a sort of homecoming

Let me make two things clear...

I have not returned to the Catholic Church over politics. Politics is merely a symptom of a deeper disease. I have returned because of the disease.

So why did I leave the Catholic Church in the first place? Because I could not buy into the notion of the Immaculate Conception. Now I have finally come to terms with it. And that makes it possible for me to stop flailing around and finally go back home.

Allow me to recount a recent conversation with my old friend George, who is a permanent deacon in the Catholic Church:

Hi George,

I haven't been Catholic for 12 years. But I found myself unexpectedly in Mass yesterday morning. I've been attending an Anglican (not Episcopal, but CANA - i.e. Nigeria-affiliated) church. But that didn't fit my schedule yesterday, so I went to the local Catholic parish. It was surprising. I didn't feel like an alien. I feel like an alien in Orthodox or orthodox Protestant churches. They are so angry and ideological. (I don't bother with seriously heterodox Protestant churches). I actually felt at peace during Mass. Anyway, that experience has got me revisiting my argument with Immaculate Conception and Papal Infallibility (THE reasons I'm not Catholic). Just thought I'd share that with you.



Hello, old friend,

I understand the tangible substantiveness of the peace you experienced very well, and I am glad you had the experience of feeling at home in the Mass. There is something real in the Catholic faith that transcends time and place and human fallibility, and which is not irrational but transrational. Were it not so, I should have been distracted from it long ago by the nightmare of history. The Mass is for me a sacred place which like a moveable feast I also carry within me, congruent with the sacred vision I have lived by and for since I was young. So I live with one foot in both worlds, only as it were, for the two realms are actually united with each breath we take.

Thanks for sharing a spiritual moment. Wherever your spiritual journey takes you, I wish you well.

Pax,
George



Hello, old friend,

I love your response. I think I have at least a vague idea of where my spiritual journey is taking me. You know what the readings were yesterday? That did not escape my notice.

We are living in the nightmare of history, and the other churches are enmeshed in it - even contributing to it. The predominant "christian" ideology of our times seems to be manichaean in nature. I kept wondering why Christians could do such crazy things as endorse torture. But when the world is divided so neatly into dual opposites, and you are on the side of "light," then I guess it makes a kind of perverse sense. It has really had me down - to the point that I was wondering if there could be anything true. But then the news of Mother Teresa's spiritual darkness came. And it was, shockingly, a huge relief to me. I grasped it - and knew that she had persevered in spite of it. It was very interesting to watch non-Catholics try to comprehend the meaning of it.

Anyway, I've been bashing my head against the wall for the past several years, thinking that I could convince people they were doing crazy things in the name of Christ. I think yesterday helped me see that there's no amount of convincing that can be done. It's embedded in dualism.

I don't think I ever anticipated having more than an intellectual understanding of your diagnosis of the nightmare of history as a result of dualism - maybe because I grew up in the culture of the "victors." But now that it is unfolding in front of me - with supposed Christians leading the charge - it is finally viscerally hitting home. I think that's why the Mass yesterday seemed like such a refuge. Christians whose agenda is Christ. And who approach Him with humility. What a concept!



It is to me like walking in an unfamiliar dark woods and hearing music in the distance, so you follow the music, and when it becomes more distinct, you know you are on the right path, and if the music begins to fade, you know to pause and listen closely, and then again follow the music until you come to the safe encampment.

Let me know how things go with you in the future, old friend.

now's the tme

I have suddenly found myself back in the Catholic Church - after a 12 year hiatus over theological differences. I wasn't away from church, but from the Church.

I have recently been pondering something my friend (insert pseudonym...) George had talked a lot about when we were grad students. One day, he told me that he had figured out the fatal flaw of Western civilization. Dualism. Not the idea that good and evil exist. But good and evil as equal opposites locked in war with each other. (In the manichaean version of this construct, good needs our help because it can't win the battle by itself).

Protestantism, he asserted, was enmeshed in it. Catholicism, on the other hand, recognized that evil was not a substance in itself, but a mere deprivation of good. Good had substance because it came from God. Evil, OTOH, had no substance. It was only a negation. In other words, God had existence in Himself. Satan did not. Evil could not create. It could only mimic.

I found the concept interesting, and I occasionally dug it out in order to try to make sense of the Evangelical obsession with politics. It made some sense of their idea that God NEEDED them to put order into an evil world. It made sense of their notion that they NEEDED to flail around in the political sphere, hurling insults at and creating dehumanizing caricatures of their opponents... rather than seeking transformation of the world through lived holiness (the way that Catholic saints had been doing throughout the centuries).

But it was still more conceptual to me than real... until the past 6 years, when it became painfully real. This was not some philosophical or theological construct. I could see it up close in the Evangelical Protestants that I knew. Frankly, I could also see it in a lot of individual Catholics. But it was not a position that held any credence in the actual Church. Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI were not manichaean-style dualists. Neither were the vast majority of Catholic theologians..

The Catholic Church could not be contained within the manichaean dichotomies present in the American political system. It was neither conservative nor liberal. It transcended labels. It embraced policies dear to the right. It embraced policies dear to the left. And it did so by keeping its eyes on Christ, not on an ideological orthodoxy.

Somewhere, beneath my theological disagreement with the Catholic Church, this was resonating. I was meditating upon it in my heart. The answer was through lived holiness, not - as so many American Christians believe - through making an idol out of party or nation or ideological position.