What is Catholic?

Attending a Catholic college was not the rosy experience I expected. I thought I would be surrounded with passionate peers who cared about social justice and putting their faith in action. Instead, I met people who had never met a Mexican girl, whose parents earned more than a quarter million dollars a year, and who knew nothing about the Catholic social justice tradition. The experience was suffocating. Yet, I was able to find my niche and find the people who shared my values. I didn't transfer out because I realized there was work to be done: the purpose of community is to learn from one another and not chicken out.

Yet, when it comes to the substance of Catholic Church teaching and its practical experience, I am more than troubled. I remember going to a friend's wedding a couple years ago and feeling like the door of the Church was shut against my body: I am never going to be on that altar. I had gotten over the fact I could never be a priest as some point, but having yet another sacrament torn away from me felt de facto excommunication.

There are a couple of things that do keep me in the church, though, and I hope that they might be a source of consideration, Alix: 1. Catholic Social Tradition: I find fuel in externalizing deeply held religious values and maybe, this is my Catholic "functional output." There is a significant quantum of people in the Church who do believe in the life and dignity of the human person, who believe there should be a preference for the poor, who believe that providing people a living wage is a Christian mandate, and who believe that participation and diversity make the Church truer. If you're interested in learning more, here is a link that might be a good starting point. For a really cool New Yorker who took the call to solidarity with poor and women's rights seriously, check out Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement.

2. Wealth of Spiritual and Intellectual History: I was fortunate to major in the "Great Books" in college (another reason I didn't leave) and to experience Western culture with a dose of the Catholic intellectual tradition. In much of the assigned text, I found the beauty of the God experience as related by men and women hundreds of years ago. Of note were Dante, Julian of Norwich, and Teresa of Avila. I wouldn't lose this if I became a Lutheran, but it reels me in to the Catholicism.

3. The Face of Tomorrow's Theology: The next generation of Catholic theologians also live the cognitive dissonance we worry about: they are gay, feminist, progressive, and engage in inter-religious dialogue. When Pope Benedict says that condom use by male prostitutes can be justified to stop the spread of HIV, there is some hope that in our generation, there will be a different face to the Catholic church.

I admit that change in the Church comes glacially. Only in the last century was the liturgy you and I relish allowed to be in the local vernacular. Is it worth it to stay in a church today, hope to revitalize it, and pray that something actually changes in a hundred years? I don't know, but it's a daily decision to stay.