Easter Vigil

So. Easter Vigil. I realize that what happened on Easter Vigil is arguably more pertinent for me to write about than was the sacrament of marriage. But that was a late addition to My Catholic Year, which, as much as anything, was supposed to be a time for absorbing as much of what the Church has to offer as possible. And so it felt wrong somehow to not mention that before getting into Easter Vigil.

As I've said before, I joined the Catholic Church by way of a Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter parish. So although I thought I knew what the process of being welcomed into the Church would be like, I was very mistaken.

First, there was the small matter of my baptism to get straightened out. I was baptized back when I was 16 by my grandfather. He was an elder at his local Church of Christ church. But there are some difficulties there. For starters, that was half a lifetime ago for me. I truly have no idea if he baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. It stands to reason that he would have. But I couldn't swear to it.

Second, even if he had and even if I remembered it, I don't have a certificate of baptism. For one thing, that's not really a Church of Christ thing to do. But even if it was, it still wouldn't matter because I was baptized at a church but not by that church. My grandfather baptized me at the church I attended at the time. It was my church; not his. Someone from the church came down, unlocked the building for us and my grandfather baptized me. But it wasn't done by the church proper.

Third, that church technically no longer exists anymore. Or if it does, not in the form it was in back when I was 16. And certainly not at the same building.

The combination of all these things made me a very good candidate for a conditional baptism. If that's an unfamiliar term, a conditional baptism should be self-explanatory. But if it isn't, it's basically the priest offering words to the effect of "If you weren't baptized already, you are baptized now". It doesn't "rebaptize" you as such because that's impossible. You can only baptized once. But in cases where one's baptism is up for grabs, a conditional baptism is a good way to settle the matter once and for all.

However, since that potentially leaves half a lifetime of unconfessed sins on the table, there's really no way to do it during the proper Easter Vigil because the priest can't very well stop the Mass to hear confessions from people who may have already been licitly baptized before. So that part had to be done earlier in the day on Saturday.

And I must say that confessing my sins to Father was a pretty unusual experience. I expect it'll get easier in the future but it was hard to think of very many major sins I've committed. But some very important mortal sins I've committed came to mind and needed to get straightened out. It'd be stupid to mention them here but by any standard this is definitely stuff to mention in confession.

What I discovered though was simply talking about them and getting them off my chest helped a bunch. I'm really sorry for some of the things I've done in life. I did them with my eyes wide open, in spite of everything my own conscience, Sacred Scripture and probably even the Spirit could say to dissuade me. But I did them and then I confessed. Father absolved me and prescribed my penance.

Earlier today I took care of my penance. And you know what? Danged if I don't feel like a burden I was never even aware of has been lifted.

Now, don't misunderstand me. I've never been one of those fuzzy-wuzzy spiritual feeeeeeeeeeeelings types. It's just not my thing. Subjective experience is fine in its place but there is such a thing as an objective reality and experiential nonsense usually isn't what motivates me. But at the same time, I can't pretend something important didn't change, first, by confessing and, second, by doing my penance.

Once the baptismal rite and then confession had ended, it was off to get dinner just before Easter Vigil started.

Now, I come from a decidedly Protestant family. My friends are either Protestant or not religious. Because of that, I wasn't expecting much of anything in terms of recognition from anyone for joining the Church. So imagine my surprise when my girlfriend presented with me rosary beads, a Catholic Bible, 'Heretics' by GK Chesterton and a few other things!

After that, it was back to church for Easter Vigil. Now, I knew this was going to be a major lu-lu. I'd heard that this was the single longest Mass the Catholic Church has to offer. Apparently it's second to none in terms of length. And I found that to be quite true.

Even so, the sights, sounds, prayers and chanting, incense and everything else... I mean, THIS is how you worship God. So I didn't mind the length of the Mass.

This is probably a typical experience for a lot of people but I was not expecting total strangers to want to take pictures of and with me just because I was joining. But that's what happened. My fellow candidates and I were almost treated like celebrities or something with everybody, of whom not least was the parish's photographer, wanting to take pictures of us standing with our sponsors in front of the altar, standing with Father in front of the altar, standing otherwise alone as a group in front of the altar, standing as individuals in front of the altar, etc. It was nuts!

