76/365 The Church in Ireland

So...

The pope writes a letter about the sex abuse crisis in Ireland. Which is a big thing (the crisis, not the letter). And at the end of the letter, after admonishing bishops and saying how sorry he is, he offers some concrete initiatives for Ireland.

The people of Ireland are to fast and pray and participate in Eucharistic Adoration.

THAT will fix it, right?

78/365 Less and Less Like Me All the Time

"Got it all sent away," my sister-in-law says with a nod. We're standing in her kitchen after my niece's birthday party. She's talking about her annulment papers.

I mention that our former bishop, now in Rome, is planning to crack down on American annulments. "He thinks there are too many. When I read that, I thought about you and hoped you'd gotten things in."

One of Mike's uncles shakes his head. "It would be just like him to stick his nose in there. Did he run out of Polish parishes to abuse?"

I know, many people these days who enter into a marriage don't do it for the long haul. And there was a time when Mike and I hit a rocky patch and things started avalanching downhill. We saved it--and other people give up and walk away. I don't think either of these things are true in the case of my sister-in-law, and I suspect she'll get (earn?) her annulment.

But once again, where was the church in these marriages? If it is so difficult to divorce in the church, why is it so easy to marry? Because an Engaged Encounter weekend or pre-cana with a celibate priest really doesn't give you any inkling what you're headed for. Warm fuzzy stories of wedding days long ago and first babies and family planning do not prepare you for lead poisoning, lost jobs, miscarriages, anger, and financial straits. Sharing life with another person is so hard, it's a wonder really that it works as often as it does.

And there, there my church goes again, getting less and less pastoral with every step. Fitting into the church outside my parish boundaries gets more difficult with every new pronouncement from Rome. As Lyle Lovett puts it, But what's riches to you/ Just ain't riches to me.

And yet I'm clinging to my Catholicism like a lichen to a rock. There's no other place for me to go. I've found the best I can and here I stay until they pry it from my cold dead fingers.

Or until my demographic group matches something Burke has decided to go after and I'm not allowed through the doors anymore.

154/365 Language

I'm having a difficult time with upcoming changes in the English version of the mass. There, I said it.

I love ritual and living in ritual and coming to deeper understandings of it. Words and gestures. Bad ritual and bad liturgy always make me roll my eyes, like the times I've spent in really bad women's prayer services. A post for another day.

At mass Sunday, Miguel's homily concerned words and meaning. That when things change (like, when we visit churches that say mass in another language), we have to pay closer attention. The mass hasn't changed, just the language it is set in has changed. We can still participate even if we aren't speaking the language of the people.

This was juxtaposed against the upcoming changes. And I have a variety of opinions that fall into the following categories:

1. I fear change. This is a personal problem of mine and I should let it go.

2. It feels kind of...fundamentalist. I mean it this way: as a Catholic, I do not believe in the literal translation, word for word, of the bible. It was written by mortals, inspired by God. The prophets and historians and poets and evangelists were not taking dictation. There was no handheld recorder or speechwriter at Jesus' sermons. And, in addition, I consider the bible to be a more inspired body of work than I do the order of the mass. And so the idea of "going back to the basics of love", so to speak, makes me hesitate. Human language is not static. Civilization is not static. The fact that my denomination is so freaking static makes me crazy.

3. But without ritual stasis, it of course runs the risk of being bad.

4. Lastly, and most specifically, "and my soul shall be healed" grates on my nerves because of the implied duality of mankind:

The unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the "form" of the body: i.e., it is because of its spiritual soul that the body made of matter becomes a living, human body; spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature.

Our current "And I shall be healed" seems more in line with that statement. But I know I'm no expert. It will become yet another mystery for me to ponder, like the question I often ask about the line in the creed: God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God. Why do we mention God in two different phrases there. Why do we have to say True God after we've just said God? I have yet to get a satisfactory answer, and I think "and my soul shall be healed" will be the same way.

And it shouldn't be that way. Just sayin.

190/365 So when do the peasants start revolting, anyway?

"I only saw him cry twice," my aunt says over lunch, speaking of the priest who married me and Mike, who had been intertwined in my extended family's life for decades. "Once when he was caring for the priest living with him who was dying of AIDS, and it just got too much to handle, it was still when nobody was talking about it and the man had made him swear not to tell anyone. And he said to me, 'I just have to tell someone,' and I thought, who am I going to tell, anyway?"

"And then the second time was about this priest, who was later assigned to be pastor at that church. He said that he knew a friend was abusing children. He was struggling with what to do about it."

I wait for her to continue. I know, from an outsider's perspective, what had gone on at that neighboring church when the proverbial shit hit the fan.

"He had gone to the diocese," she says with an exhale. "And he felt like he'd betrayed a confidence but he had to. His face just looked gray."

"But that must have been years ago," I think out loud.

She nods. "And then that priest was assigned to the parish in question, where it finally all went down."

It made me wonder. Had he really gone to the diocese, or was my aunt sugar coating the report? She was known to do that sort of thing. Had he just told her that? I couldn't see that being true. He took things pretty seriously over all. Or could it be yet another case of bishop malfeasance. Hmm. Let's think a moment.

221/365 Standing in the Magic Chef Kitchen

Astrid and Clark's wedding anniversary was this month sometime, and they had a party. A lot of people I know were there--through knitting or neighborhood or church. I spent most of the evening with book club and knitting folks, eating dinner on the extremely hot patio--we were at the Magic Chef Mansion on Russell, by the way--and perusing a book of plates depicting St. Louis in 1875. That could have taken my entire evening, grasping at the bits of knowledge I have about my urban poor ancestors who came here from Germany or famine decimated Ireland. Streets that don't exist anymore, houses, churches.

