14/365 The People in the Pews

In a conversation about why I remain Catholic when I do not share what non-Catholics typically see as "Catholic values" one time (over the internet, of course--in person people are never as bold), one ex-Catholic mentioned that she had to leave in order to find a church where she knew all the people sitting in the pews near her shared all her beliefs.

I never considered that something I would want. Sure, when I sit in a Catholic church, I expect that the majority of people there are Catholic. That they can recite the Nicene creed and at some level believe what they say. Beyond that? I don't have many expectations.

I didn't seek out a specific kind of church when we moved here--we'd been attending, half-heartedly, St. Henry/Immaculate Conception (my mother asked me at one point: "Was St. Henry immaculately conceived? Who is St. Henry, anyway?"--it's a combined parish that kept the names...and now it is no more). We lived in its parish boundaries and that's where we went. We moved into our house and my grandmother told me that she knew the pastor and I should give him a call. Turned out, we didn't live in the parish boundaries, but as I was about to hang up to call the correct one, he said, "Wait, do you have kids?" And as we talked more, I decided we'd give it a try. We were geographically closer than to the parish where our address fell, and we went a bit.

Obviously we stayed, with some backsliding and handwringing over the years. But never once did I say to Mike, "I can't belong here because Adam keeps talking about things I don't agree with." I never once felt as though I didn't fit in due to my opinions about politics that did not fall directly into the sphere of belief. I am very liberal on some topics, somewhat less so on others in comparison to Americans in general. I figure I'm probably to the left of the average Catholic, but trust me, there are others far far further to the left.

And a few of them attend my church.

Many people to my right, politically, attend my church. And there are a lot of people who are vaguely similar to me. At least, that's the way it feels to me--politics don't come up as often as they once did with our former pastor. So it could be that I have a skewed view.

But that's the point. It doesn't matter that much at my church (anymore). I can sit in the pews next to that old guy from the Knights of Columbus who couldn't understand Mike's hesitation about joining up. We can both be at this church because we don't have a problem with group think. We are a geographic parish. We do not have any particular focus around politics or devotion. We aren't the Tridentine Latin Mass church and we're not the radical left. We are in the middle. And that's what makes us a good place, frankly. I guess our diversity does make us strong.

Heck, my parents even came back.