Being a Catholic in 2008

UPDATE: I hadn't read this when I wrote the post below:

What one believes about God and creation and life after death, I have learned, is personal and complicated. Those of us who have spent a life doubting and insisting that our brains be permitted to function as they were meant to have often viewed church-going people with some sort of awe -- how can they be so sure?

It turns out that many, many, many aren't so sure and that the doubters' views of faith and religion are just, sometimes, wrongheaded. Faith is something that some folks seem genetically hardwired to have--it's a gift. Religion, while not unrelated to faith, is nonetheless different. It's something you practice. You can practice it, and benefit from it, even if you are not a faith-filled person. Just ask Mother Theresa.

Once I figured all this out, I found a great deal of comfort and intellectual satisfaction in being a Catholic. Catholicism, I have always believed, points a way to a right life (not the way, mind you). By following a perfect life through the liturgical year, we learn to be good children, good parents, good stewards of our world. From the liturgical Christ, we learn to suffer with grace, to stand up for the oppressed, and to accept our ultimate fate as mortals. We learn to submit when necessary. We learn to see the "divine" in one another.

The Catholic Church does not, like so many other denominations, reject physical existence. It revels in it. That's what the sacraments are -- the links between the physical facts of life and divinity. And, as the Church understood Christ for much of the 20th Century, an emphasis on physical existence calls us to service and tolerance. Mother Theresa said that if you want to find God, don't look in the cathedrals, look in the ghettos. That resonated with me. It still does.

In the past years, during the tenure of the last pope and, certainly, in the tenure of the present one, the Church has become more conservative. It is not that its harsher views have changed, it's that the consequences of questioning them have become harsher. Catholics are no longer invited to examine their consciences to test their alignment with Church teachings. Instead, they are reminded of the primacy of this one religion, and, in some places, they are denied the most fundamental benefit the Church offers -- the Eucharist -- if they disagree.

I do not agree with the Church's teachings on homosexuality. For years, I was content to live with tolerating the "condition" while condemning the "practice," but then priests began denying communion to gays and to gay sympathizers. My son attends a Catholic school. He is nine. Suppose, when he is 13, he decides he is gay? What will this new, conservative Church say to him?

I agree with the Church that the number of abortions in this country must be reduced and that the optimal number is zero. But, apparently like many Catholics, I do not agree that the Church's views are practical when combined with impractical and burdensome teachings on birth control. I do not agree that voting for a "pro life" candidate is the way to ensure an end to abortion. The most a president can do toward that end is get rid of Roe. The states will then be entitled to keep abortion, if they choose -- and many will. We will have accomplished very little. Sure, some women and doctors will get arrested and some children will get born who are not wanted, but these surely are not the end goals of the Church. What sense does it make to end choice if we have just created an entirely new set of inhumane and intolerable problems? Don't we really want a world in which women don't feel forced to choose abortions?

I believe the [catholic] answer to the problem of abortion is to encourage thoughtful teaching about sex and to accept more forms of birth control as an option. I also believe in personal responsibility, and I don't think, frankly, that enough families are willing to teach that, in many circumstances, it is noble to take responsibility for your actions--even if some sacrifice is required. But I firmly believe that the biggest part of the answer is to support candidates who support women and young girls and who believe in a social safety net. I believe the answer to abortion is at our family dinner tables and in our checkbooks and in the conversations we have with our friends. And yes, in the voting booth. Because if we just vote for people who want to put women in desparate straits in jail rather than to find meaningful solutions to a problem, we will be looking at high abortion rates forever.

I cannot believe that some want to deny me communion for these convictions.

I love my Church. After Christmas, however, we are moving our son to an Episcopal school. Whether our family will remain Catholic is an issue that we discuss frequently. We stick our heads in the sand a little, we
hope for better days. But we know a reckoning may be ahead, and, for us, this is a profoundly sad thing.