Everything You Knew is Wrong

I went back to St. J. this evening since I didn’t manage to make it out of the house on Saturday.  I thought I’d give them a chance when it wasn’t a holiday.

Well.

I have never walked out of a church with such an overwhelming desire to drag pastoral musicians out back and beat them senseless with their hymnals. (The guitar edition of Breaking Bread could probably do a number.)

If you’re going to miss cues, at least stay sort of remotely close to on pitch.

If you’re going to be wildly off-pitch, at least hand someone a tambourine so you’re all remotely on the same measure at the same time.

If you can’t accomplish any of that…just don’t pick songs that sound like theme songs to ’80s soap operas.  (I’m looking at YOU, Haugen!)

There were a few things that would make people other than me cry “liturgical abuse,” and it bothers me profoundly that people there are not in the habit of kneeling during any part of the mass whatsoever.

Those are things I could almost overlook if the music there weren’t so wretched.  As a former musician, it distracts me to no end.

I’m feeling very tired for most of this week, both physically and mentally.  I suffer from debilitating migraines, and I’ve had a tension headache since…Thursday, I think.  Maybe Wednesday, but I think I had just been hung over from too many margaritas at my birthday party on Tuesday night.  (The strawberry ones are so tasty, but I need to remember to order them without alcohol later in the evening…)

Anyway, the muscles of my forehead ache as if they’ve been strained, which leads to dizziness, nausea, and just plain feeling tired.  I can’t get any relief from it with painkillers, either, unlike a migraine.  “Maybe I thought too hard and I sprained my brain,” I joked to my mother earlier today.

Sure, it’s not medically possible, but it feels like that’s what happened.  On top of preparing to graduate and some general work woes, I’m at a spiritual impasse and feel terribly confused.

I didn’t quite realize what I got myself into when I decided to formally revert if one can do “formally” do such a thing.  There’s no ceremony, and it’s not like I left the Church–I only left regular practice.

I grew up in a church that was liberal to a fault, and my religious education was severely lacking, though my mother was able to fill in some gaps.  As I correct a lot of the incorrect things I learned, and fill in the remaining gaps, I become very anxious and start to wonder what, exactly, I’m doing, and whether I’d be better off, or at least happier, going back to my life as a lapsed-Catholic agnostic.

I can’t do things by halves.  When I take on a project or start a new hobby, I go all out or not at all.  But I’m not sure I can do what’s demanded of me if I go whole hog back into practicing Catholicism.  Yet easing in isn’t really an option either, since I have one hurdle to jump.  I learned only a short time ago that I’m not supposed to receive the Eucharist with mortal sins on my slate.  Seeing that the last time I went to confession was in 1997, I have…a few.  Regular confession isn’t something that I was ever taught was required; it was something to be done only when someone forced us to.

I’ve taken the route of simply not going to mass for the last few weeks.  The local offerings that don’t conflict with my weekend job range from “annoying” to “rampant liturgical abuse,” and I’m so tired and frustrated lately that I just think, “well, if I shouldn’t receive, then I lose the only thing that makes going to Mass worthwhile.”  Most people I know would overlook this and just receive anyway, but I wouldn’t be writing this blog or worrying myself sick about other theological issues if I were “most people.”  I’m not sure whether that’s good or bad, these days.

I recently learned that some local Franciscans have a lovely chapel in a strip mall; they have about eight hours of open reconciliation time every weekday, and a few daily Masses.

I thought that I would welcome this news, but it’s only increased my stress.  This news removes the one excuse I had left–no times convenient to my schedule for confession–and increases my anxiety.

It would be so much easier to turn and run away, and write off the last few months as an ill-fated experiment in devoutness.

The right thing to do is, of course, rarely the easiest.

I’m starting to think that Catholics need an equivalent term to Baal Teshuva, meaning a young person who adheres to a stricter tradition than that in which they were raised, or who return to faith when they had previously left.  It should be a Latin word, but my Latin is…nonexistent.

I’m thinking of this because of something that I put in the mail with my bills today.  I ordered my first Latin-English missal and a few other odds and ends from OLRL, a group that is…um, pretty far to the right, just short of sedevacantism, as far as I can tell.  Which is admirable, if that’s their thing.  I’ve never owned a missal at all.  We had seasonal missalettes at my church growing up, which had the text of the Mass, readings, prayers, and some other useful things in it.  I remember following along when I was first learning how to read, which was helpful.  My church phased them out because they switched to a different translation of Scripture, but they’re still around for those who want them.  I think part of the reasoning was also to make Mass more oral and participatory, rather than having people follow along in the book.

I’ve never owned a scapular, so I ordered one, and some pamphlets.  Yay, shiny new book toys!

I had been working on an outline and some background research for a blog entry or even an article along these lines, but someone else wrote it for me. I’ve written before about my experiences in France. I loved France and intend to go back for a while once I have the money to spare. Like Québec, what was once a culture so thoroughly based on Catholicism (practices, if not necessarily faith) clamored in the late ’60s and early ’70s to cast off religion like a particularly scratchy wool sweater.

