Why Catholic?
Good question. Why am I Catholic? I think the answer is as much a coming of age story as it is one of faith. If you are reading this and aren’t Catholic, don’t worry. I don’t intend to proselytize. The issue isn’t why you should be Catholic. It’s why am I. I wasn’t born into a Catholic family. I married into one. It wasn’t exactly a happy union with my in-laws either. They weren’t at all pleased with their daughter dating a Protestant let alone marrying one but I wanted her and wouldn’t have cared if she had been a Martian. In the end her parents relented and we were married in her parish church, though they kept us outside the rail and wouldn’t celebrate Mass. That was the rule in those days.
Another one was that I had to agree that any children would be brought up Catholic. I attended a required series of classes (instructions) so I would know what that meant. I didn’t tell anybody at the time, not even Lynne, but that’s when I first started to think about converting. It wasn’t just her, though I confess the sight of her wearing a mantilla in church was a factor, but that’s another story. Part of it was the priest giving instructions. We met once a week for several months in a small group, six Protestant guys about to marry Catholic girls. The priest had done this before and knew a lot more about our faiths than we knew about his so he was able to point out similarities as well as differences.
I was surprised at some of the things I learned. Many of the essentials were the same. Some differences were more style and emphasis than substance but others went much further, Papal Authority and the Latin Mass not the least of them. We all professed the same creeds, both the Apostle’s Creed and the longer Nicene version. The Lord’s Prayer omitted the Protestant conclusion (we added it after Vatican II) and the Old Testament has a couple of extra books. I think the biggest difference is in the sacraments. Catholics have more of them than I was accustomed to and place a lot more emphasis on them, especially the Eucharist. It is the focus of every Mass. We use real wine and take it from a common cup. It doesn’t just represent the body and blood of Christ; it is the body and blood of Christ.
None of the questions I had as a Methodist got cleared up. I just added a few more. The catechism explains the central mysteries of the faith in exquisite detail but they only get deeper. The words catechists like to use don’t help. Often they are simply obscure. It isn’t unusual for a common word to be used an odd context. Sometimes Webster’s Unabridged offers no definition that fits. I find myself feeling like a perplexed Alice from Through the Looking Glass on hearing Lewis Carroll’s immortal line. “When I choose a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”
So why am I Catholic? Why do I insist on believing bread and wine have been transformed when any fool can see nothing has changed? Maybe it’s because I need to. I want to believe life has meaning beyond what my five senses can explain; that some good will come of all this. The rituals I once found odd and awkward I now find comforting. I’m Catholic because we have the Mass.
Another one was that I had to agree that any children would be brought up Catholic. I attended a required series of classes (instructions) so I would know what that meant. I didn’t tell anybody at the time, not even Lynne, but that’s when I first started to think about converting. It wasn’t just her, though I confess the sight of her wearing a mantilla in church was a factor, but that’s another story. Part of it was the priest giving instructions. We met once a week for several months in a small group, six Protestant guys about to marry Catholic girls. The priest had done this before and knew a lot more about our faiths than we knew about his so he was able to point out similarities as well as differences.
I was surprised at some of the things I learned. Many of the essentials were the same. Some differences were more style and emphasis than substance but others went much further, Papal Authority and the Latin Mass not the least of them. We all professed the same creeds, both the Apostle’s Creed and the longer Nicene version. The Lord’s Prayer omitted the Protestant conclusion (we added it after Vatican II) and the Old Testament has a couple of extra books. I think the biggest difference is in the sacraments. Catholics have more of them than I was accustomed to and place a lot more emphasis on them, especially the Eucharist. It is the focus of every Mass. We use real wine and take it from a common cup. It doesn’t just represent the body and blood of Christ; it is the body and blood of Christ.
None of the questions I had as a Methodist got cleared up. I just added a few more. The catechism explains the central mysteries of the faith in exquisite detail but they only get deeper. The words catechists like to use don’t help. Often they are simply obscure. It isn’t unusual for a common word to be used an odd context. Sometimes Webster’s Unabridged offers no definition that fits. I find myself feeling like a perplexed Alice from Through the Looking Glass on hearing Lewis Carroll’s immortal line. “When I choose a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”
So why am I Catholic? Why do I insist on believing bread and wine have been transformed when any fool can see nothing has changed? Maybe it’s because I need to. I want to believe life has meaning beyond what my five senses can explain; that some good will come of all this. The rituals I once found odd and awkward I now find comforting. I’m Catholic because we have the Mass.
posted by Onfoot at 10:40 AM
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