Hmmmmm, part 2

Okay, so having laid down the parameters in part 1, let’s look at where things are right now.

(Continued after the jump, or just clicky clicky)

So…obviously the first option should be Catholicism. I mean, family, friends, Celtic…why wouldn’t you? Add to that a couple other factors:

* I consistently come away more emotionally and spiritually satisfied from a Catholic service than I have from any of the others I’ve been test-driving over the last few months.

* I have more different ethnic groups (GROUPS mind you) in two pews on one Sunday at St. Joe’s than I ever had non-white PERSONS come through the door of my childhood church in eighteen years. Coming from a traditionally lily-white denomination, this is particularly affecting.

* There’s an almost two-millenium tradition of study and inquiry and examination, dating from the Council of Nicea and the debates over the canon to St Augustine to John Henry Newman to Vatican II, and even if one doesn’t agree with every point, at least the debates are happening. The whole of the church is plainly not pledged to the “LA LA LA NOT LISTENING MARY HAD A LITTLE LAMB” school of thought that sent a generation of Baptist preachers to “Bible colleges” rather than seminaries, and I’ve been attending the proof of it weekly for the last six months.

* Say what you like, but when there’s an outbreak of vampires or werewolves or demons, nobody calls for the local Presbyterian minister.

However…there is a lot of baggage that goes along with the whole Catholic thing. A lot of it is ancient history about which I’m not particularly bothered. Yes, the Inquisition was godawful. So was the Baptist support of slavery and action against civil rights. So was the Puritan persecution in Colonial-era New England. Everybody did some awful shit back in the day, and I’m not going to get too bent out of shape over the sale of indulgences or the hostility to Arianist thought in the fourth century. Like it or not, though, American Catholicism in 2008 has a lot of associations, as evidenced by the fact that my wife and her side of the family always have to offer the hasty disclaimer of “liberal Catholic” whenever the topic comes up. Not an easy package to buy into, which leads me to my next point:

Is it morally and intellectually honest to convert to a faith knowing full well you’re only going to take on about two-thirds of it?



Seriously. I think about being Catholic, and while a lot of it appeals, I know I’m going to run on the rocks with regard to a variety of things…like, say, transubstantiation, or the opposition to Freemasonry (I’m not a Mason but a lot of my relatives were), or the encyclical against birth control, or hell, the entire doctrine of papal infallibility (which only dates from the 1870s, and was largely a hydrogen-bomb play by the Pope to prevent being overrun by the Prussians). Can I really say “OK, I’m only going to buy part of your arrangement, but here I am!” It strikes me as akin to converting to Islam, but saying “One prayer a day ought to be enough for anybody, and I’ll just face toward wherever, and besides, bacon tastes good, pork chops taste good.” Or becoming a Jew and saying “you know, I just can’t bring myself to let go of lobster bisque, and nobody’s bringing any cutting tool within five miles of MY junk, thank you very much.”

Now I hear you saying “Listen here donkey, you just called yourself a Baptist and yet I’ve seen you being carried feet-first out of the pub with twelve tally marks on your arm, what gives?” Well, two things. One, I commend you to 1 Timothy 5:23. I’ve got a lot of “thine often infirmities,” especially end-users. Two, I think it’s a little different for a faith you’re raised up in. If you drift a bit, well, you came to it as a child and the natural course of your life may change things. I think coming to a new religion as an adult carries an assumption that you’re old enough to look clearly at what it is you’re pledging and have a realistic assessment of what it means to be x.

So for argument’s sake, let’s say that Catholicism isn’t something I feel I can honestly sign onto. What next? Well, the obvious answer is to go Anglican, which around here pretty much means The Episcopal Church. (Apparently they’re trying to get away from things like Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America. Wouldn’t you?) In the immortal words of Robin Williams, “Catholic Lite – same religion, half the guilt.” Let’s see: apostolic succession, strong intellectual history, liturgical worship – plus women at every level of the clergy! None of the hangups about birth control! Still knock down a burger on Fridays during Lent! Get to claim National Cathedral!

