Favorite Philosopher's Blog

A week or so ago I stated that I am Catholic to the core of my being.  As if to taunt me, the Vatican comes out almost immediately with a statement  –  a double whammy regarding pedophilia and women’s ordination and practically equating the two – that makes me want to sit down with a large spoon and enough ice cream to kill a gorilla to try to figure out how I can continue to call myself Catholic.

So here I go again.  Facing the evil that is the bureaucracy of the Catholic Church.  How can I stay?  There is no defense for the actions of the Vatican.   How can I stay? The present Pope is a travesty.  How can I stay? The response to the pedophile scandal is pathetic.  How can I stay?  And the absolute insanity of these old misogynistic men in Rome regarding the ordination of women is unspeakable.  How can I stay?

I can stay because they are false, and I am true.  They and their power hunger and fear and misogyny are not what Jesus Christ intended for this Church; Christ intended love for his Church.   Their view of humanity is hateful, the view of humanity of true Catholics is loving.  I stand with the women who are already being ordained and refusing to deny their Catholicism.  It is their birthright.  They have been baptized in the eyes of God.  I saw a headline that said something to the effect that only God can fire the Pope.  Well, the Pope can’t fire them or me, only God can fire me, and she has no reason to.   Truth can’t be fired. 

Why this Pope?  Why these controversies?  For me, there can be only one answer: because only by evil rearing it’s ugly head can things change.  Only by these decrees, one more outrageous and downright stupid than the last will all but the most blind Catholics’ eyes be opened.  I wrote earlier that the contributions to higher education by the Catholic Church that have advanced the intellectual capacity of humanity should not be underestimated. It is that education, that gift of intellect that the Church has afforded men AND women that will ultimately allow for its correction.   Hoisted by their own petard. (One of my Dad’s favorite sayings, which tells me he’s nodding his head from the hereafter, sticking his two cents worth into this discussion.) 

As for me, I say “bring it on” Pope Benedict and your evil cronies.  You will not take my Church from me.  It might not happen in my lifetime or yours, but this wrong WILL be made right.  Women WILL minister in the Catholic Church.  As for your part in the pedophile scandal, you may publicly continue to hold your head high in a sense of false pride, but in your darkest most private moments you know the truth.  We all know the truth.   I ultimately am grateful for your example of how not to live the precious gift of life we have been given.  I couldn’t ask any more than that from my spiritual leader.

I am not a stranger to the silence that was part and parcel of the retreat.  I have loved to sit in silent churches.  I first remember doing this in high school.   I admit that it started in part because I could legitimately walk through the boys’ side of the school to get to the boys’ chapel.  There was a girls’ chapel but going to the chapel was, originally, not the point.   I don’t remember much about the chapel except that it was empty, and quiet, and gave me solace from the angst of the high school years – the insecurity of not being the prettiest/most popular; the anguish of liking a boy who didn’t like me back; the general mental chaos of the high school years – at least for me, the perennial philosopher.   I would love to go sit in there after school and eventually I found myself talking to God – what was I going to do about all my problems?  Help!  The answers weren’t immediately obvious – that only happens infrequently – but I left with a feeling of being loved, of being at peace, that I could carry on until the next time we met.

As a child I lived across the street from St. Mary of the Lake Seminary, the diocesan seminary for the Archdiocese of Chicago.  It is a huge piece of “forest preserve” with a lake smack dab in the middle and a lovely church amongst the many university buildings.  I would visit that church as well as the church on the adjacent grounds of the Benedictine Sisters Monastery.  That church was like home for me, too, because as a child we went there to Holy Hour every Thursday during the summer – an hour that promised a stop at Dairy Queen on the way home.   I’m no expert on church architecture but I can tell you that it was from another time, the frescoes of heaven on the ceiling made it easy to “be good” in order to get that Dairy Queen.  There is something missing in the sterile church architecture today, namely artwork – on the walls and ceilings, in the statuary, in the stained glass windows.  Might as well be going to church in a warehouse  in most of today’s churches.   No wonder kids could not care less – there is very little for the imaginative young mind to focus on while listening to timeless words of the spirit.

My friend, Diana, recently reminded me of going to Gesu Church on the Marquette Campus in Milwaukee.  There, too, within weeks of arriving at Marquette, already confused and homesick, I found myself sitting in there, letting tears fall, letting questions be asked and listening for answers.  Again, I have no idea what the architecture was, but it was old Europe, and the vaulting ceilings and stained glass and the marble were as much food for the soul as the silence.  The last time I was there the upper church was locked – another sign of the times.  My feeling on that is clear and unwavering.  Let the vandals come.  Let them take what they wish.  They cannot steal the spirit of these churches.  Put in security cameras if you must, but unlock the doors.

