Confirmation
April 15, 2004
My family is Catholic. Despite a few aunts and uncles that don’t go to church anymore, all of us, especially the grandchildren, are expected to be joyfully practicing Catholics as a matter of course. I’m sure all of us have questioned or wondered about our faith at various points in our lives, but probably none so differently as my brother and me today.
I’m 23. I often say I’m a “recovering Catholic.” I still love the mass and many of our Catholic traditions. What I don’t like, though, is the hierarchy of the Church. I don’t like it when bishops and priests take political stances. I am a big fan of the separation of church and state, and it bothers me that you can be considered a bad Catholic for not accepting, without questioning, Church teaching on things such as abortion, gay rights, and politics. I don’t think it’s unpatriotic to question my government and work for the reform of laws I perceive to be unjust. In much the same way, I think that I should be able to question the Church’s foray into politics, their handling of the sex-abuse scandals, or whatever, without being deemed a bad Catholic.
As a result of my conflicted feelings about the faith, I am not as active in it, nor as enthusiastic about it, as I was as a child.
My brother John, on the other hand, is deep in the most intense period in a young Catholic’s life. He is preparing for Confirmation, which is the Catholic equivalent of a bar mitzvah without the scrolls and chanting. It is the point in a young person’s life at which they are expected to reaffirm the decision their parents made for them at baptism. The young person chooses a sponsor—someone that should serve as a good example of a Catholic adult. My brother has chosen me.
I accepted his invitation after careful consideration. After all, I still am Catholic. I still love the faith and see value in it. I still believe in God and many of the tenants of the faith. Being pro-choice or pro-civil unions doesn’t make me a bad Catholic, does it?
It’s hard to give my brother my opinion about these things. My mother, not only being, well, our mother, but also the teacher of the Confirmation class at their church, is teaching John the party line. I’m trying to share my honest thoughts without contradicting her. And I’m trying to do this without making him want to give up on the whole thing altogether. After all, while he’s ostensibly making this decision for himself, there is just a tiny bit of pressure from my family.
So the situation is making me do something I hate—debate religion with myself. The old habits that I learned in religious education are coming back to haunt me. “Matt, don’t you think your new opinions just seem ok because you’re justifying them?” Well, no. But I can’t help but question myself.
When no one was counting on me, I was a lot more sure about what I believed. While my opinions haven’t changed, how comfortable I am with them sure has.
I’m curious as to what your justifications are. Could it be that when the Church teaching doesn’t fit the way you want to live your life, it’s just easier to say the Church must be wrong?
You say that you want the church to work like our government. Our government is a group of people elected by the masses to serve the common good. They have no power outside of what is given to them by the people. Therefore, government is controlled by the majority. There are pluses and minuses to the majority rule; if the majority is wrong, then wrong rules; see the women’s suffrage movement, civil rights, and today’s gay and lesbian movement, the abortion issue…the list goes on. When laws change, does truth change?
It would be absurd to assume that God intended the Church to work the same way. God created human reason, which is always developing; we are always learning new things about the way the universe works, the way the human body works, the human psyche…and until the end of time, we will always be evolving. Again I ask, does that mean truth changes? When mankind was absolutely certain that the sun revolved around the earth, were they right, because the majority believed it, or wrong because we now know it doesn’t?
Revelation from God is not subject to the opinions of the majority. I don’t condemn you for not agreeing, I just think you’re wrong.
I think you’re making a heck of a stretch to get to some of your conclusions.
You ask if I’m assuming the Church must be wrong because it doesn’t fit the way I’d like to live my life. I can’t see how wanting the church to ordain women, allow priests to marry, or protect womens’ reproductive rights has anything to do with the way I want to live my life. But even for issues that do affect me, I don’t believe that because I’d be affected by them, my desire for them to change is any less valid or well-reasoned.
You said that I want the Church to work like the government. Well, first, that’s not what I said at all. The analogy I made was that I don’t think it’s unpatriotic to question your government, and it’s not unchristian to question your church. If there had never been need for reform in the church, you’d still be looking at the back of your priest’s head while he recited the Tridentine Rite. You say “if the majority is wrong, then wrong rules.” But then you use women’s suffrage, civil rights, and gay and lesbian rights to exemplify this. But aren’t these examples of just what I’ve described—the majority standing up to the leadership to change unjust laws? You ask the question “when laws change, does truth change?” But the question is irrelevant. The laws must change when the truth—that the status quo is unjust—is recognized. It was true with women’s suffrage, it was true in the civil rights movement, and it is true today.
I guess I wonder why many religions, not just the Catholic church, are so hung up on Leviticus 20:13 (“If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them shall be put to death for their abominable deed; they have forfeited their lives.”) while not being all that concerned about Leviticus 20:9 (“Anyone who curses his father or mother shall be put to death; since he has cursed his father or mother, he has forfeited his life.”) or 20:18 (“If a man lies in sexual intercourse with a woman during her menstrual period, both of them shall be cut off from their people, because they have laid bare the flowing fountain of her blood.”) Talk about picking and choosing which parts of the bible you want to take literally. The only way to rationalize that gay people should not be given rights equal to straight people is if you believe that gay people are either inferior or guilty of choosing a lifestyle unnatural to the one God gave them. I can’t accept anyone basing their support for discriminating against gays and lesbians on some Old Testament FUD unless they take all the rest of it literally. And I can’t, because I really like pork. It’s the Other White Meat.
When mankind believed that the sun revolved around the earth, they weren’t wrong because we later learned otherwise. They were wrong because it was never true. I don’t believe that God’s opinion on the matter has changed. I believe that as mankind becomes increasingly more intelligent about the way our world, our minds and our bodies work, we learn that the old beliefs—the beliefs based upon fear and distrust of what can’t be understood—are outmoded and must be changed. And I’m not suggesting that the Church has to take a political stance at all. Actually, what I’m asking is that the Church leaders stay out of it altogether. They should stop declaring which politicians should be allowed to receive Communion and stumping to their congregations for the Federal Marriage Amendment and stick to what they do best: worshipping God.
It doesn’t bother me that we disagree about this. I do want to make sure that you correctly understand what I believe.
I don’t believe in God but am getting my confirmation this year. I havent spoken to my mom about this little problem but I am quite sure that she will make me do it anyways. So now I have to do a project on how I will live my life diffrently…I DON’T KNOW!!!!HELP!!!!!