Do I need more reason than conscience and comfort?

I grew up in Erie, PA, which has strong Polish and Italian Catholic communities. There are many Catholic churches in Erie, some very old and beautiful.

Contrary to what I think Bethel Baptist Church, Bethel Christian School, and the Cairns household preferred, I developed a respect and fascination for Catholicism.[1]

The earliest memory I have of any exposure at all to Catholicism would likely be the bells of St Luke Church , on 38th Street in Erie, one block down from Grandma and Grandpa Cairns's house. When we were very little and stayed overnight, Brother Tom and I would share a roll-away bed in what used to be my dad's and Uncle Ken's room, but as I got older (tweenish), Grandma put me in Aunt Dottie's room, which was large, with a high, soft bed and goose down pillows that compressed to a mere feather's breadth beneath the weight of my head. Dottie's room was accented in pink, including a vintage radio and heart-shaped alarm clock on the nightstand.

If there's one place besides my own bedroom that I felt safe and secure, it was that room, at night, when the house was asleep and summer heat sucked and billowed curtains between facing corner windows. I can still feel the cool tightness of tucked sheets at my toes, smell lingering detergent on freshly laundered pillow cases, and hear the bells of St Luke, only one block over but soothing and dull as if miles away, dissolved by distance.[2]

I could very easily have been Catholic, and been a very sincere one. If you believe still in the one universal Church (capital C), then I am, regardless of who might say otherwise.

I have no rosy misconceptions about organized religion, Catholic or otherwise. I have no direct experience with cruel nuns, abusive priests, or Saturday evening's mass before Saturday night's debauch.

But I have seen otherwise good Baptists become pit bulls at church business meetings, and I've known many Christian gossips and drug addicts, wife abusers, and many plain old nasty people that sully the charitable air of a church just by walking through the door.

And I've known harmless lushes and smokers and jaggoffs and just about every kind of Christian that keeps their sins more or less between them and God.

Which only means that whatever I don't know about one church can't be any worse that what I do know about another.

I had a college friend at Calvin that said he could "feel the pain of the Reformation" regarding his roommate, a seminarian who at that time was struggling with his faith and in fact that year transferred to Notre Dame. They lived across the hall from me in Bolt - an intriguing pair - my friend fully Punk at a time when it wasn't yet cool to be Punk, and the seminarian older, portly, bearded, and slightly intimidating; I sensed the seminarian didn't like me, but it just may be he didn't have time for another Calvinist freshman that wouldn't understand him. I never got to know the seminarian. I am glad he followed his heart.

I'm listening to the Douay-Rheims New Testament right now, small passages between other books and my Old Time Radio. I have a printed copy also that I like very much; it's a very pretty bible.

I'm actually quite drawn to the Anglican Catholic Church for reasons I can't entirely explain; the Anglican Catholic Church claims to be "the true heir of the Church of England in the United States." I understand the ACC looks for restoration with Rome. They are more conservative, which appeals to me, and of course my heritage is 75% English/British. Do I need a better reason than conscience and comfort?[3]

http://www.anglicancatholic.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglican_Catholic_Church

 

[1]
Mom and Dad knew many fine Catholics and I never heard a disparaging word about them or their faith. I did hear a lot in Bethel Baptist Church and School about how we differed, but it wasn't very convincing, at least to me.

Let me tell you a story: I once taught adult Sunday School in a Baptist church (yes, this F-bomb dropping Christian with a mind so open his brain could drop out, but I wasn't like this then). One week I taught a lesson from the Catholic catechism. It had Jesus and Mary and a bunch of stuff in there traditionally associated with both Catholic and Protestant doctrine. I don't remember where I got the catechism, or if I still have it. I typed up the lesson in my own words and distributed it to the class. Near the end, I asked if we covered anything they wanted to review further, or if there was anything they disagreed with.

Nope.

I then pulled out the catechism and said that's where the lesson came from. There suddenly arose protests from around the table. Now they could see where there were doctrinal problems. They left very grumpy. I didn't teach Sunday School again, there or anywhere else.

Truth is, the lesson was no more Catholic than it was Baptist or Lutheran or anything else. There is far more that unites most Christians of most sects than separates us. If you don't believe me, pick up the favored bible translation of any Christian tradition you like, read it front to back, and try to identify where the translators have favored phrases that support their doctrinal preferences. Oh, there are many, to be sure, in the Douay-Rheims or King James Version or any other, but you'd be hard-pressed to find or explain them. When it becomes more pedagogy than translation, that's a different matter, but that's not what I'm talking about here, and that doesn't apply to most groups that claim the name "Christian."

[2]
St Luke rang their bells every hour. Around 9pm or so, the bells became quieter. Grandpa Cairns said he thought they were recorded and they turned down the volume at night. I faintly recall some disappointment that Erie didn't have its own Quasimodo in St Luke's bell tower.

[3]
I am, alas, not so naive as to ignore the possibility that the reality is not so wonderful as the conceit. I wish I were. I might be a more optimistic Christian.

Started: 2012-03-04