I learn something new every day! I was reading Fr. Robert Carr's blog, From the Middle of the Storm, when I came across this tidbit:
Martin Luther had some good ideas. His rejection of the Eucharist as the Body of Christ was not one of them. He is after all the one who coined the phrase: "Hocus Pocus". His mocking of the Latin Hoc Est Mea Corpus-This is my Body.
A small piece of trivia in a decidedly non-trivial blog.
I was raised Roman Catholic, which put me in the minority here in East Tennessee. Since I went to a Catholic grade school, and all of my friends were Catholic, it took me a while to realize that there were people who weren't Catholic. My dad was in the Knights of Columbus, and we went to the Friday Fish fries at the K of C hall, and of course Mass on every Sunday, although occasionally we would go Saturday evening, when the services were more informal. As a student in a Catholic school, we had religious studies, and attended Mass every morning. I don't know that I was particularly devout, but I did take it seriously, and became an altar boy for Sunday Masses, and a cantor for the daily Mass.
The Parish priest was a Jesuit, and from the old school. We had several more modern priests come and go, but Fr. Julius was the foundation of Sacred Heart Church. I still remember him teaching me how to strike a paper match to light the candles before Mass. I was afraid that I would burn myself trying to strike them, and asked him for some wooden matches. He would have none of that foolishness, and showed me how to strike the paper ones without burning myself. He took the time to ease my fears, and build me confidence. A small thing to be sure, but one that sticks in my memory. Looking back now at some of the things he said and did, I think he had his eye on me as a possible future priest, but was waiting to se if I had a calling, rather than trying to actively recruit me.
At the time, the mid 70's, there was an acute shortage of priests, and the seminaries were begging for people. I believe that is where the current problems originated. Rather than looking for men who had a calling, the Church began actively recruiting men for the priesthood, and cast the net a little too wide.
Anyway, I can remember the day when I started to question my beliefs. It was during a Sunday Mass, and the Gospel was Jesus throwing the moneychangers out of the temple. The Homily was "Why every Catholic should subscribe to the Liguorian"
Even at 11 or 12, I could still appreciate the irony.
I didn't question the catechism as much as I did the institutions. I still believe in most of the Catholic doctrine, with the one major exception of birth control, but I had a hard time reconciling the actions of the Church with that catechism. The Liguorian pitch was only the most obvious example of this variance; there were many others.
It began to seem to me that the Church valued form over function, that the rituals and rites were more important than the faith that lay behind them. As my dad would often comment, we spent an hour at Mass talking about love and "Go in Peace," and 15 minutes in the church parking lot, cussing the guy who cut you off on your way out. I didn't see people living the life they proclaimed in church. It reminded me in a way of the Jewish religion at the time of Jesus. They were so caught up in their rules, and the law, that God had to send Jesus down to straighten out the whole mess. Moses was given 10 simple laws, and the Hebrews managed to develop endless tomes of law and interpretation of the law, requiring very learned men to research, argue, and debate, before telling the common man what he could or could not do. So, God figured if he boiled it down to one simple rule, maybe we humans wouldn't be able to bollix it up again. It seemed to me at the time that the Catholic Church succeeded in complicating it again.
The current troubles also touched me, albeit very lightly. One year at summer camp, Catholic of course, I was approached by a seminarian. I guess I may have been 14 or so. My cabin was on a weekend campout, and somehow the two of us were apart from the rest of the group. He was very subtle about it, and I really didn't get the point; I just knew there was something wrong with the situation. Feeling very uncomfortable, I left and rejoined the rest of my cabin. I was an awkward kid, and feeling uncomfortable in a social situation was nothing new for me. It was only years later that I realized what he was looking for, but by then it was so far back, it didn't really have much of an emotional impact on me.
Anyway, I started drifting from the Church, and before long, I began to consider myself as a non-Catholic. I still retained most of the doctrinal beliefs of a Catholic, Communion, Confession, the Trinity, saints, and Purgatory, but I disagreed with some of the practices, like the prohibition on birth control. Rather than acting like most American Catholics and calling myself a Catholic, while disagreeing with central practices of the Church, I decided it would be more honest to leave the Church, and call myself an agnostic.
And so, for the last 20 years or so, that is what I have been. I believe in God, and I talk to Him fairly regularly, and I try to thank Him for the good in my life rather than ask Him for things. I try to live my life as a good man, making things around me better instead of worse. But I've been finding that lately, that isn't enough. I'm feeling a pull back to the Catholic Church. I know Jesuits have a saying, "Give us a child until he is 10 and he'll be ours for life," or something like that, and maybe that is what I am feeling. I still don't know how to reconcile my personal convictions with what the Catholic Church teaches, nor would I feel comfortable rejoining the Church with serious reservations. Maybe the current crisis will remove some of those reservations as the Catholic Church finds its soul again. Maybe then I'll feel comfortable rejoining. I don't know.
I've just finished re-reading this post, for speeling and grammar errors, and realized that this would be more at home in And So It Goes. Oh well, this is my blog, and I make the rules.
It stays here.
Posted by Rich at May 23, 2002 3:04 AM