But then they just saw all of us get welcomed into the Church. As converts. Whatever our lives would've become before we joined the Church, that's all changed now. We have a new destiny. A better destiny. And they witnessed us take our first clumsy steps in that right direction. And as adults in such a traditionalist church, you can well figure that we're probably doing it for all the right reasons. And so perhaps that is what those people wanted to commemorate.

Either way, it was hard to not get a little emotional about the whole thing. I've been trying to join the Catholic Church ever since October 2013. My fellow candidates only started in July 2014. If, shall we say, "time served" is a factor, I don't think the experience meant as much to them as it did to me. This took a long time to finally get sorted out. It was worth the wait, to be sure, but joining the Church has been uppermost in my mind for a very long time now.

And now that I'm officially a member, I don't quite know what the next step is. But I'll figure something out.

Of Commissions and Synods

The end of RCIA draws ever nearer. I've only got just a bit more to work through with Father, not least of which is a one-on-one meeting to, I assume, work out the finer details of my baptism. True, I've been baptized before but (A) I can't prove that as I don't have a certificate and (B) I truly can't remember if it was done in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

So a conditional baptism it is!

There have been a few teachable moments in recent months though. I haven't had much chance to write about it but it's interesting to me to compare the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission conference on the LGBT movement over and against the Church's Third Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops.

In the case of the SBC, many people have interpreted comments made by a lot of their high muckety-mucks as a new direction in SBC policy. Change comes from the top and comes slowly but, so the expectation goes, in ten years, we might be looking at a very different SBC. This is based on remarks such as these by Dr. Albert Mohler:

"Early in this controversy, I felt it quite necessary, in order to make clear the gospel, to deny anything like a sexual orientation I repent of that."

And why not, the SBC is losing tens of thousands of members every year. These are predominantly those under the age of 35, for whom "LGBT rights" border on a sacrament. Push comes to shove, they're perfectly willing to turn their backs on Christianity in solidarity with their LGBT friends.

Compare this to the Church's Synod, where some bishops might've wanted to open the door a bit more for the LGBT community but the Church's Magisterium asserted itself and, in the end, the most you could say is that the Church repeated the existing policy of treating LGBT's with dignity and respect but not even coming close to "accepting" them in the ways that Protestant denominations have.

To be sure, this approach isn't necessarily winning the Catholic Church admirers in that same under-35 demographic either. But the difference is that the Church won't change their policy to fit the climate of the times. Homosexuality is a sin and, rise or fall, the Church will stand by her historic teachings in this regard. Nothing has changed. Indeed, nothing can change.

Think of this as another in a long list of things that Protestants have compromised to keep the lights on. For as big a deal as they make over it, it seems that scriptural authority is capable of being overruled by popular demand.

Who knew?

Crossing the Tiber by Steve Ray

I was hanging around the waiting room at an adjunct building the other week waiting for RCIA to start when I happened across the parish's book rack. Well, I say "book" rack; there were books, sure, but there were also pamphlets, CD's and some other stuff there too. But since we're talking about a book, calling the thing a "book rack" seems like the most relevant label.

Anyway, so I happened across the parish's book rack. Among other selections, Steve Ray's Crossing the Tiber stood out. I'd heard a lot about it thanks to the Catholic Answers podcast, where Ray is a frequent guest. The back of the trading card summary is that Ray started out as an evangelical Christian but slowly drifted away once he began, y'know, ACTUALLY READING WHAT THE CHURCH FATHERS WROTE. The drift eventually took him into the Mother Church's embrace, where he's been happily ensconced ever since.

The book, thus, is about how he made that transition. And as he goes through the matter, he makes it clear how often his evangelical friends looked at him askance when they discovered he was joining the Catholic Church.

There are other items I could mention but the major point is that it's a little eerie how his journey somewhat parallels my own. True, he left the evangelical world by choice whereas I was pretty much shown the door. He was a self-styled "Lone Ranger" Christian for what seems like several years while, in my case, that phase lasted only a few weeks (if that). But otherwise his study and reactions to his findings are a pretty close mirror to my own.

Understand, I'd been listening to the Catholic Answers podcast for a few weeks by the time I heard a Steve Ray episode. I thought of it as a nice little rounding out of my Anglican beliefs. My view was that the Catholics were only mistaken about maybe a handful of beliefs. And even there, it was a matter of degree more so than substance. So I could listen to Catholic Answers and filter out the Catholicisms of it as I went along.

Well, Ray made several comments that challenged me. So of course I checked out his sources... all of which were easily verified and, surprisingly, easily proven to be true!

