Why I am Still Catholic
I love the Catholic people – especially in my own parish, but also beyond. What a glorious mix of human beings! I can identify with theologian Rosemary Haughton who wrote that she likes “being part of something that has thrown up so many eccentric and remarkable people.” As Andrew Greeley says, “It’s fun to be Catholic.”
“In its best moments,” Greeley says, “Catholicism is the happiest of the major world religions. It is permeated by the reverent joy of Christmas night, the exultant joy of Easter morn, the gentle joy of First Communion, the satisfied joy of grammar school graduation, the hopeful joy of a funeral mass.”
Maybe that joy is due to Catholics’ sense of sacramentality – seeing the world through different lenses, God present, not only in the sacraments, but everywhere – God so close, so loving, so forgiving. As Julian of Norwich assures us, we are “enfolded in love.” How could anyone be sad or unlovable, surrounded by such divine and besieging kindness?
Along the same lines, I love the small “c” (universality) of Catholicism, how it embraces people of all cultures, races, ages, classes, nationalities throughout the world. I know that some parishes are mostly one race, but rarely are they one class. “Why, there’s the butler going to the same Mass that Madame attends.”
I’m blessed to see this goodness in my own inner-city parish. When we gather for worship, I watch young and old, whites, blacks, Latinos, Asians, people with Native American backgrounds coming together reverently. The homeless are welcomed, along with people who are well-off. Persons with mental or physical disabilities sit among the “abled.” Released prison inmates are made to feel at home. People of all sexual orientations praise God together. I know that this wonderful universality will happen again and again, “24/7,” as the Mass is celebrated around the world. It is, as Vatican II states, both a sign and instrument of our unity, as well as a promise and signpost of human unity across every barrier that divides. No other Church has such wonderful, beautiful, hopeful and world-wide diversity.
For me, a deeply-lodged anchor of my Catholicism is the absolutely central place it gives to Jesus Christ, the tangibility of God. Many years before becoming Catholic, I “accepted Christ as my Lord and Savior,” as our evangelical friends would say. I delight to be part of a worshiping and serving community whose members are trying to be disciples of the living Christ. Every time we meet, we not only reaffirm together our faith in Christ, born of the Virgin Mary, but are nourished and challenged, by Word and Eucharist, to live out our Christian faith in daily life. Better than any other Christian group I know, the Catholic Church has kept for 2,000 years the unity and integrity of faith in Jesus Christ. I feel blessed to have come to believe in the basic teachings of the Church, expressed in the creeds and in the central doctrines of the faith. I need frequently to be reminded of them and shown their implications.
When I’m not reacting negatively to some pronouncement that seems absurd, I appreciate the existence of the teaching Magisterium of the Church. For all its human faults, heavy-handedness, sometimes arrogance and lack of due process for accused theologians, I believe it is largely responsible (along with the Holy Spirit) for upholding the truth which is in Christ. It helps keep us on track. It is a major force holding us together, helping us contain our tensions, rather than splitting apart, as has happened so often in Christian history. It helps us honor Jesus’ prayer “that they may all be one” (John 17:21).
The Catechism of the Catholic Church is a remarkable achievement of the Magisterium and a magnificent compendium of Catholic faith. I have read my own dog-eared and much underlined copy from cover to cover and use it often as a reference. Many sections not only express the faith clearly, but are beautifully and movingly written. My main criticism is its stridently sexist male language. Reading it, one unfamiliar with the pervasiveness of such language in other official Catholic texts might conclude that it was written with the explicit intention of alienating women. (See, for example, the very first paragraph. Its six brief sentences use words like “he,” “him,” “himself,” “his,” and “man” an astounding twenty-one times, nearly one in every five words.)
At times the Church has expressed its faith in horrendous ways, e.g., burning heretics at the stake, forcing belief on unwilling cultures. At times it has taught untenable things, like supporting slavery, demeaning Jews, condemning democracy, opposing religious freedom. On occasion, it still supports the untenable (e.g., its teaching against contraception). I suppose it will do so in the future. But, at its best, it has never wavered in upholding its core belief in Jesus Christ. At its best, it has held Jesus before humanity in a humanizing, transforming way, not only theologically, but embodied in Christ-filled human beings who take up their cross and follow him. Catholicism is a marvelously, unambiguously Christ-centered faith. I find that very good, true and beautiful.
I find tremendous goodness in the venerable tradition of Catholic social teaching. I love the way it transcends the political dichotomies of Left and Right, its affirmation of human dignity, social justice and the common good, its preference for the poor, its linkage of faith with works, the wisdom it gives about how to transform the world to be more like the Reign of God. I love Cardinal Bernardin’s contribution to this tradition, the idea of a seamless garment of respect for life, from conception through death. I know of no other religious body that has the depth of Catholic social teaching.
Capitalists, look out! The Church is clear that the market should not be made into an idol, that the state has a right and an obligation to regulate economic affairs toward greater justice and fairness, that selfish individual wealth-seeking often conflicts with the “common good.” But socialists look out as well! No other entity in the world has been as critical of socialism’s excesses (especially in its communist form) as has the Church. The Church upholds the right to private property, mistrusts inordinate power in political hands, to give only two examples of its critique of several varieties of socialism.