I found the story of the young woman who came up to Ms. Eden after her program particularly touching. I can’t presume to say what’s always the best thing for everyone, since premarital and extramarital sex has been going on, well, for as long as there’s been marriage. In a way I surround myself with like-minded people, since even the most liberal of my friends are only interested in sex in the context of a relationship.

I really think, though, that the last few generations have been sold a bill of goods. I always thought so, even as an atheist. Sometimes I longed to act on my impulses… well, that’s not true, since it wasn’t so much to act on my impulses as it was to finally make myself just like everyone else since being a “geriatric” virgin (i.e. older than 20) is rather shameful in the circles I moved in in college.

Even if the sexual revolution’s backlash doesn’t change society as a whole, if writers and religious leaders are brave enough to speak out about it, if that saves some people from the suffering that mindless sex can cause, then so much the better.

And the “Three Cool Cathechists” title of that post made me have to track down the Beatles’ version of the song it pays tribute to.

Lastly, for some reason I missed “The Colbert Report” on his latest night of super-awesome Catholic content (discussing the Gospel of Judas) and only heard about it through Custos Fidei.

Based on interviews I’ve read, Stephen Colbert seems to come from the same school of liberal but still devoted and theologically nerd faith that I do, and I’ve long been a fan of his. It’s fun to see him explode across the Catholic blog scene periodically.

Speaking of TV, the Holy Whapping Television Network (HWTN) post made me giggle so hard I nearly spit cranberry-grape juice on my (white) skirt.  Oops.

Who are the real rebels, indeed?

Considering how much anger I inspire in most of the people I know when I say fascist things like “having sex with someone you’re not even dating is always morally wrong” and that most horrible, rebellious of all things a young single woman can say, “I’m against abortion,” I do identify with this article.  The hatred Eden inspires in the secular press (see Gawker) makes me wonder where it comes from.  I’ve experienced much of the same online, just with a lower profile.

I left a comment on this post at Holy Whapping that made me smirk, and so I decided to post it here.

No, you’ve got it all wrong. Here’s what’s off:

The bishop expects them to have LEARNED the Baltimore Cathechism. I never owned or read a cathechism until I was in my mid-twenties. That’s with ten years of standard religious ed and preparation for three sacraments under my belt.

We didn’t have Confirmation class until many of us were old enough to drive, and then it mostly consisted of talking about God’s love, making felt banners with our patron saint’s names on them, and being encouraged to hug each other all of the time.

Color me jealous. Jealous of those adorable white mantillas, actually.

Maybe if my parish had tossed the ’70s aging hippie crap and given us something substantive and engaging to learn, so many kids in my class wouldn’t have considered Confirmation their graduation from Catholicism.

Had they really wanted to court goodwill, they could have not held classes at 8 AM on Saturdays.  That’s when 15-year-olds in my hometown are hung over!

I was hoping that my parish-shopping adventure would stop with the lovely 19th-structure that’s a few minutes’ drive from both my house and my weekend job. Turns out, well, no.

One of the more amusing insults for overly-liberal music and liturgy over on the DCF Board is “happy-clappy.” I thought that this was excessive until I saw it in action–the priest encouraged us to clap along with the choir/folk group during the last song. And applaud afterward. As a former pastoral musician (guitar) I have to say…I never liked getting applauded, except maybe at the end of a Christmas or Holy Week marathon of rehearsals and masses. Regular performances were what was expected of us; they weren’t worthy of applause. Just a regular day at the “office.”

The homily was short and enlightening, and I liked the priest a lot, but a lot of the details I couldn’t deal with. The picture at left is of this church in the mid-’50s. Lovely, isn’t it?

The entire interior (even the ceiling) is now painted white, and there is only a plain crucifix on the wall over the altar, a regular table-style altar, and the pews have been replaced with interlocking chairs. It’s bland and doesn’t match the church’s neat 19th-century exterior at all.

I’m not comfortable without kneelers. We always avoided mass at the church in my hometown that lacked them, except when the mass time was convenient and we had nowhere else to go.

I liked how the population there was very young (the church borders a college campus, and so draws many of the students.) It’s neat to be in a church of people close to my own age. What’s not neat is to see that both of the lectors were in jeans (one in ripped-up, worn ones) and one of the ushers was wearing jeans and an Aerosmith tour t-shirt. Maybe I’m being snobby, but that just didn’t sit well with me. We would have been peer-pressured out of doing that when I was in college–Newman was small and close-knit, and that just wasn’t done. It wasn’t expected.

There’s a difference between casualness and lack of respect, and I really think that people mean well. Casualness and a lack of what I call a “sense of the sacred” is what drove me away from the church, years ago.