Eventually I came to the same conclusion that Ray originally did. The Catholic Church is either the real deal, the Church founded by Our Lord and perpetuated through a succession of bishops or else the Church simply does not exist in this world. Considering the impossibility of the latter, that left only the former.

Thus I am enrolled in RCIA.

So in a matter of simple intellectual honesty, I must acknowledge Steve Ray as my unwitting entry point into the Catholic Church. And considering his own Protestant background, reading Crossing the Tiber was an immensely intriguing idea. And I must say that the actual book certainly doesn't disappoint.

So think of this as a recommendation. Protestants leave Protestantism sometimes. Or they think about it anyway. And it helps to know (A) other people have been through the same thing and (B) there are justifiable and intellectually honest reasons for doing so.

Of course, the edition of Crossing the Tiber I bought is abridged because it only cost $6 or $7. So I guess you get what you pay for in life. Still a good book though.

Considering Anglican Use

RCIA with the priest from the FSSP parish has been going along nicely. Still, he raised a few good points on Friday night that I've tried to ignore.

The fact is my Mass attendance sucks. There's no nice way to say it so there it is. I've been to the low Mass in Latin a few times but basically my attendance has really dropped off, especially in the past several weeks.

Now, to be fair I DO work on weekends. And that makes it kind of challenging to go to Mass and fulfill my obligation. Difficult. But not impossible. If I'd really wanted to go, I could've.

But there is no Mass in Latin at a realistic time and location to make going on Saturday or Sunday feasible. And obviously I'd rather not go to the Novus Ordo Mass.

Now, that's not to be taken as anti-Novus Ordo or anything. I'm just saying I prefer Mass in Latin, and, apparently, would rather not go if it's not in Latin.

A conundrum.

But then I had a realization a few days ago. As far as I could remember, my office HAS to be fairly close to this one Anglican Use parish I know about so I decided to check it out. And sure enough, it's ridiculously close to my office. So I could go there after work on Saturdays and fulfill my obligation. And it wouldn't even be all that hard to get there either.

Now, as I've said, I did indeed leave the Anglican church. And the reason for that is because it's not the church Our Lord founded. It's not that I don't like it. Quite the opposite! I love it. I believe that Anglican liturgy is one of the finest around. But you're either in communion with the Pope or you're not. And if you're not, why should I bother?

That's what makes the Anglican Use parish so cool. Best of both worlds! So my plan is to get an idea of their dress code. See, my office has one of the most lax dress codes you've ever heard of. The thing is that after a while, "casual" becomes the dress code. So if you show up to work dressed like you're about to go to church... well, that's not a good thing, now is it?

So what I'll probably have to do is bring a change of clothes with me to work so that I can fit in at both places. People have to make sacrifices greater than that to go to church all the time so I shouldn't complain.

I'm actually really excited about this. I've always believed the Anglicans have a lot to contribute to Catholicism. My only regret is that I can't attend an Anglican Use parish nearer to my home. But at least I've got the FSSP parish nearby.

It's hard not to feel really blessed right now.

Second Thoughts About the Church?

Back when I was attending RCIA, I was confronted approached by one of the other Inquirers about Anglicanism. When RCIA first began, we all gave a quick summary of our spiritual lives and what had drawn us to the Catholic Church. I mentioned making a pit stop in Anglicanism after leaving the evangelical world before deciding to make the full transition to the Mother Church.

I surmise my comments drew his attention because he approached me later on and asked if I ever had second thoughts about leaving Anglicanism.

I told him that I was positive I was doing the right thing from a religious standpoint. But I must say that it's a question that I've always had a difficult time articulating an answer for because there are several considerations at work.

For one thing, I really enjoy the liturgy of the ACNA parish I attended for most of 2013. It felt sober and reverential. It was a relatively broad church Anglo-Catholic parish. So we got the bells every service, the smells of incense occasionally and a very Catholic view of the Real Presence.

What I ultimately had to understand was that I would rather be an Anglo-Catholic in the Catholic Church than a papist in the Anglican Church. In spite of my new (and recent) fondness for the Traditional Latin Mass, it must be said that a lot of that comes from my distaste for the Novus Ordo... and that comes from my affection for the Rite I Anglican liturgy, with its beauty and eloquence.

