On being Catholic

There's been something of a thing going on here. Something about Catholics and the DNCC. Maybe you've heard.

Anyway, I thought I would take the opportunity to reflect on being 50% of this blog's 50% Catholic-ness. And I want to go at it by asking, am I Catholic?

I think B is probably more likely to identify as Catholic than I am. I most often say I was raised Catholic. And boy was I. 12 years of Catholic school, Mass every week and Holy Day, a reader and Eucharistic Minister in my parish, Lenten sacrifices, the whole nine. And my parish was very traditional, not at all progressive. I lost my dedication in college, but still would've identified as Catholic.

When I was getting married, we elected against a church marriage. I wasn't at all interested in asking non-Catholic Mr Vane to deal with all that catechism bullshit. The priest at my home parish knew about my decision and took the opportunity after mass one day to tell me in front of most of the parish that once I got married I wouldn't be welcome to take communion in his church anymore. I didn't go back for 5 years.

There are people out there who would loudly proclaim that I am not a Catholic. Not because of what my life looks like, necessarily (although I don't attend mass) but because of what I believe. Or don't. Here's a sampling:

I don't believe
- in transubstantiation
- in the Resurrection
- in the Immaculate Conception
- in Original Sin
- that the death of Jesus Christ redeemed those who believe in him
- that Jesus Christ was a deity
- in Hell
- in the Trinity

Those are the biggies.

I do believe
- in the right to abortion
- in the right to gay marriage
- in the right to birth control
- in the authority of women as spiritual leaders

On the other hand, I also believe
- in the value of looking to intercessors
- in the power of confessions
- in the power and beauty of ritual
- in the importance of Good Works
- in the authority and influence of mothers

And that list is, for me, bound up in Catholicism, in my experience of Catholicism.

As an adult, most of my friends have been Jewish, and with various understandings of what that means. Some are fairly observant Jews, others are atheists. But they all agree that there is room within the idea of Jewish-ness for that range of experiences (I don't mean to extrapolate that kind of inclusiveness to everyone's understanding of Jewishness, obviously.) And in knowing these people and attending their seders and break-fasts, I have lamented the poverty of my own religious experience, where I never felt the inclusiveness of that range.

And now I want to try to find it. Some days I will likely still refuse to identify as Catholic. But the truth is, there is very little about the adult I am that was not influenced heavily by that Catholic upbringing. My values, when they are counter to Catholic doctrine, are so because I consciously ask them to be so. My instincts remain with doctrine on some raw emotional level. Sometimes an upsetting level. But my adult Catholicism can be different. We accept feminisms, plural. We need to stand up more for Catholicisms.

I'm not a Christian, but on most days, I am still a Catholic.