Do not anger the disc golf gods, part two. By shaving 16 strokes off his score from last Sunday, and by me adding 12 strokes to my score from last Sunday, Pablo and I tied at plus four this afternoon. I will be praying to the disc golf gods tonight for vengence.
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Why I shall never be Catholic, most likely. I will try to be kind. My problem with Catholicism goes further than any specific belief — transubstantiation, the Immaculate Conception, infallibility of Mr. Pope, birth control. In fact, I've come to this conclusion: if I believed every bit of dogma set out in the Catholic Catechism, I might still not become Catholic.
I will term the issue I have with Catholicism as Lack of Individual Intellectual Epicurism. (Oh please: you can at least make it through this graf before you fall asleep.) It's an a aesthetic problem, really: Because the Catholic Church's dogma is completely set out in bound book form, while there is an opportunity for getting closer to God emotionally, there's no opportunity for an individual to get closer to God intellectually. In the Catholic Church, the academic basis of your belief has been written for you. Example: Let's say you are a Protestant. You wonder, "Hmm. Was Mary born with sin or not?" You read the Bible. You read commentaries about the Bible from people smarter than you. You pray. You put on a puppet show that shows in graphic detail Mary being conceived. And then you come to a decision: Yes, she was born with original sin. No, she was not born with original sin. You might change your mind later. You might decide that you have no idea. You might decide that this is peripheral to your faith, and you see no need to think about it at all. Great. This is how you are intellectually getting closer to God.
Let's say you are a Catholic. You wonder, "Hmm. Was Mary born with sin or not?" You read the Catholic Catechism and see that no, Mary was not born with sin. You think, "But what about the fact that Mary...no, wait, what am I doing? She was born without sin, because the Catechism says so. I may not understand why she was born without sin, but she was, because people smarter than me have said so, and the Church requires me to believe that." Rather than a process of discovery, it becomes a process of memorization.
Probably because I'm too smart for my own good — thanks a lot, Mom and Dad's genes! — I don't approach religion in the emotional or passionate way that most people do. No, I approach it in what is probably the wrong way: logically and dogmatically. Strangely, while I'm a feeler when it comes to interactions with others (the F in INFJ), I'm a strong thinker (T) when it comes to my relationship with God, probably because my F comes from a ardent desire not to hurt people, and I, uh, generally can't see the hurt in God's/Jesus's/the Holy Spirit's face. (Crikey, ain't that a depressing thought.)
Anyway, my approach to God is analytical, and the Catholic Church has done all the analysis for me, thank you very much. So, uh, what fun is that? I'm serious: How could I get anything out my approach to God within the structure of the Catholic Church? I couldn't: There'd be no need to think about God. I'd just need to feel him. This, I think, is why the Catholic Church is so popular: it's lack of dogmatic discourse makes it's perhaps the most emotion-centric of the Christian denominations. And people love that. Most people. People who aren't me. I have no trouble going to Mass in that environment — doctrine rarely comes up in homilies — and I have no issue directing a bell choir with people who share that belief, because these are people I like, and because only one of our members is interested in sputtering Catholic dogma. (Hi, Ken!) But regardless of whether the Catholic view of God is the most correct, what I perceive as anti- intellectualism through lack of free will ("you must think what we tell you to think") will always keep me too far from the Church to convert.
There's one other choice. I could be like most other Catholics and retain most of the Catechism but actively reject specific beliefs that I find repugnant or stupid. (Most Catholics use condoms or The Pill rather than Natural Family Planning, for example.) I don't see why, though: if your church leadership is telling you that you must Natural Family Planning, and that not using Natural Family Planning is an affront against God, and you don't believe that you need to use Natural Family Planning, and you think God would be just as happy if you just stuck in a diaphragm, why would you want to be a part of that denomination, logically? I can think of many emotional reasons why, but no logical ones. As I've said before, I doubt most Catholics believe in Transubstantiation and that most are Consubstantiationists at best. As the church believes that any view of the bread and wine less than Transubstantiation is a heresy, why would you logically want to be part of a Church that believes you're committing a heresy every week with communion?
Kim says that there are certain things that need to be accepted on faith in the Catholic belief, and for her, Transubstantiation is one of those things. She doesn't understand it, but she doesn't feel that she needs to understand it. Many days, I wish I could just do that. Many days, I wish God had built me that way.
oh so lovingly written by
Matthew |
i sincerely do not know what you are doing here. are you lost? were you
looking for your delicate calico cat, and did you follow her up two flights of stairs
to this room? she is not here. she was here, yes. we gave her a warm bowl of milk, we talked with her about campaign finance reform for a time, and then she bid us good day. i believe she was
going to the post office two blocks down, but i don't quite recall.
for surely you did
not find your way from prinsiana, the least traveled site on
the internet. if you did, though, perhaps you are looking for humor. perhaps you are looking for profundity. perhaps you are looking for answers.
i'm sorry, but you shall go naught-for-three.