Had I gone straight from Southern Baptist Church #2 straight to a Novus Ordo Catholic parish, I might not care as much about the specifics of liturgy. But that year in the ACNA parish said that liturgy is good; eloquent and beautiful liturgy is better.

But that isn't what happened, now is it? I did spend that year in the ACNA parish, I was exposed to a lot of Anglo-Catholic theology and language does matter to me.

That's what attracts me to Anglicanism on the superficial level. But it's also the same thing that repulses me about it on the spiritual level. Anglicanism isn't just from England; it is of England. You cannot separate Anglicanism from some sense of British nationalism.

Now, don't get me wrong. I have no problem with people from other countries being patriotic. Or even nationalistic, for that matter. Go right ahead.

Where I have to draw the line though is comingling national sovereignty with religious expression. It's well and good to be proud of your country. But the fact is that Anglicanism classically is the mix of Englishness on the one hand and Christianity in the other hand combined in the center in prayer. So closely associating my faith with my earthly citizenship just doesn't seem like a good idea to me.

But come to that, Anglicanism is defined by England every bit as much as Lutheranism is by Germany, Presbyterianism is by Scotland and the SBC is by America. None of these are truly universal in the way the Church is intended to be. The Church is supposed to be one, holy, catholic and apostolic. Anglicanism at large fails the "one" part with its myriad splinter groups. The decidedly English flavor trips up the "catholic" attributes of the Church. It's fidelity to the "apostolic" element is debated to this day by people a lot smarter than me. And surely you don't need me to tell you how far out of whack several components of Anglicanism are when it comes to the "holy" part of the equation.

The Catholic Church has none of those problems. Pope Francis is the vicar of Christ and is the leader around whom the rest of the Church can unite. The Church suffers slings and arrows specifically because of her holiness. It is catholic in that all people in all places feel at home in the Church; so much so that there's probably a Mass going at all times somewhere in the World. And Pope Francis is the latest in a succession of bishops who can be traced in an unbroken line all the way back to St. Peter.

She is therefore one, holy, catholic and apostolic church.

So whatever affection I may have for aspects or elements of Anglicanism to this day, no, I don't have second thoughts about my decision to come home to the Mother Church.

My Catholic Year- The Traditional Latin Mass, The Ancient Way

How about a REAL update on My Catholic Year?

I said in my last post that I'm not terribly interested in bickering over liturgy. What I'm convinced of is that evangelical liturgy (and yes, they DO have a liturgy; their refusal to put it in writing doesn't change the facts) is weak sauce and often hypocritical. Beyond that, your liturgy of preference is between you and your God.

That having been said, I went to the Traditional Latin Mass this morning at that FSSP parish this morning and HOLY CRAP!!!

When I was slumming it with the Anglicans, I REALLY enjoyed the High Church services they did. It wasn't as High as it might've been but I figured it was still pretty good. But if you've ever been to the TLM before, you know that it blows the doors off the Anglican liturgy, duct tapes them back on and blows the doors off again.

Anglicanism ruined me for evangelical Christian worship. The Traditional Latin Mass has ruined me for every other liturgy. THIS is what I want from my worship. It all feels so ancient and reverential and, most of all, AUTHENTIC.

With all due respect to Pope Paul VI, I have no idea how or why the Church could ever go from the TLM to the Novus Ordo. Having now been to both, I can understand why people are so partisan about it these days. I don't think it's worth the grief and bloodletting it's caused over the years, you understand; I'm just saying I understand why people can get so fired about it.

From the standpoint of communion, part of why the TLM works for me is because it's primarily in a dead language. Yes, the homily and related matters are in whatever language they're in. But by and large, the Mass is in Latin. Apart from the mystery aspect of it, there is (or would be) solidarity in knowing that basically all of us are having basically the exact same Mass in basically the exact same way. It'd be as mysterious to me as it is everywhere else in the world.

Obviously that isn't how things are right now. I'm just saying it'd be nice.

I've never questioned my decision to join the Church. But at the same time, I've also never been more positive of where I'm supposed to be.

Apart from that, I made plans with Father Charles to meet later this week. My work schedule has changed so I probably won't be able to make it to Mass on Sunday for a long while (which I'm not happy about, especially now, but it's the hand I've been dealt) but he said he's willing to meet with me one-on-one and go through the Catechism with me so that I can pick up basically where I left off in RCIA.

