Blessed are they, the devoted and unquestioning
The ever-recurring issue of "church versus state" suddenly becomes much more personal than it has ever been before. For the past few weeks I've been feeling bouts of anger and resentment towards none other than the Archbishop of St. Louis, whom I've kindly dubbed "the communion Nazi". Not sure if this is a form of sacrilage or not, I couldn't help think if I deserved to be receiving communion this afternoon at mass, being that I'm not going to vote for W. Bush this upcoming election. Albeit the premise for his uncompromised position on abortion is valid and of course in alignment with church doctrine, where does the supreme authority reign on his opinion that Democrats, Independents, and other non-Republican parties alike should not be able to partake in Eucharist? In light of popularized depiction of church leaders indeed being fallible and moreover downright immoral, I've never fully gotten the sense that we should heed them that much reverence. But maybe I'm a bad Catholic... That shiny bubble of naiveness burst long ago, before the major national commotion of church sex scandals, when Fr. Furdik, our own parish priest was accused and admitted to molesting several young boys in our town, some of whom I knew, though not intimately. Since I'm on the rampage of Catholic doctrine that I don't wholeheartedly or even halfheartedly believe in, I've always been sort of hesitant on the "holier than thou" attitude that we tend to convey. God is God, in whatever sense we hold Him to be in, and there shouldn't be a hierarchy of importance and tyranny over others' way of serving Him, no matter how liberal it may be. So I must ask myself, why do I even attend mass or partake in Catholic tradition if I disagree with much of the organization as a whole? For now, the answer is two-fold- one being that in only seeing one higher being, I don't feel the need to differentiate between religions per se, and thus being Catholic is essentially the same as being Protestant to me (as outrageous as that idea may be), and second, traditions and customs are important to me; I like the familiarity and congruence of the way mass is constructed, and it reminds me of my upbringing. There is a sense of home which I cannot find anywhere else. And so however misguided my anguish over the delineation of how church figures will disagree with how I'm going to vote this November, I hold true to this rebellious streak, in that it is between me, God, and the feeling that I'm being true to my own beliefs on the foundation that what I've been taught, along with what I've learned, will find middle ground.
posted by Sheila @ 8/29/2004 06:10:00 PM
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