If you’re gonna blaspheme, at least make it funny
NEW YORK, NEW YORK—IT’S A HEAVEN OF A TOWN!
Daily Show writer Rob Kutner, with a lot of time on his hands these days, wrote up an itinerary for the Holy Father’s upcoming visit to New York City. It starts by mentioning that the visit occurs in the “sweet spot between tax time and Passover, so all of the Jews are busy.” It goes downhill from there–I don’t think I cracked a smile during the whole thing.
Putting the “public health” back in “public radio”
WDUQ, the NPR affiliate in Pittsburgh, has its home at Duquesne University, a Catholic university. The university has instructed the station to stop accepting underwriting funds from Planned Parenthood.
This question ultimately is about about the place of a Catholic institution to make such demands on media affiliated with it. I do listen to a lot of NPR–always with a critical ear, naturally, but they’re much more balanced than they once were. (Maybe not my local station, but that’s a whole other post.) Public radio underwriters usually aren’t very controversial, and while some people wonder what’s so controversial about low-cost Pap smears, the truth is that accepting advertising from PP doesn’t look good for a station that’s ultimately affiliated with a Catholic university.
(As an aside, though, I’m going to have to start visiting my local PP for health care if I don’t find insurance or a low-cost alternative soon. Sigh.)
OMG LET ME TELL YOU INTERNETS I HAVE SINNED!!!11WTFBBQ
Online confession? I only wish it were that easy. Being able to type things out emboldens us to say things we normally wouldn’t, and that might make things easier. But that doesn’t make it any more right than consulting with an online “doctor” to get a “Canadian” prescription for Viagra. Less so, actually–you might get real Viagra through the mail, but no real absolution over TCP/IP.
(I can’t wait to see the Google hits I’ll get from this post.)
Welcome back. By the way, everything you knew is wrong.
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.
Poor catechesis in action
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.
