posted by John Borst

The following excerpts are from an article in the February 23, 2007 issue of Commonweal by Jerry Ryan “Why I Stay Catholic: The Bonds of Belief & Friendship”

It is only available by subscription. A web-based subscription is $25 US.

After describing an e-mail received from an ex-seminarian from Argentina, Ryan writes:

….He made me question my own motives for remaining in the church.

The most obvious and simple reason is that I’m used to it. I was born and brought up Catholic. I happen to be Catholic just as I happen to be American. It’s an empirical fact-the rather prosaic underpinning of my fidelity.

Because I’m a Catholic, I go to Mass on Sundays (or Saturday evening), and I’m relatively at ease. I know when to sit, stand, and kneel, and I know the responses. I am deeply aware of Eucharistic theology, and I want to respond to this gift with all my being. Yet I often feel as though I’m just going through the motions. The people around me are strangers, the music is led by a choir singing a couple of octaves above what most of us are capable of, the songs themselves are sickly sentimental, and the sermon is often insipid. . . .(snip) . . . At church, I have the impression that we are a motley crew fulfilling an obligation. There is a clique of dedicated people in the parish who keep things rolling, but I’ve never been tempted to become part of that group. I simply don’t have a vocation to lay ministry. These are very good people who are trying their best. The worst of it is that I haven’t a clue as to how things could be improved.

Now that is a description I can relate to! This too:

So I can’t stand outside and throw stones. The very things that pain and disappoint me in the church exist in myself, and I don’t like them there either. Often I feel like a hypocrite among hypocrites-all of us pretending to live something we are constantly contradicting.

That is the nitty-gritty level. In the larger context, there is a whole litany of complaints: the church’s obsession with micromanaging the sexual life of the faithful and imposing its one-size-fits-all regulations; its courtship of the rich and powerful (who are the laypeople who sit on diocesan boards and consulting committees? Are they representative of the people of God?); the political posturing (morality must be legislated). The litany could go on and on.

snip

Is it simply out of inertia that I continue to be a Catholic? I hope not. Faced with so much that puts me off and the temptation to simply walk away, I find myself replying with Peter: “To whom else will we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

Some of Ryan’s reflections and turns of phrase are memorable:

A long time ago I copied a phrase from a now-forgotten source that goes to the heart of the matter: “We know what is human in the church…in the measure in which we are unworthy of knowing what is divine in it. Those who are best qualified for taking scandal at the faults, defects, and even deformities in the church-the saints-are those who never complain about them.”

Our human communities will always be terribly imperfect, fragile, and ambiguous-sources of enriching friendships but also sources of antipathy and deception. …(snip)…I don’t think we should pretend to “like” everyone, even if each is a good Catholic. The Apostles continued to bicker among themselves even after Pentecost. The history of the church is full of stories about saints who couldn’t get along with one another. The failure of communion on a human level is part of our historicity and our legacy of sin

There is another aspect that is seldom mentioned: the very personal nature of our faith. … (snip)… If a hundred Catholics were asked what their faith means to them, there would be a hundred different answers. Faith . . . (snip) . . . must be vital and free, something understood and interpreted in the depths of one’s being according to the gifts with which one has been graced, according to one’s vocation and limitations. . . . (snip) . . . What the church puts before me is the wisdom of centuries: of confessors and martyrs and fools for Christ. …

snip

Although faith is personal and individuated, it is not individualistic. … (snip ) …If there are many mansions in the house of the Father, I doubt any of them is single-occupancy.

As Easter approaches Ryan provides much food for thought about why if teachers, we teach in Catholic schools, if parents we send our kids to those schools or if as trustees we give our time to govern them.

On the other hand this article from April 6, 2007 is available free:

Why People Leave the Church
DON’T BLAME THE ZEITGEIST
By John Garvey

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