The list goes on, of course.  It was in an empty church, St. Phillips in San Francisco, where I first “knew” I was pregnant with my first child.  It was there that I knelt and cried before a beautiful stained glass of Jesus in Gethsemane when I felt overwhelmed by marriage and babies – and knew that pain is part of what it means to be fully human.   When I moved to Lafayette, and missed my friends and home in the city more than I ever could have imagined,  I eschewed the locked church in our town and found myself in St. Mary’s of Walnut Creek, the door to main street always open.  It was just a little church, but it was in that church that my ultimate moment of doubt and despair was healed. 

It was also in that parish that I found solace in teaching religious ed to second graders.  One time I took them all into the empty church and taught them the most important lesson I could teach them.  We went in, we all sat down on the altar steps, and I asked them to be quiet and listen.  We did, for a very long time, and then I whispered to them my secret: that you don’t have to come to church just on Sundays with Mom and Dad.  That you can come to church anytime, all by yourself, and just sit in the quiet, and listen for God, and that it is one of my favorite things to do.   Then we were silent again, and I watched as their little faces gained a renewed understanding of “church,” even at that young age.  Some of their eyes got bigger, some eyes darted around the room, looking for that God I spoke of, but all surely understanding on their little 8 year old level that silence is powerful… 

That was easily twenty years ago.  I like to think that maybe one or two of those children, now young  adults and perhaps with children of their own, find themselves drawn to a silent empty church when everything in their lives seems topsy turvy.   There are other places to find solace, and I find it there too – mountaintops, the ocean, the woods.  For me, however, there is something wonderfully cozy, even in a huge church, about being surrounded by the Spirit in an enclosed space, where I am safe and comforted and not at all alone.

When did I feel completely sure?  When did I experience the mystery, the ultimate reality? It is hard to tease the “grabbed from inside” knowledge from the awe of looking at a star-studded night or a gorgeous ocean sunset.   For me it comes most frequently when I begin to consider the concept of time.  The concept of time has always fascinated and bewildered me.  Two of my favorite books are Einstein’s Dreams (ah, a simple Ctrl + U did it) by Alan Lightman and Mission by Patrick Tilley both of which mess with your mind about time.  Check out either for a good read. 

When I start contemplating time, I get lost in the infinite, and become quite aware of that which cannot be defined by human imagination or intellect.   I feel small, I feel connected, I feel infinite, I have a strong realization that I am, as a human being, like a puff of smoke, here then just as quickly – gone.  And yet, here I sit, the Garden of Eden outside my window, a technological wonder allowing me to write this and send it off into cyberspace, having produced with my husband another three wisps of smoke.  In terms of the universe I am nothing…and yet…like every other single thing that exists…I am everything.   I am not just “I” but am an integral, essential piece of the universe, of the ultimate reality, of the mystery, unique and separate from everything but one with everything.

When I was a little girl in Catholic school, we learned and memorized “catechism” – a little delving into the internet reveals it was called The Penny Catechism  and it included questions that now strike me as relevant.  If you take out the word God and Him, and replace it with Ultimate Mystery, it was more right on than those of us who lived through Catholic school in the mid-20th century would care to admit!

Who made you?  God made me.

 Why did God make you?
          God made me to know Him, love Him and serve Him in this
          world, and be happy with Him forever in the next. (Not human beings having a spiritual experience, spiritual beings having a human experience, as Teilhard states?)

To whose image and likeness did God make you?
          God made me to his own image and likeness.    (As a child, I couldn’t figure out how little Mary Horton looked like the old dude with the beard, but whatever, I didn’t and don’t dwell on the small stuff!  Of course now “image and likeness” means something comletely different…)

Is this likeness to God in your body, or in your soul?
          This likeness to God is chiefly in my soul. (Okay how about COMPLETELY in my soul 🙂 – I mean, I admit I am getting a little grey and have to more routinely wax my chin, but I still think I am hotter than an old dude with a white beard, I mean cmon!)

How is your soul like to God?
          My soul is like to God because it is a spirit, and is
          immortal.

AHA! There it is. The soul.  Timeless, universal, immortal, here then gone but not gone.

What must you do to save your soul?
         To save my soul I must worship God by Faith, Hope and
         Charity; that is, I must believe in him, I must hope in
         him, and I must love him with my whole heart.  

Well, that whole saving the soul business starts all kinds of trouble for us Catholics.  However, take a look at the rest of the statement, which is a staple of Catholic belief and practice: I must worship (let’s change that to respect/revere, shall we?) the ultimate reality by faith – by believing that there is something bigger than us of which we are part; by hope – that there is a purpose to all this, that our meager understanding when we have “aha” moments is only a movie trailer preview of what is to come and which I’m hoping beyond hope that I get to experience in a way that makes pleasurable human sensation seem like being  wrapped up like a mummy.  Finally, love with my whole heart. Love the ultimate reality with my whole heart, love all other existence with my whole heart, love myself with my whole heart, love my enemy with my whole heart, love the impatient person who toots at me at the stoplight with my whole heart, love my grouchy patient with my whole heart, love (fill in the blank) with my whole heart…

Yes, those moments of pure, indescribable love, the love that makes you feel like you have no body – those grab you from the inside, indeed, and let you know – there is a mystery, a “God,” an ultimate reality.