all the difference in the world, and we all know that all the pregnancy woes are just paving the road to delivery joy, so ultimately, I guess I'm pretty lucky to have any woes to dump on you all.

I'll leave you with that delicious little slice of optimism. Goodnight!

Possible Issues

Food for thought - just a quick bite before I start some semblance of a productive day... 

Why is it, that while most people only pray when things are going badly, I do just the opposite? The only time my prayer life only seems to be even vaguely consistent is when everything is going well for me. Maybe it's because I feel like I have it all together and can now afford to indulge in the luxury of a prayer time without being distracted for worrying about the million other undone things on my list. 

Mostly though, I think it's that, when we pray, we are forced to get REAL, and who wants to get REAL when things are crappy? Not I, apparently. 

Note to self: Look into possible issues with denial.

what if i can't keep swimming?

when you're someone who struggles with depression, you never know when and where it's going to hit, even if you've been in a good place for a long time. it can still blindside you and smack you like a ton of bricks when you least expect it.

when it comes to struggles in life, i've always adopted the "this too shall pass" mentality. baby steps. or as one of my favorite bloggers, glennon melton, likes to say, "just keep doing the next right thing one day at a time." on the really bad days, i literally have to tell myself, "baby steps, get out of bed... baby steps, brush your teeth..." and so on and so forth for each little activity i encounter that day. just keep swimming, just keep swimming... i take my baby steps and remind myself "this too shall pass" again and again throughout the day until it's over.

of course, with depression, "when it's over", it's really just beginning. because nights are the worst. that's when you have to stop swimming and the floodgates open and all hell unleashes itself on your head and heart. sleep is a joke at that point.

and you don't know WHEN it's going to pass. how long will it hurt this time? hours? days? weeks? it becomes incredibly more difficult to console yourself with "this too shall pass" when you don't know when. it's not like getting through a particularly crazy day at work on little sleep. on those days, you can tell youself, "just eight more hours... five more hours... three more hours..." but when you're depressed, all you can really tell yourself is, "just keep swimming" and hope and pray that you're swimming towards something CLOSE.

so, on this day, when all i want to do is go out and buy a pack of camel crushes and a bottle of scotch and hide in the shower with them until i've played the entire "black sails" album... i have a kid that needs caring, another on the way, and a life that needs living. oh, and a job that needs doing. just as soon as i hit "publish".

no one is going to do those things for me, so for now, it's time for this girl to keep swimming and keep doing the next right thing.

now. baby steps, fax that liability insurance form...

jesus hates money, funerals, and your children.

There's a post that's being floated around Facebook that looks like this:

Obviously, there's a lot that can be said about it, and I actually agree with most of it. There's just one part I want to focus on today:

"jesus was… anti-wealth"

There is no scripture reference provided to show how the author came to this conclusion, but I would venture a guess that he was probably referring to Matthew 10: 17-22, commonly known as "The Story of the Rich Young Man":

17 And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 18 And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. 19 You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.’” 20 And he said to him, “Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.” 21 And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” 22 Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.

A quick, on-the-surface read of this scripture could easily lead us to conclude that Jesus was anti-wealth, for the simple reason that he told this man to give his up. Sounds reasonable, right?

But was the money the problem, or the young man's attachment to it? Would Jesus have told every other wealthy person to do the same? Or did he ask it of this young man specifically because he knew he was more attached to it than he was to God?

I love this story that Mother Mary Francis, P.C.C. quotes in her book, But I Have Called You Friends: 

"You know the homely little tale often told about the hermit, the very holy hermit who had lived in the desert for years and years. He had no possessions, he fasted strictly, and he had come to think, as I suppose one could easily be tempted to think if left to one's own unaided speculations, that he was a fair sort of fellow in God's eyes. But in his naiveté he brought this to God's attention. You remember how he reminded God that he was so detached from everything, how he was really living his life completely for God - and a few other points for God's edification. And the Lord informed the self-complacent hermit that he was more attached to the cat he had than the king of France was attached to all his possessions."

This hermit thinks he is doing a great job living the gospel since he has next to no possessions, and yet the one thing he does posses - his cat - he is more attached to than the king is to all his wealth. (Which, if you think about it, kinda makes sense. If I only owned one thing in the whole world, I suspect that that one thing would start to feel like my whole world and would become almost impossible for me to part with)

I think this story is so insightful because it shows that it is not possessions themselves that have the power to keep us from God, it's our relationship with them. Even if a cat is the only thing I own, if I love that cat more than I love God, he is probably going to ask me to give it up. If, on the other hand, I have a successful business that makes a lot of money, but really I'm just passionate about my job and couldn't care less about whether it was making me rich, chances are, God won't ask me to give up my wealth if I'm not putting it ahead of my relationship with him.

That being said, is it HARD to be detached from wealth once we have it? Absolutely! That's why Jesus also says, in Matthew 19: 24,

24 Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

Jesus is telling us it is HARD to make it to heaven when you're rich! This is why it is so important to work on detachment. It's hard to make it to heaven when you're rich, but don't think for a second that being poor makes it easy. You couldn't pay me a million dollars to walk up to a poor person and tell them how lucky they are that they're having such an easy time making it to heaven. If people truly believed that being poor got you to heaven faster, they would probably stop trying to make more money.

Returning for a moment to the hermit and his cat, Jesus talks about detachment from things other than wealth too. For example, in Luke 9: 59-60…

59 He said to another man, “Follow me.”

But he replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.”

60 Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”

… and in Luke 14:26…

26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple. 

