The title of this post came to me a few weeks back. In spite of my best attempts to dislodge it from my brain, it has remained there. I figured that I would just go with it. In my own obtuse and round-about way, of course.
Over the past couple of weeks, I have sat down four different times and attempted this blog. Each attempt has met with online disaster before the entry could be saved or posted. So, I guess you'd have thought I'd have gotten a clue by this time, wouldn't you? LOL
I think it stems from the fact that I have a friend who is supposed to be vacationing in Italy later this spring. Last I heard, she still hadn't gotten around to getting her passport.... She had mentioned her upcoming trip on one of the internet forums of which she and I are members. I told her to visit the Vatican and be sure to wave to His Holiness The Pope. However, how many fingers to use I left entirely to her discretion. In her reply, she said she had laughed when she had read that but could never be disrespectful. Me, on the other hand.....
I believe that attitude could be the very source of my problems with getting this post posted.
Nonetheless, I remain firm in my resolve to blog on this topic and find myself saving to draft frequently. LOL
There are two schools of thought among Catholics themselves that differ widely in their views of the faith and the practice of it. I have wonderful friends who will tell you that being Catholic is the very essence of what it means to be a follower of Christ. These same friends are also the ones who will make sure that they go to mass before going to gamble in the casinos when vacationing in Las Vegas. There are other Catholics who will tell you that the religious rituals of the church are stale, out-dated, devoid of meaning, and offer nothing to the condition of the soul of those seeking a relationship with Christ. Yet, you will not find them without rosary or novina candle.
In some ways, Catholicism in humorous. All of the angles are covered. How many religions do you know of that offer for sale a product called "All-Purpose Blessing Candles." C'mon. You cannot help but love that one! In the film Dogma, it was the Catholics who found the loophole! I rolled! Believe me, if there were a religion to be able to find a loophole, it would be the Catholics.
I am the mother of the child, who during her fifth grade year in Catholic school, was able to argue the priest to a theological deadlock as to why offering prayer to a statue of a saint or of The Blessed Virgin constituted idolatry. I know parishoners who would be absolutely scandalized to even think of arguing such a point. These same parishoners, however, have no problem with the clusters of troll dolls on tables at bingo. I just found out that they play bingo on Monday nights at one of the gay bars. A few of us from work are talking about going soon, and I am planning to surprise everyone with troll dolls for our table! (Oh, I am so going to hell....... Just some programmed and ingrained Catholic guilt there. LOL) When she was in sixth grade, I rented Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life" for my daughter and me to watch one weekend. Of course, "The Life of Brian" was required viewing somewhere in her upbringing, as well as Mel Brooks' "History of the World: Part 1." "Spaceballs" is still one of her favorite movies. Yes, my child is just a bit warped, but she's much more fun. Can you imagine an accountant with no sense of humor at all? She also has five children and is hoping to adopt more. I joke that the children are my return on all that tuition invested in Catholic school. I have Catholic friends who are so envious that, in this day and age of one or two children in a family, my daughter has given me so many grandchildren to love.
I have my rosary and my Virgin de Guadalupe novina candle on my desk. They sit right next to my deck of tarot cards. My running joke is that I like to keep all of my idolatry together, centrally located, and easily accessible. The fax machine in the nursing office at work is broken more than it is functional. We've traded machines, had the phone line checked, and on and on and on; still, the intractable problems continue. I've threatened to bring in my rosary and holy water from Lourdes and set them loose upon the beastly machine. (Have I mentioned that I'm going to hell?)
I refer to myself as an excommunicated catha-holic (hyphen added only for emphasis), but I have also willingly taken part in a family rosary with some close friends when a child of one of their family members had fallen ill and was hospitalized and the doctors could offer no explanation as to what was going on with the illness. I know of a couple, married for nearly twenty years and childless, who had a child one year to the day after a family rosary. I lived in Tucson. Tucson has the only Catholic shrine in the world dedicated to a sinner.
One of my patients makes me absolutely crazy. Her problems and issues are more psychiatric in nature than relating to mental retardation. We believe that she may be developing a form of dementia/Alzheimers due to some of the repetetive speech and short term memory deficits that we're seeing. She has not reacted well to the medications that we have tried to this point. At dinner time in her apartment, she will often say the prayer for the meal. I was in the apartment one night when she offered the prayer in Latin. This is the woman who cannot tell you what act she just completed, but she can remember her catechism. I have used that as a tool to redirect her from many an obsessive episode. "What is the first Holy Mystery?" She can recite those lessons learned more than fifty years before without missing a beat.
Several years ago, the father of one of my daughter's school friends died. He was a younger man but had suffered for years as a brittle diabetic. I sat with my daughter's former school mates, now young women, at the funeral home. The service was small, intimate, and very personal. There was no priest with vestment and censer and liturgy. The prayers offered, however, were Catholic. My daughter's friends were very surprised that I actually knew the Hail Mary, for when they were growing up, I was consistent in my unrepentant uncatholicism. Offering those prayers for Ron was a matter of respect for his convictions.
When my older granddaughter was born, her paternal grandmother insisted on having her baptised at their Catholic church. I refused, even though the argument was, "This is the baby's soul we're talking about." I refused not because it was a Catholic church or because I was not concerned about the soul of my first grandchild. I refused because the paternal grandmother had not voiced this same kind of insistance on baptism over her grandchild who had been born with cerebral palsey. Was his soul less valuable? I have shared several holiday celebrations with this family. My grandchildren still do share in those celebrations, and I encourage them to be respectful of their grandmother and the traditions of the church which she always includes at those holiday gatherings of the family. Those are as much a legitimate part of their heritage as is their geneaology.
There are evangelical Catholics. Of the different sects of Catholicism, I would have to identify most closely with this group simply because I lean towards being an evangelical and not necessarily towards what I see as dogmatic ritualism within the Roman Catholic church. Ritual was established to bring us closer to God, not to take the place of God. I believe that is why so many of the churches, of all denominations, are stale and dead. There is no spirit, only ritual and dogma and the traditions of men. There is no love.
Love would have to be the hallmark of the ministry of Christ. And, it is that basic commodity which is so lacking in many who claim to be His followers. Over the years, I have encountered many people who have no issue at all with Jesus or His teachings. Their issue rightly lies with those who claim to be His people, who have no compassion, no mercy, no depth of soul beyond themselves whether they go by the title of Catholic or by some other title of their choosing.
This certainly is not where I had envisioned this post of going or of where it was headed in my previous attempts at writing it. I guess it just needed to be done in a timing that was not my own. Oh, but He does have a sense of humor! LOL
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