| | |
|
AlexandraRexFirstPaper 7 - 18 Apr 2012 - Main.MeaganBurrows
|
| |
| META TOPICPARENT | name="FirstPaper" |
|---|
What is Catholic? | | | 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 | |
>
> |
Ladies,
Your essay and responses really resonated with me as well. I always find it enlightening to listen to/read unique individual experiences with religion and spiritual identity, as each time I gain new insights that serve to catalyze further self-reflection and growth in my own spiritual journey. I was raised Catholic and attended a Catholic school for 12 years. I particularly liked Toma's parent-child analogy for individual relationships with religious institutions. I started to feel disillusioned with the Catholic Church in sixth grade. I struggled with reconciling the social and spiritual value I derived from the community I grew up in with my visceral distaste for some of the political and moral positions espoused by the Church and my school. Through my personal conflict and through interaction and discussion with those from a variety of faiths, I have come to believe that religion – for me at least – is what I make of it. In general, I’m not a big fan of labels, which I find to be often reductionist and stifling. I don’t ascribe to a particular organized religion, but instead consider myself a ‘spiritual’ person. At one time, not too long ago, I was concerned about the implications of practicing ‘buffet style’ spirituality. I felt, as Alix and Courtney have stated, slightly guilty for ‘using’ religion, because I didn’t fit the ‘prototype’ of ‘the good Catholic’ I was raised to aspire to be. But I genuinely don’t think it upsets my God - or at least any God I would want to believe in - that I can both love the teachings of Jesus and take issue with religious institutional disdain for homosexuals and abortion rights. I don’t think my God would see this as cognitive dissonance or splitting or failing some spiritual unity test. In fact, I would like to believe that my God would respect and cherish my free thought, my emotional reaction to injustice, and my individuality. That’s why I feel I can, to borrow Alix’s words, “believe in God and go to church and have premarital sex and use contraception”…and support abortion rights and gay marriage. Because my God sees the inherent beauty in my unique ‘incoherence’ and discord, and loves me even more for it.
Ultimately, choice of spirituality and religious identification is a very personal decision, one that may constantly evolve throughout a life span and one that each individual must reach on their own. While some may derive great personal value from following the sermons of their priest to the letter, others, like myself, prefer to commune with God and practice spirituality in a different way. I don’t think either method is less worthy of respect than the other. It is often difficult however, being raised in a community focused on the former approach, to redefine yourself without feeling as though you are betraying your family, friends or community and isolating yourself from them. I definitely think Alix, as Eben said, that your new experience with meditation may prove to be very valuable. In addition to enabling you to dismiss distraction and subdue hectic consciousness, it may also help you to build upon the keen sense of self-awareness and introspection already emanating from your words, assisting you to reconcile seemingly conflicting emotions and define your own spirituality throughout your life.
-- MeaganBurrows - 17 Apr 2012 |
|
|
|
|
This site is powered by the TWiki collaboration platform.
All material on this collaboration platform is the property of the contributing authors.
All material marked as authored by Eben Moglen is available under the license terms CC-BY-SA version 4.
|
|
| | |