Are we to conclude that Jesus was anti-funeral and anti-family? Does he really want us to hate our children?? A quick, purely on-the-surface read of these scriptures - such as with the story of the rich young man - would make us conclude that he does. But if you utilize a dab of critical thinking (After all, Jesus attended Lazarus' funeral and reminded the rich young man to honor his father and mother), you'll probably conclude that it isn't very likely that Jesus wanted us to leave our dead to rot in the fields and despise our families. But if there is one thing in the world that it is more easy to be attached to than wealth, it is our loved ones (or in some instances, our cats). That is one thing for which the vast majority of people would be willing to sacrifice any and all of their possessions. Jesus is driving home the point that we need to have that same kind of dedication to God, even more so. He wants us to love God even more than we love our own families and our own lives. Is THAT hard? Um, YES. I would venture to say that most people never achieve it. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't strive for it. And if you think Jesus wouldn't ask us to strive for something that is impossible, take a gander at Matthew 5:48:

48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

He was a radical revolutionary all right, that Jesus. He said some crazy stuff. But it's good stuff, every bit of it. 

Judging or punishing someone for having wealth is just as bad as judging or punishing them for not having it. Being rich doesn't make you a bad disciple of Christ any more than being poor makes you a good one. Neither, incidentally, does owning a cat. 

part 1: love to hate

qualifier: this is a post about why we feel the need to qualify things before we say them. you'll see my response shortly, but in the meantime, i have one of my own… i wish i had the kind of time to devote to writing that i did back in high school and college so that i could make this read more like an essay with a clear thesis and however many supports, each leading either one into the next or all three directly back to the thesis… but alas, i am banging this out during sophie's nap time, so forgive the rambling and circularity that are bound to appear!

a couple of weeks ago, one of my facebook friends shared this video:



i'll give you three minutes and four seconds to watch it…

i think this guy hits the nail on the head as far as pin-pointing this generation's prevalent fear of speaking our minds unless we are more or less positive that everyone who hears us will either agree or be silent. we feel the need to qualify every statement we make that has the remotest possibility of being misconstrued, hence the rampant overuse of "like", "sortta", "kinda", "ya know", etc.

my first reaction, like most people's, was to immediately place the blame on my generation and lament the fact that we are, in taylor's words, "like, the most inarticulate generation of all time".

but then i started with the "why"s. it's a habit i've been working to form in myself, since i really believe that all negativity - be it negative speech, behavior, or what have you - is a response to something, is caused by something. people did not just wake up one morning and start talking this way. so why did we?

to me, the real question is, "why do we feel the need to qualify everything we say to make sure that it's 'safe'?"

this post entitled watch your words pretty much sums up the answer for me.

honestly, i couldn't blame people LESS for wanting to qualify every statement they make. our rampant inarticulateness is very likely a direct result of our rampant UNKINDNESS. i don't think this is new, either. i think that the advent of the internet simply issued a big fat invitation to people everywhere to unleash all the ugliness and hate that was inside them ANONYMOUSLY and without fear of DIRECT CONFLICT, in much the same way that it provided easy access to pornography, luring in who-knows-how-many people who never would have entertained such temptation back when magazines and videos were the only way to obtain that kind of material. what i mean is, i don't think people were LOOKING for ways to unleash all the ugliness inside them, just like i don't think a lot of people were LOOKING for ways to get easy access to pornography… suddenly, it was just THERE! and even once you had signed online, no one had to actively SEARCH for things to get angry about or plug in a google search for "free pornography". all they had to do was scroll through their facebook feeds or check their spam folders.

before i go any further...

i do not think the internet is an evil thing! on the contrary, i think it is a WONDERFUL thing and i use it all the time. the point i'm driving at is that with the good comes the bad. just as the internet provides fast, easy access to GOOD things (like emails and photos between loved ones, current events, awareness campaigns, and caring bridge updates), it also provides fast, easy access to some very BAD things, and we need to be EDUCATED about this and practice DISCIPLINE and CAUTION when it comes to them.

so, to resume…

the video by taylor wasn't actually what started me thinking about this whole topic. my wheels had been turning for months after seeing how many hateful things people write on celebrity instagram feeds and in blog forums. there are entire websites (appropriately nicknamed "hate sites") devoted to bashing and hating on certain celebrities, bloggers, etc. again, i wasn't looking for these things; i didn't have to. all i had to do was google the names of some of my favorite bloggers. i was trying to find more information on them, and ended up finding a whole lot of other stuff i was definitely NOT trying to find.

it blew my mind to find that there are some people who have gotten so riled up by what they see online (and probably on television also), that they have reached a place where they ARE actively looking for things to stir up their own anger so that they can then spew it out. i could not (and still CANNOT) understand why people would actively subscribe to the facebook, twitter and instagram feeds of people they hate, just so they can hate them more, or why someone would put hours of their time into constructing and maintaining an entire website devoted to bashing someone they hate. it's as though some people literally LOVE TO HATE. (i'm not going to venture down that therapy trail; that one could be an entire post in itself).

CHRISTIANS, WE ARE FAR FROM EXEMPT WHEN IT COMES TO ONLINE NEGATIVITY.

and with that obnoxiously provoking statement, i'm going to stop, not because i'm cruel, but because sophie is awake and my time is up. this is actually a good stopping point though, because it gives me a good starting point for what i guess is going to be part 2 (with my qualifier about rambling, i should have known this would require a part 2…)

until next time!

rules

many people who take issue with the fact that churches (usually the Catholic one) have so many "rules" (really they're teachings, but i digress...) are the same ones who tend to favor more government legislation and vice versa. at the end of the day, most people are allowing either God or Government to run their lives. at least religion is something you choose to follow freely in this country. just sayin'.