And yet…

1) I can’t explain it, but it doesn’t feel right. To say “I’m going to find the faith that dovetails nicely with what I already believe” seems a bit of a cop-out. The fit is just a little too good, if that makes sense. Which is important, because…

2) I haven’t yet found an Episcopal congregation out here that resonated in a meaningful way, although I have one or two I need to test. But the nearest one to where I live had a rock band and the hymn lyrics projected on a big overhead display. I have MASSIVE issues with having the Jumbotron in church.

3) There’s no nice way to say this – the Episcopal churches I’ve attended tend to be…um…white. REALLY white. Preppy Ivy-League established-church-of-the-American-establishment quarter-of-all-Presidents white. I’m aware that overall, the Anglican Communion covers just about everything the Brits ever colonized, including (among others) Ireland and India and half of Africa…but in the USA, it feels a little too much like a Vanderbilt alumni gathering. Now, I am sure this is a broad and unfair generalization, but it just doesn’t match up to Irish in Boston, Mexicans in Los Angeles, Italians in San Francisco, African-Americans in New Orleans…you get the picture.

4) The denomination is in turmoil. In a big way. A denomination tearing itself apart over issues of governance and property and affiliation, all because of one bishop’s ordination, doesn’t feel like a place to find stability.

Well, up the road a ways, there’s a combined church. Lutheran/Episcopal. Two denominations that are in full communion, recognizing each other’s sacraments, possibly the two denominations closest to Catholicism in history and origin, which never really went the psycho-Calvinist route as far as I know. And if you go back a ways, you find a big wide Lutheran streak in my family among the Teutonic ancestral line. Hmm. ELCA? Coffee and pastry every Sunday? The byword for “inoffensive mainline Protestant?” My godson is nominally Lutheran – he was christened Lutheran anyway – and the whole “Called to Common Mission” might get me a 2-for-1 deal with the Episcopals anyway…

You know, that doesn’t entirely feel right either, like sneaking in through the kitchen. Plus I don’t think that any but the most conservative Lutheran delegations (the ones who consider the Pope to be the Antichrist) are all that high-church. Look, I don’t know what it is with all the genuflecting and standing and kneeling and recitations and creeds and such, just go along with me for a minute here. I mean, we’re over 2200 words on religion already, you can hang on for another paragraph or two, right?

In Catholicism, the doctrine of Papal Infallibility (the aforementioned nuclear option) has only been used three times. Once to declare infallibly that the Pope can in fact make infallible statements pertaining to matters of faith. Once to retroactively declare infallible the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. And the last time, over fifty years ago, to declare as dogma the Assumption of Mary. However, in the late 1960s, Pope Paul VI allegedly had on his desk the document that became Humanae Vitae, ready to be signed and issued as dogma – the Church’s teaching against birth control raised to the level of an infallible pronouncement. Ultimately, it didn’t happen, and while the prohibition against birth control is doctrine, it does not rise to the same level of indisputable church teaching as if it had been issued ex cathedra.

Things being how they were in the 1960s, I rather expect that the United States, at least, would have experiences a major schism at least on par with what the Episcopalians are going through if not much worse. I think you’d have an American Catholic church that, freed from obedience to the Pope, would probably have evolved over the ensuing 30 years to a point where it would not be completely mad to see full communion between the Episcopals, the Lutherans, and the American Catholic Church – one huge high-church mainline Christian denomination on the middle way between Calvin and Roman Catholicism. And if that had happened, maybe my decision would be easier – I could throw in my lot with any of them and still have a sense of partaking of all three, that there was a common thread of one-step-removed that bound them all in common, that somehow it would make things simpler. I don’t know, I can’t really explain it. But none of that happened, and now here we are.

So what happens now? I guess I have to keep looking around, seeking, grasping if you will (and if you’re in DC, you probably will – more Junkspeak) and just see what ultimately feels right. I don’t know why this suddenly became so much more important to me over the last year or so, but there it is…now I just have to figure out where I go from here.

Sheesh. Over 2800 words total in 2 posts. If you got this far, I apologize – hopefully the next thing will be a spaz about the NCAA tournament or something entertaining. By all means, drop me a line or something – at least let me know where the flaws are in my reasoning or something…