It seems in my life themes appear. It could be everyone I know being pregnant, job loss, housing changes, lots of random things. Right now it’s religion. This is something I have been thinking quite a bit about and has come up on other blogs and in my real life. Religion, for me, is a tough topic because I feel so many different emotions. First I should probably make a surprising confession… (ha, ha , get it? nevermind)
I am Catholic, albeit a bad one, but Catholic all the same. I think we can all agree on why I am a bad Catholic, but frankly that just a tip of the ice berg. In my daily life I follow very little of the church’s teaching. I have sex, I hand an abortion (which is a biggie!) I am on birth control. Regardless of this, I still consider myself a Catholic and I am proud to call myself one. This causes obvious conflicts internally as well as within the community. I am able to make the distinction between my disapproval of some of the church’s “rules” because I break religion (specially Catholicism, but it works for any religion) in three groups; The church’s theology, the church as an institution and organization, and its members.
When I was living back east I went to a small Jesuit college which required religion classes. Even back then this caused much internal debate and flashbacks of having to get up for Sunday school and first communion class. And unlike Sunday school I was not going to have the bonus of looking for the Nina’s name in the Sunday Times with my dad over breakfast. (man, those breakfast were the best part of my week as a kid) To say I dreaded my first religion class is an understatement, but and this is a big BUT, I loved those classes. I had completely misunderstood what they were going to be. I didn’t learn about Catholicism, but theology . I hadn’t realized there was a difference. I loved learning about different scholars views on how religions were interpreted and how religion dictated how women and others were view and treated within a society. My second year at this school, I took my second religion class which was “Understanding Catholicism” and was by far one of the most interesting classes I have ever encountered. Thank God it was the only religion class open when I got my lazy ass around to registering. My professor was a Jesuit priest and one of the most compassionate, passionate people I have ever met. He took my (and a few of my classmates) cynicism in stride. He taught us about traditions within the faith and he was adamant to the bible being open to interpretation within reason. Which frankly was a huge relief to me; reading the bible literally never sat right with me, but that a whole different topic. I personally believe that a lot of positive things are the backdrop for Catholicism. The idea of forgiveness, personally responsibility and commitment are good ones. I hold onto these tenets. I believe that what the Catholicism was truly founded on is a good thing.
I think the Catholic church as an institution is a crock of shit. There is a duality here that I still struggle with. From my personal experience I have found the church hypocritical, unbending and downright infuriating. Even writing these sentences my mood went from comfy cozy to blood boiling. I have never been able to rap my mind around church. I think individual congregations can be a great source of community and support, but the organization as a whole is repugnant. Corruption is rampant and has disgraced the ultimate benefits of the religion. When I was a senior in high school I was president of my local CYO and loved it. I had a bit more faith then, but I was starting to question it. Every summer we would do a long weekend up at a cabin on lake. It belonged to one of parishioners and they would lend the cabin and their boat to us for you use. Five days of swimming and not showering cause we didn’t have enough quarter to run the public showers because we had used them all on cheap candy. It was great! My last year my director of the CYO program was pregnant so she slept upstairs with her husband to be able to get a good night sleep and the assistant director (AD) slept (or more accurately didn’t) downstairs with all the kids. There were probably about 25 us from 15 to 18 and we were a loud, rowdy, sugar infused group. Our director would sit in a lawn chair on the beach and wave as the AD took us out on the boat because she was tired and the movement made her sick. Most of the trip all she talked about was how tired she was and sick she felt. All of us kids understood and were excited that she was going to have a baby. It was fine I didn’t think anything of it. Later that summer at a retreat I found out the AD had been asked to rescues her position (which was volunteer) with CYO and asked to leave the church. Why you ask? Because she was pregnant and not married. (also 35 and a lawyer, so more power to her. It’s not like she couldn’t take care of it) Now as much as I don’t agree with the thinking I can understand why she was asked to rescues herself from CYO, what I was not comfortable is that because she wasn’t married she somehow mattered less than my director. Yep, that’s right folks, they were BOTH pregnant on the lake trip. (I think the baby’s were born roughly 3 weeks apart) She was treated like dirt. Made to sleep downstairs with the loud teenagers, drive the boat which made her sick and all the while not complain or let on what was really happening. Because of course we weren’t to be told, I mean come on, the disgrace! The kicker of the whole thing is she did it, without complaining because we mattered to her, she respected us enough to endure all of that for one more trip with us. One more chance to have a positive impact on a bunch of young kids. The other point that doesn’t sit well with me is how she was used. The church knew she was pregnant before we left for the church and they still let her come. If they were going to remove her on principle that would seem like the time to do it, but they needed the body to chaperone so they used her as a warm body and then punished her while putting the married women on a pedestal. I never go over that and will admit it probably caused much of my later cynicism.
My AD is what I think a catholic should be. She cared more about others than she did her self, she did was she could for her congregation by volunteering for CYO and followed her morals. Yes, she had premarital sex, but when it came to the consequences she followed the teachings of her faith and made a decision SHE could live with. When a couple of us confronted our priest he actually told us that she would be allowed back if she gave the baby up for adoption. HUH? In my opinion, and it’s just that MY opinion) a good catholic doesn’t not fall from grace, of course they do, but they get up gracefully from the fall. The individual members of the church are the most difficult aspect for me. I want to believe (and for the most part do) that the majority of the members are good people doing the best they can with their lives and with their faith, but there are the bad apples which feed into the organizational issues. I look at my AD and my professor and most importantly my grandmother and it restores my faith in the organization. They along with ideals I can get behind help me get beyond the blood boiling rage I feel for the institution. My attachment to Catholicism goes far beyond these delineations as well. I think as people we are created by our traditions, our legacies and my traditions happen to coincide with the catholic faith. I am a cradle catholic and because of that it is as much a part of me and my heritage as being German and Irish. Regardless of the separation on ideals and ideology it’s a part of me. I don’t agree with my mother all the time, but that doesn’t change the fact that I am her child. I don’t always agree with the Catholic church but that doesn’t change its legacy on me and therefore I am Catholic.