But I got up to get a second wedge of gooey butter cake from the butler's pantry and there was Colleen O'Toole (the O'Tooles are the only folks on this blog who have a last name because in real life, they are almost always referred to by first and last name. You would never say "I was talking to Colleen" but always "Colleen O'Toole"). She was talking with Yvette and with a couple I didn't know. I eavesdropped. I made a grand sweep of the gooey butter cake selection, slowly choosing something, and then stepped over to the sink to pour myself a cup of coffee (which turned out not to be decaf, but I didn't know that until later when I was wide awake at 2 in the morning). Sugar, cream, first sip. Then I turn around and shoulder my way into the conversation.

It's about a parishioner at a neighboring church, a leader, who was nominated to a diocesan-wide leadership position. Someone who has given his life to the church and to this particular cause. Then it became clear that he was gay, in a longterm relationship, and that was it. I have not researched the story and only know what I listened to there in the kitchen. The unnamed couple excused themselves, it was late, and Yvette went to collect her husband. Colleen O'Toole and I remained.

"This issue," she said, shaking her head. "This is what's going to get me kicked out of the church."

I thought quickly about all the issues that could get me kicked out of the church. But no--many of them are things I hold to myself and don't care that they aren't exactly in line with church teaching. None of them make me feel guilty; my conscience is clear on them. For instance, I think the Church's stance on birth control is ridiculous. I think the idea that we don't allow priests to marry is bizarre and should be reevaluated. I believe women should be given the right to church leadership. If the church has to be led by celibate men, parish leadership and clergy should be more broadly available. But these aren't things that I'm so wed to that I'm going to make a stand. The women priest movement doesn't interest me because so many Catholic feminists are so angry. I've been to prayer services with some of the women active in that movement locally and I wouldn't want them to be my pastor. Just for instance.

But there's a difference between "I think there should be changes to the priesthood" and whether we're going to close our doors to an entire wedge of the population.

"Yeah," I nodded after this split second of consideration. "Me too."

310/365 Change

The language of the mass is changing and I don't think I can get excited about it. Or care. I hate that about me but it's kind of a defense mechanism. I hate change, like I said at the meeting on Wednesday night. What was our tolerance for change? was the reflection question. Lots of people said "change is good" and some said less solid things like "I like change when it's a good change." So I decided to be honest and say I hate it. I hate it when things change. I hate it when things aren't planned and I know what's coming and even then I don't like it much. On the Meyers Briggs scale I'm an ENFJ. My extrovert status is solid, my intuition is solid, my feelings vs thinking is a little fuzzy (I feel, or think, that this is the one you can make yourself change more than any of the others: how you make decisions, etc). But my J? Judging vs. perceiving? It's a 10-0. I am all J. All J all the time. At one point my friends nicknamed me Lady J (I think it's a comic book reference besides) because if I don't have a plan, I have nothing. Change can only happen if it is planned. Well planned. Elections make me physically ill. Surprise changes to my schedule throw me for a loop. Babies mess up my life for, like, 3 years. Change and flux are bad. Bad.

The nice thing about being Catholic is that things don't change. Or change comes so slowly it's more of an adjustment. A tweaking. I don't mind tweaking. Local change? Fine. You don't like this banner, let's make another. Take out the carpet. Restore the tile. Make things a little bit better this year. A liturgical year evolves, it doesn't overhaul and reinvent the wheel each time a new season comes along.

Some of the language changes feel like tweakings to me. Like getting rid of gender references to the Holy Spirit. Or even "it is right and just" instead of "it is right to give him thanks and praise." Thanks and praise have already been mentioned. It is right and just. Other small things are jarring, like the changes to the Gloria, but they don't change the feel of that part of the mass.

Actually, besides the ridonkulous "and with your spirit" flip, which just makes me roll my eyes as I read all these backwards retrofitting revisionist history reasons for it, the only ones that bother me are in the creed. I believe vs we believe I don't mind; rewording the Holy Spirit section so we don't say "he he he" all the time is a great idea. But "consubstantial" and "incarnate" are just wrong. Wrong. The idea that "one in being with the Father" is a worse translation than "consubstantial with the Father" could only be true in the dark recesses of minds like Bishop Across the River Braxton. And the incarnate phrase is awkward--once again we look like jerks here, people, like mentioning that Jesus might have actually been born is such an uncomfortable topic to discuss that we have to hide it with a liturgical euphemism.

Yes, one of the lip-service reasons for these changes is to elevate the language and make it more ritualistic, which I'm all for, to a point. I'm not all for it when it comes to the creed. This is the CREED. This is what we believe. We should understand what we're saying if we're going to say what we believe. Which is why I get so annoyed when we drone on "God from God Light from Light True God from True God." Why do we mention God twice there? Why God and True God? What heresy have we forgotten that this stands against? I ask priests every so often (each change of pastor) and nobody seems to know. Not the point here (it says the same thing in Latin)--but I really feel like if I'm going to say WHAT I BELIEVE then I should use vernacular language. Not slang, not jive, but everyday speech. Incarnate and consubstantial are not in my everyday speech. One in being with the father might not be a phrase I'd use when chatting at coffee, but at least I would use the words.

I know I fear and loathe change. So I've sort of let go from engaging in this. It's one of those things, you know, I can't do anything about it and whatever. If it weren't for the Benedictines and Catechesis of the Good Shepherd and my parish I wouldn't be Catholic anyway--none of this really matters to me. I have many many opinions about the hierarchy, of course, and this just gets dumped on that steaming pile.

Like I said at the meeting, this isn't going to be the issue over which I'm drummed out of the Church. There are so many better reasons.