Ch. 4 Dark Night of the Soul (continued)
My Catholic Questions
What about those people in other countries wearing their native dress and worshiping God in their different languages who were not Catholic? What about those Presbyterians down the street? I know that I should be super grateful that I was a post-Vatican II “Anonymous Christian” Catholic because the Church no longer claimed exclusive rights to heaven but it did claim that Roman Catholicism was the best way to get to God. By “best way,” I inferred that Protestants and people from non-Christian religions were going to have to spend more time in purgatory learning their lessons but that did not seem fair. I recognized that I was Catholic because my parents were Catholic. No one presented the whole array of religious options to me to let me choose. It was happenstance and I just knew God would be fairer than that.
I was bothered by some of the Bible stories ~ Abraham & Isaac and the Flood come to mind ~ but I rather blithely decided they were wrong, badly reported, or vicious rumors that disparaged my beloved God. God would never devise such a cruel test of faith or throw such a temper tantrum. It may seem to you that I was wildly arrogant but the Church did not push a literal interpretation of the Bible. The priest easily reconciled the Genesis story of creation with science by asking who are we to say how long God's days are. Seemed rather geo-centric to believe that God was locked into the time frame of how long it takes the earth to spin around its axis. Then there were those crazy bits about people living to be 900 years old and surviving inside a whale. I could not believe that really happened. Also, I was Irish Catholic so I was very familiar with the practice of telling a story to make a broader point rather than to accurately relay facts. Did my Paw-Paw really have a friend named Gus Zilch or was he trying to share a love of humor and adventure by telling fantastic tales of their exploits? I just figured that the Bible was filled with the stories that we Christians tell, the stories that comprised our Christian lore. I did not read the entire Bible until I was in my forties. Suffice to say, the priests left out a lot of stuff. I am glad that the Catholic Church emphasized a natural theology based on reason and ordinary experience over a revealed theology based on scripture.
What about the usual suspects ~ the child sex abuse scandal and the lack of roles for women in the hierarchy? At the time, I did not know about the child sex abuse scandal. Nothing bad ever happened to me or to anyone that I knew at the hands of a priest or nun other than getting whacked with a ruler for bad behavior in the classroom. Public school kids also got whacked back then which I knew, though not first-hand of course, because I transferred to public school in the 3rd grade. I was not bothered by the lack of roles for women until I was in high school and mistakenly thought that it affected me. I briefly mentioned that I considered becoming a nun. Well, I did not really want to be a nun; I wanted to be a monk. I did not realize that there were contemplative orders for nuns. I thought they all had to be nurses or school teachers since those were the only roles in which I had seen them. I wanted to be a monkette. Live the simple, rhythmic life and perhaps become a university professor. I did not want to be a priest and I have never displayed ambition to move up any chain of command so those were not issues on my radar. Today, yes, the lack of ways for women to participate in the Church upsets me. Now, a lot of things upset me but back then I had troubles enough of my own and wasn't looking for more.