Besides all that, I have every Thursday and Friday off from work now so I can still go to Mass on those days. Being as Father Charles is hopefully going to be my mentor through this whole process, I'm thinking my lack of attendance on Sunday won't be a major problem for him. My guess is that it'll be a fairly Low Mass on those days (although I'd love to be wrong!).

Just heard a major rumble of thunder outside so I guess I'd better call it a night.

My Catholic Year Update

Man, been a long time since I updated this thing. As usual, there's not been much to say so I didn't bother updating. Until recently, that is, when a few interesting things came down the pipeline. So now's not a bad time to talk about some of that stuff.

For one thing, as I've said again and again, I haven't been able to attend RCIA at the Catholic parish I've mentioned a few times because of my work schedule. But we recently did a shift bid at my office and so my schedule has changed. My Thursday nights are now free. It's my Sunday mornings that are unavailable now.

No, it's not an ideal situation since RCIA requires Thursday nights AND Sunday mornings to be free. But it changes the equation at least a little.

Another thing is that I decided to wash my hands of the Catholic parish I'd been attending. I love the Church and I submit to her authority, don't get me wrong, but it really felt like they weren't even TRYING to meet me halfway on this. They have a model and they're sticking to it no matter what.

My decision to find a different parish coincides with moving to a slightly different part of town. There are two different parishes nearby. One is part of the FSSP. The FSSP's big claim to fame is their preference for the Latin Mass. I've written about the Latin Mass before but I've never really been to one before. But I really like what I know and what seen of it.

I must be honest though, there's an incredibly High Church Anglo-Catholic parish near my new apartment and it was VERY tempting to start going there. I rationalized that I really tried to join up with the REAL Church but they didn't seem interested in having me.

In the end though, that seemed like an excuse. I like Anglican liturgy more than the language and liturgy currently employed in most Catholic Masses, it's true, but that's not a good justification for turning my back on the Church. Ultimately, communion with the Church founded by Our Lord is more important than liturgy. Besides, I figured I could find an FSSP parish and try my luck with them.

So that's what I did today. I called the pastor of that FSSP parish, explained my problem and the impression I got from him is that he's surprised that this tiny problem has gotten as big as it has (and he's not alone on that either). But no matter what, he said he'd be open to meeting with me and working through the Catechism of the Catholic Church with me in lieu of a standard RCIA arrangement.

Just like that! He said that to a total stranger like me! How awesome is that? The guy couldn't pick me out of a police lineup if his life depended on it but he agreed to help anyway.

I'm still in the process of getting things sorted out in terms of moving from my old place into my new apartment so all my nice clothes aren't in my closet yet. So there's probably no way to manage going to the Latin Mass tomorrow. But I can definitely work it out next week.

There have been some hiccups along the way. This whole process turned out to be a lot bumpier than I was originally expecting. But I'm making progress here and that's ultimately what counts the most.

Work Training, RCIA and The Kids Today

As I said before, I've started training for a new job. Also as I said before, that's eaten up most of my free time lately. When I get home from work, all I feel like doing is eating and then going to bed. This won't last forever but it's how things are right now.

Still, there have been a few interesting developments lately.

First off, in my last post, I mentioned I'm not sure what my future is with RCIA because it will conflict with my work schedule once training ends. Unfortunately, I don't know any more now than I did when I first posted it because the outreach director at my local parish has been kind of incommunicado lately. No idea what will happen here.

Frankly, it irritates me because how hard can this possibly be to deal with? Surely they have issues like this pop up all the time. You'd think I'd have more to show for myself after an entire week of waiting for answers. But you'd be wrong.

Every once in a while, articles like this one pop up that make it sounds like The Kids Today are starting to embrace liturgical worship, this is the way of the future, evangelicalism is dead, etc.

Now, more and more it's hard for me to take evangelicalism as a form of church worship seriously. I can't deny that. At the same time though, you can't really underplay evangelicalism as a cultural force. I don't dispute that either.

What bothers me about articles like this is (A) the superficiality of them and (B) the abject lack of distinction between short term trends and long term cultural transformation.

Yeah, sure, The Kids Today might find liturgy interesting... today. But that doesn't say anything about what they've preferred over the past several years or where they're likely to stay in the years to come. It's simply right now that they dig going to Catholic Churches or high Lutheran places.

As interesting as that may be, it says nothing about what's happened in the past, what's likely to occur in the future and possible causes for this sea change in worship style.

It's just kind of there. And that's about it.

More to follow.

