What is Catholic?

Thank you so much for sharing this experience. This essay was really thought-provoking and honest. Your paper explores a topic that is so uncomfortable that most of the world does not engage with it at all. Many people, nervous to indulge the doubts you identify here, suppress them and continue on blindly while still others withdraw altogether.

Having thought about some of these questions with regards to my own faith (Judaism), I wanted to share a piece of advice I received a few years ago. A colleague told me that oftentimes our experiences with the organizations/institutions which we respect can be compared to the trajectory of relationships between children and their parents. We are raised to believe they are flawless fortresses of morality and prudence. When the veneer of this image cracks and a duller reality is exposed, we feel rebellious and sometimes resentful. Why aren't our parents perfect? Why aren't our religions free of questions? This period of disenchantment can be really painful; it erodes at the foundations of our "truths" and leaves us feeling unstable. But, it is natural that these organizations will exhibit anthropomorphic discord; after all, they are made up of humans. Once we grapple with these questions, we can begin to really think about these organizations in a critical and productive way.

Like our parents, these institutions are not perfect, but we glean value from them and so they are important. Unlike your parents, you can tailor your own spirituality and religious experience so that it is a custom-fit. You can continue to be part of a community and a faith without subscribing yourself to all of its stances. At the same time, as a member of the congregation, you can steer that congregation's direction. Avoiding complacency doesn't necessarily mean leaving the religion (unless you want to), it can mean trying to change the particular Church to which you belong or, if that is not possible, allowing yourself to extract what is valuable to you from the faith while keeping some questions in the back of your mind. Some of the Church's actions which you take issue with seem to reflect a decision made by a person or groups of people, rather than natural extensions of the tenets of Catholicism. This is out of my depth, but I wonder, and maybe your paper can examine, if there is a difference between those elements of the Church which are actually fundamental from those that are traditional. Indeed there are a few Catholic congregations which have taken different positions from the one which you have described. Sorry if I made any of this sound easy. I know that it is not. You are brave to engage with these questions. Again, thank you for sharing.

-- TomaLivshiz - 17 Apr 2012