And it’s not just talk. For years I went to a peace and justice conference organized by a department of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. Social Action directors and community activists – 500 or more priests, vowed religious and lay people – come together with bishops and other Catholic leaders to share and learn about each other’s work for peace, justice and the integrity of creation. They represent tens of thousands of other Catholics from their home dioceses who have the same commitment. Jim Wallis, a Protestant leader and editor of Sojourners magazine, says that such organized Catholic efforts represent the most powerful lobby for justice and peace in this whole country. Catholic Charities recently received national recognition as the largest and most effective social service organization in the nation.
Another wonderful expression of social teaching is the independent Catholic groups, like Pax Christi and the Catholic Worker, who do so much to embody their faith through peacemaking and justice-seeking.
My own urban parish, St. Vincent de Paul, is flush with people who live out Catholic social teaching through their ministries to the poor and their actions for peace and justice. I’m thrilled that people from 145 Philadelphia and suburban zip codes are attracted to our parish, not only because of its liturgy and lay involvement, but also because of our outreach to the marginalized and our efforts to make this world more like the Reign of God. I know of many other parishes around the country with similar orientations.
The preferential love for the poor, so central to Catholic social teaching, also finds expression in hundreds of Catholic hospitals and thousands of Catholic social service agencies throughout the country, along with millions of Catholic volunteers and ordinary parishioners. Day by day, and mostly unheralded – they go about the work of healing the sick, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the lonely, protecting the unborn and doing the other works of mercy. Again, these Catholic efforts provide the most widespread and comprehensive services to the poor and the marginalized of any non-governmental group in the United States. Their goodness is a sure sign of God’s Sprit at work.
I love the Sacraments, “even” Reconciliation, which, at least for many individuals, seems to have fallen out of favor in today’s skeptical world. Of course I can pray directly to God for forgiveness, but there is something wonderfully concrete about going to another human being, confessing my sins, being assured of forgiveness and getting help not to sin again. At times, Confession brings me an almost unbelievable sense of peace and tranquility. It gives me the inspiration, over and over, to believe that I can begin again.
I love the Mass and can’t imagine my life without the ability, on any day, to join my brothers and sisters – along with the angels and saints and choirs of heaven – praising and thanking God. I can’t imagine not being nurtured by the Body and Blood of Christ so as to go out into the world to try to be that body broken and that blood poured-out. I’m blessed to be part of a parish where the worship is anything but cold, dull or routine. Not always, but very often, we experience worship as deeply joyful, renewing, life-giving and participatory. We sense Christ forging a Body like his own from the unfinished materials of our lives.
The Mass is wonderful and central, but only part of the immense spiritual richness of Catholicism which I treasure. In addition to the liturgy are the lives of the saints and mystics, the great prayer traditions, the devotion to Mary, spiritual direction, the multiplicity of retreat centers, the wonderful books on spirituality – all have helped me enormously in my spiritual journey. Where would I be without them? Where else could I find such spiritual treasures?
In addition, I value the call to the priesthood and vowed religious life. That is a big step for a person raised as an eastern seaboard Quaker, a denomination with no ordained clergy, whose leadership is entirely lay. But some of the finest most dedicated and, yes, holy people I have ever met are priests and nuns. Of course there are nefarious, corrupt, pompous and power-hungry examples, as the sex abuse scandals have revealed. But these, I truly believe, form a minority of clergy and religious. Crucial in my journey to Catholicism was the kindness, intelligence and endless patience in answering my questions of a Medical Mission Sister and a Jesuit priest with whom I met. I’ve had the privilege in my parish of working with a Vincentian Brother and a Daughter of Charity who can only be called saints. As much as I may object to clericalism, it is clerics and sisters who, again and again, have shown me the face of Christ.
Another good thing that many of my friends find hard to believe is that the Catholic Church is amazingly open to positive change. It may be hard to see amidst today’s scandals and rigid directives from Rome, but who would have thought in the 1950's, before Vatican II, that we would see such immense changes. The Mass is in the vernacular, not Latin, as it was for over a thousand years. The hierarchy now accepts Biblical scholarship. The Church has given up the idea of being the one and only path to salvation. For so many centuries, the hierarchy opposed political democracy and religious freedom, but it now affirms them. The Church has now confessed its mistake in holding the Jewish people responsible for Christ’s death. All these positive, humanizing changes were brought about, not only by the Holy Spirit, but by the hard work and even suffering of dedicated people.
These profound reforms make me believe strongly that the injustices and misconceptions in which the Church is involved today can and will be changed. As Martin Luther King affirmed, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” As laity, we may be oppressed, as Paul Lakeland contends in his challenging book, The Liberation of the Laity. But, as the Psalmist says, God “secures justice for the oppressed,...sets captives free,...raises up those that were bowed down” (Ps. 146:7-8). Already, out of the sexual abuse scandals has come not only creative groups like Voice of the Faithful and the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), but books, conferences, university courses and prophetic voices calling for a profound transformation so that the Church can more nearly be like the community of Jesus’ vision. I think a Church like that is worth struggling and sacrificing to help bring about.
St. Augustine said:
Hope has two lovely daughters:
Anger and Courage.
Anger that things are not what they ought to be;
Courage to make them what they might be.
If we stop with anger, we’ll be frustrated and tempted to withdraw. We need courage, I think, to make the Church what it might be. And prayer. And love. Maybe we can take a leaf from Martin Luther King’s book and learn how to struggle courageously, but also lovingly and nonviolently, to help make the Church what it might be.