In summary: St. P is a very friendly place and very close to my work and home, but so liberal and casual that I felt ill at ease. I feel bad saying so, since the priest and staff and parishoners were so nice, but I can’t help how I feel.

My shopping continues. Good thing I live in a Northeastern metro area with dozens of churches to choose from.

Things are slow here at work on the reference desk, so I decided to poke around the Internet instead of doing anything academically useful. The controversy and eventual splinter church and excommunications at Corpus Christi in Rochester, NY popped into my head while I was reading something else. I decided to dig up a few articles on it–my memory was fuzzy on some of the details, and I suspected I’d look at it differently now than I did then. I saw the events as the facts were reported in my local paper. Now I have access to the New York Times, and magazines of varying ideological stripes.

I suppose it says a lot that at the time, I thought that Corpus Christi/Spiritus Christi* was a pretty cool idea. I was in my late teens. “So what if they’re schismatic!” I said to myself. “That just means that the power hierarchy is WRONG!” In hindsight, looking at their programs, it seems that even if it weren’t for the (many) other issues, the big problem is that they’re just too liberal for me. Which is quite an accomplishment, when you get down to it. After all, Newshour quoted their pastor:

REV. JIM CALLAN: All the issues I’ve been removed for will seem absolutely silly in 10 years, because we will have married priests, we will have married women priests, we’ll have Protestants and Catholics receiving Communion together. Gay people will be getting married in church. Yes, I would not do these things if I thought they were - are so far off the mark.

That was in, um, 1999.

I’d be honored to be part of a parish with so many ministries helpful to the community surrounding it–prior to the break, the church’s programs were amazing. The trouble is, I can’t get behind drastic breaks with tradition. I had considered conversion to Buddhism or to the Episcopal Church, but neither really worked for me at heart.

* - I’m linking to the Wikipedia article precisely because of how terrible it is. They’re never going to achieve a neutral point of view on this thing.

I moved to this city twenty-five months ago, but I still haven’t managed to find myself a psychiatrist. I have been treated for depression and dysthymia for a half-dozen years now, and lacking first comprehensive, then any health insurance, whatever traditional psychotherapy I sought would have to be paid for out of pocket. As a full-time student and part-time library paraprofessional, there’s not much in my pockets, so I have to make do with what resources I can cobble together.

I saw a resident at the medical school for a while, and consulted with my former psychiatrist over the phone while I was in transition from one place to another. Phone consultations are hard, and at the sliding-scale clinic I had serious doubts about the competence of my resident, as well as disgust at the unprofessional behavior of the reception staff. I found a combination of medications that keeps me relatively stable and content, and I have a GP prescribing them to me as a stopgap situation until I can set myself up with a competent specialist who is willing to see a patient who pays out-of-pocket.

That’s a gloss of my background info. One of these weeks I’ll write more about mental illness, despair, and lack of faith.

Someone on a message board mentioned catholictherapists.com, which piqued my interest–it might be nice for once to see a mental health professional who doesn’t see my geriatric (past age 20) virginity as a serious crisis to be remedied as soon as possible. There was one listed in my city, whose office I drive past every day on my way to work. Looking over her profile, I saw something that stuck in the back of my mind. The site asks applicants to state and comment on which official Church teachings they agree or disagree with. Catholic personals sites do the same thing, of course–all for reasons that should be self-evident. You can see the application here: it asks about artificial contraception, abortion, infertility, cohabitation…the everyday issues that most mainstream American Catholics ignore.

The local shrink agreed with the last item. The Church’s teaching on homosexuality.

Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.

This is a valid teaching, even if it’s one that I disagree with, and I understand why they include it…but then, I don’t. I understand that there are still conservative physicians and therapists who believe that homosexuality is a psychiatric illness in need of treatment or who call for chastity and conquering one’s urges. Fine. To say that being homosexual is “disordered” implies that it is a mental illness…which it hasn’t been considered such by her profession since 1972.

Pharmacists and hospitals have a right not to stock or dispense Plan B. Here in New York, you can have a special testing time for civil service exams if they happen to fall on a religious holiday or day of rest. I oppose on ethical grounds the policy of my profession (librarian) that all patrons, even minors, should have access to all materials in the library.

It’s one thing to gracefully bow out of doing things at work that one’s religion forbids, but publicly declaring disagreement with the profession’s definition of what constitutes a mental illness? I can see the reasoning behind it, but I’m not sure I would want to be a patient of a doctor who clicked the little ticky box in complete sincerity.

I read today’s B.C. strip before learning that the creator, Johnny Hart, had died. I find it rather fitting that he died right before Easter, since the Holy Week strips seemed to be the crowning glory of his year, if a little confusing at times. (”How old was Jesus when he was crucified” is a math question?)

It will be strange to see the comics page without his work, even if I found it uninspired and unfunny about 95% of the time. I hope that the space he currently occupies on comics pages will be ceded to a new, creative, young (well, under 70) cartoonist.