Becoming Catholic
In the summer between my first and second years of seminary, with a string of failed relationships under my belt and an emerging sense of internal pandemonium eroding the fragment of my self-confidence that remained in tact, I retreated to the forested hills of Burgundy, France amongst the brothers of Taize, an international and ecumenical community of monks devoted to prayer and an extreme simplicity of life. I arrived in the middle of June with a thousand other young adults who, I am certain, had made the pilgrimage to Taize in search of the same thing as I—namely a still, sure voice that could definitively proclaim all was going to be okay and that we each had some worth left inside of us despite the confounded mess we had made of our lives.
I had long been haunted by a Pelagian god, or at least the fear of one. It was he who demanded a perfection I consistently failed to meet. Guilt was his modus operandi. Grace and mercy I knew only as offerings of love given by me to my neighbor and even my enemy. God’s love for me was based solely upon my ability to do so. I never left the church; an unrelenting fear of displeasing the Almighty prevented me from doing so. But I roamed from one Christian tradition to another in search of rest and peace from the myriad of theologies waging war against one another and ultimately against my soul.
One of the few things of which I was certain by the time I arrived at Taize was that fundamentalists of every stripe-whether they be conservative or liberal-were all pretty much the same. At the end of the day, by their reasoning, God was profoundly disappointed with even my best efforts and had very little to offer in the way of true redemption. I longed for the God of my childhood, firm yet kind, triumphant yet meek, accepting, faithful, and approachable. But I had been reminded time and again that such a God was merely the product of childhood naiveté.
I needed a radical silence, a safe space far away from the clattered noise of everyday life, into which I could wade through all the conflicting messages. For how was I to recognize truth if it was muddied by the infernal busyness of this world? I often imagined myself with all my suffering, fears and countless embarrassments to be one long string wrapped ever so tightly around a large wooden spool. I knew if I was ever to make sense of my life I would need to slowly unwind myself from the spool and confront each section, bit by bit. Perhaps then I could undo the all the damage that had been done and at long last feel at home with myself. But in order for this to happen I needed the world to stand still if even just for a moment.
Time did stand still at Taize, and it did so quite effortlessly. This was undoubtedly the result of a simplicity which pervaded every aspect of life, from the tents in which we slept to the stumps we sat upon outdoors as we ate our daily breakfast of bread, butter and hot cocoa to the chanted prayers which could lure even the most preoccupied individual into attentive contemplation. Here there was a time for everything-work, play, meditation- and each aspect contributed to the whole, which of course was the worship of God with the entirety of our being. It was through this simple daily rhythm of life that peace settled over me and I tasted the hope of resurrection.
Towards the end of my stay, I plucked enough courage out of my timid little soul to approach one of the brothers following evening prayer. I can offer no description of the monk’s appearance; I was much too consumed with my own inner turmoil to notice much of anything other than myself. I can only say that I felt secure in his presence. But this was quite profound given the fact that it had been a long time since I had felt safe in the presence of any man other than my father, brother and one or two of their friends. This was a man who wanted nothing from me. I was not there for his amusement, his demands or even his comfort. And somehow with neither pretension nor condescension he was offering himself to me.
All at once I felt the sheer relief that I imagined greeted C.S. Lewis’ narrator in The Great Divorce as he stumbled upon his guide (who could have only been George MacDonald) to the mountains. Here was someone who was true. He at least would not deceive me. ( Ch 9, pg 66) “Here begins the New Life”. And so I threw at him everything that had been welling up inside of me for the past ten years–my utter disappointment with and at times feelings of abandonment by the Church; my inability to find, much less trust, love; and my overall sense of spiritual homelessness which was quickly fading into an apathy which had horrified me in the past when I had witnessed it in others.
I hovered in his shadow, panting in part from the sheer relief of unloading burdens that had begun to suffocate even the joy I felt in memories of a better time and in part out of a rising anger that had formerly been tucked away in hopes of appearing unscathed by life. My life hung in the very grip of his response. And though he could demolish the only morsel of hope that remained and send me to depths that were to this point inconceivable, I begged the monk to tell me what I was to do. He answered only, “The question is not ‘what will you do?’, but ‘will you become who you are?” It has taken me years to establish the answer to this seemingly riddled question. I am a Catholic.
Sooner than I can put these thoughts to paper I hear the reproving voices in my head demanding, “You are a Christian first, a child of God, and then a Catholic!” And these voices are correct, in a sense. We are all who proclaim the risen Christ as our Lord a part of the Body of Christ, loved and cherished by our Father in Heaven, comforted and nurtured by His Holy Spirit and promised new life in the world to come through the sacrifice of the Son. This is of central importance, and if we Christians are ever to fight the present darkness of relativism, individualism and the general, not to mention rapid, deterioration of morality in our world we must learn to recognize one another as family and equal inheritors of the Kingdom of God.
That being said, it is increasingly becoming the case that proclaiming to be a Christian means very little. It does not necessitate that one believe in the Virgin Birth, the literal resurrection of Christ or even in His divinity. I once knew a man in seminary who did not even consider belief in God, or any Supreme Being for that matter, a requisite to Christianity. However, proclaiming that I am a Catholic does still mean something. Unlike many Christian traditions torn apart by conflicting beliefs and agendas which have left them desperately grasping for a new identity suitable for the modern times, the Catholic Church has remained constant in doctrines collectively established early in the life of the Church and based in the historic interpretations of the Holy Scriptures.
This point cannot be stressed enough, especially in this modern world in which Biblical literacy and knowledge of historic Christian teaching is alarmingly low while the acceptance of unorthodox theologies is condoned, if not eagerly encouraged. The result has been the creation of a mass of Christians ill-equipped to discern the difference between the truth and a lie. Utterly desperate for wholeness, they are willing to sample each short-lived fad that promises relief. One moment they are convinced that within them is all the light and power they need to achieve the inner healing they so desire, but as soon as the winds change they are fixated upon a particular precept of the Church allowing it to become no more than a superstition or an obsessive compulsion—their hope lying in the accurate practice of the ritual. Some have even rationalized the use of mediums and psychic powers in the name of Christ as they pursue freedom from their anguish. Is there any wonder as to why so few of us have experienced substantial and enduring transformation? The problem has been especially exacerbated by the popular illogical notion that ultimately all truth is relative. If all truth is relative, then there is no truth, and there is no peace to be had and no salvation for which we can hope.
The early Church knew truth and proclaimed a grace that saturates every aspect of the kosmos and indeed prevents it from annihilating itself. All of creation can be bathed in this mercy that has the power to hallow even the darkest of nights of the foulest of creatures. This grace cannot be earned and excludes no one. It is not subject to the changing tides of modernity or the tyranny of any person. The Catholic Church has faithfully preserved these teachings and offers them to a world longing for redemption. And so it is not that being Catholic trumps being a child of God, but that through the historic doctrines of the Church I have begun to discover what it truly means to be the beloved Child of God. It is through this grace that my life wrapped so tightly around its large wooden spool has finally begun to unravel.