I thought I’d throw that Colbert graphic in there to lighten the mood of this post a bit, because this post isn’t pretty.
…I don’t think that I can in good conscience stay Catholic.
I’m feeling very dark and abandoned by the church and most of all by God. I feel unwelcome in the Church, racked by doubt, and very alone. I haven’t been to Mass in about six weeks and I can’t rustle up the will to go.
“Maybe if you went to Mass more often, you’d get a job offer!” my mom chirped over the weekend.
I don’t think that’s how it works even if there is a God.
I think that deep down, I’m an atheist with morals informed by a Catholic upbringing and my innate obsessive scrupulousness. Maybe I was in denial during my initial reversion; craving God and wanting to find a community of people who think about sex and family the way I do.
Prayers seem to just echo in my head. Going to Mass just seems like it would be empty.
I have to go to confession before I receive communion again, because I follow the rules even when I’m not sure anyone is enforcing them.
I don’t like feeling this empty and alone, but maybe that’s how it always will be.
I’ve been job-hunting and interviewing lately. My employment situation is rather precarious and I am waiting to hear back about some interviews that would improve my life significantly.
Please pray for me, and put in a good word with St. Catherine of Alexandria and St. Thomas More.
I had a busy and incredibly stressful day that ended with overnighting some items to a friend who has traveled cross-country to be with her mother as she dies. I haven’t been able to afford gas, and as I merged on to the interstate, my car began to slow down and shudder a bit. Empty tank.
“Please,” I prayed. “Get me through this, get me to the next exit and a gas station.”
“Nah,” God replied. “You need a firm lesson on planning ahead and taking basic care of yourself before you put yourself out for others. Plus, you didn’t make it to Mass today.” The car slowed down and shuddered to a stop as I pulled over.
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.)
My mood has been murky today as I turn this article and its reaction in the Catholic blogosphere over in my mind. I am a political moderate but a registered Democrat as of this past spring, for the sake of voting in the 2008 presidential primary. Pro-life Democrats are rare now, and not particularly vocal.
I think sometimes that the faith isn’t particularly compatible with democracy, and the nature of our political system. I prefer when government stays out of my life, and I say that as a government employee.
The horse has, unfortunately, left the barn, and I don’t think that banning abortion wholesale would have much of an effect other than pushing women to illegal clinics. I oppose the expansion of available abortion and new government funding for it, but I think that the greater priority, given the current culture and political climate of America, is prayer and working to change the culture.
Yet some people tell me that so much as casting a vote for a Democrat is a grave sin.
When I studied in France years ago, I lived in an attic maid’s room and took meals with a family who lived in a small apartment in a nice neighborhood. The family rented a room within their apartment to another student, an Evangelical my own age from Arkansas, and we all often had dinner together. The family forbade us to speak English to each other in the house, and we often had very deep and fascinating conversations over dinner, even with our slightly mangled French. Nicole’s hadn’t studied French for very long, only five semesters or so, and her language skills were weaker than mine.
Our host family were indifferently Catholic, perhaps practicing a little more than most French people. I was lapsed at the time; I think I attended Mass two or three times in the six months I lived there, but visited dozens of interesting churches. The other student–I’ll call her Nicole here–attended small non-denominational churches, many run by expats, in Paris. Sometime that spring, she heard about an organized pilgrimage to the cathedral at Chartres. She had never visited that cathedral, and made a note of the meeting time and place, deciding to go.
Now, Chartres is a spectacular cathedral, and an old, old traditional pilgrimage site. As Nicole reached the gathering site around dawn, she noticed that other people had large backpacks and other camping gear. She didn’t pay much attention to this until the group of people started to move. She assumed that they were moving to buses…or to a train station….to some sort of motorized transport.
They were not. This was a traditional pilgrimage, and it was on foot. Nicole realized this too late, traveling with only the spring clothes she was wearing and her school bag.
I think that the trip she was part of was the Notre-Dame de Chrétienté Pentecost pilgrimage that happens every year, and that she had received bad information about the nature of the trip. (Here’s another article about the Notre-Dame pilgrimage, which sounds fascinating.) They had traveled outside of the city before she realized what was truly going on.
She decided to continue with the trip. She kept to herself and was too shy and embarrassed to ask her traveling companions for help or for food. Some people may have shared water or snacks with her, but she traveled without meals. When it came time to sleep, she separated from the group and slept on the ground with no blankets. She had decided early on to make this a true pilgrimage of her body and her spirit, and though I don’t think she framed it in quite those terms, to unite her suffering with that of Jesus on the cross. She did not tell the other pilgrims how she was suffering, and as she told us about her pilgrimage trip, she was modest and matter-of-fact, not seeking sympathy or pity.
I’ve tried very hard to forget most things that happened to me during that part of my life, but this story that she told at the dinner table has stuck with me. Her suffering in silence, determination to finish the trip without complaining, and ability to view a disaster as a spiritual learning experience have stuck with me.
It reminds me of a lot of adventures we have in this life–things we never would have started if we had realized beforehand how difficult they would be.
I’m a huge, huge Beatles fan, but can’t stand “Imagine” on multiple levels. So this, even though it’s a crime against the general principle of song parodies and has about three times as many syllables as it ought to, really made me laugh. I can’t embed Vimeo videos here, but check out the link for video of the performance.
Imagine there’s no heaven,
It’s easy if you try
Imagine there’s nothing real but what you see
Isn’t that a cheery thought?
Imagine all the people living for today
Imagine there’s no heaven or hell
And while we’re at it, no moral justice
No more consequences for what you do
You can cheat on your wife, no problem
(Everything turns out right anyway)
Wouldn’t this really be
A wonderful world to live in
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
And we all know truth is determined by majority
So come along and we’ll be as one
Imagine no possessions
It isn’t hard to do
Imagine not being responsible for anything
Or caring how it’s treated
Life would be sort of like the public library
All the books with the pages ripped out
Imagine not wanting to own anything
Imagine not having the things you enjoy
So imagine not caring what you have for dinner
And no passions too
Imagine what it feels like to be a brick
Living as a brick for evermore
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
So if we get enough people together
I’m sure we can talk some sense into God
Imagine no religion
No Jesus Christ to tell us what to do
Just all of us sort of figuring it out
And everyone stopping being selfish
A brotherhood of man
Because……it’s a nice thing to do
Imagine all the people
Achieving an uncorrupt, socialist world state all by ourselves
Well maybe that’s a little hard to imagine
But go ahead anyway,
After all we’ll show God we can be brave
No-ho-ho matter what He thinks
A lot of people can’t stand Commonweal, but I like it most of the time and just roll my eyes the rest of the time. I found this article fascinating, since I’ve met many Vietnamese-American Catholics in the last ten years, before visiting southern California, I didn’t even know that they existed. Yes, I grew up in a bubble.