RCIA- Inquiry Phase

Haven't posted too much this week. The main reason for that is because I've been crazygonuts busy every single day this week. Start training for a new job on Monday and goings on with that has occupied most of my time and attention lately.

Not sure how this will affect RCIA though. Guess I'd better ask my Catechist about it but basically my new work schedule will require me to work during the normally appointed time for RCIA. Of course, by then the Inquiry phase will be over so it may not make a difference at all. We may not even meet on Thursday nights anymore.

But maybe we will. And if we do... I honestly don't know what the next step from there might be. I may ask the pastor for a dispensation on the grounds that in some ways I'm just spinning my wheels in RCIA anyway since I already believe what the Church teaches so in a sense RCIA isn't really necessary for me anyway.

But that's the last resort. There may be other options on the table.

More to follow.

Lent & Other Musings

I gave up soft drinks for Lent. My Catechist said that as my fellow Inquirers and I aren't members of the Church, we actually don't even have to participate in Lent. But if we already believe, there's no reason not to participate.

So here I am.

And as I say, I gave up soft drinks for Lent. I mainline caffeinated beverages: Coca Cola, Mountain Dew, Dr. Pepper and other things. I have two major vices in life: caffeine and nicotine. And, thankfully, they're both legal. So giving one of them up for Lent was a pretty courageous thing, if I do say so myself.

Of course, cutting off the soft drinks means pretty much cutting off my main source of caffeine. In case it's not obvious where this is going, I had a pretty roaring headache for a couple of days. Took forever to subside.

I tend to plan ahead. Not always but usually. As such, I had items in the hopper waiting to be posted so I went ahead and posted them. The reason for that is because the idea of posting new material with THIS kind of headache struck me as pure insanity.

Since my headache has subsided though, I think I've settled into Lent pretty well. The fasting aspect hasn't been too difficult. And as I've said before, I've been improving my prayer life. And let's face it, Lent isn't a bad time to do that sort of thing. I've heard of people going to Reconciliation/Confession more often during Lent but as an Inquirer, I don't think I'm permitted to do that just yet. But the concept does interest me.

In other news, today Barry the Teleprompter Messiah delayed Obamacare's individual mandate for a period of two years. As a total coincidence, the Democrats lost the special election yesterday for a House of Representatives race yesterday. I'm sure these two things are completely unrelated to each other though.

sigh

I can't help it. I don't want to run an overtly political blog but things like this are why I don't believe in universal suffrage. Not just anybody should be able to vote.

Words Have Meaning

This is part of the video we watched during RCIA last Thursday about Our Lady. I mentioned before that this is one of those Catholic dogmas that I struggled with over the years.

On the one hand, I didn't need very much convincing that Our Lady deserves more honor than she's given in most evangelical churches. I'd wondered more than once if the leaders of what I now regard as the Protestant Rebellion hadn't tossed the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to her.

At the same time though, I couldn't exactly fit all that in with what I knew about the Catholic Church's teachings and dogmas concerning her. And the reason for that turns out to be that I was lied to about how the Church views Our Lady. It's not "worship".

Words MEAN something. And speaking as a former-evangelical, total ignorance as to what the Church teaches and stands for is an evangelical specialty. This is especially true when it comes to the Blessed Virgin. It's the evangelical in a million who understands the difference between "veneration" and "worship". Theirs is an alarming tendency to throw words around without an iota of understanding of what they mean. "The Catholics venerate Mary! That's idolatry!" I should not that "veneration" is the act of showing reverence and honor. "Idolatry" is worshiping images of some kind. Praying to Our Lady is therefore neither "worship" nor "idolatry". Grasping those concepts isn't difficult; it simply requires brains and discernment evangelicals apparently lack.

Does this seem harsh? The objective truth is that evangelicals don't understand what the Church teaches. That's not open to debate. The cause therefore is either (A) a lack of intelligence or (B) an agenda to intentionally misrepresent the Church. Incompetence is the lesser evil, wouldn't you agree?

In any case, the Church's views of Our Lady actually make perfect sense when someone qualified to explain them breaks them down for you. So I guess it's like anything else; never trust evangelicals to explain Catholic doctrine.

Now, this all works to convince me on an intellectual level about the importance she plays in theology. But I still struggle with the idea of praying to her. Or, for that matter, any of the saints. You can take the boy out of evangelicaldom but you can't take evangelicaldom out of the boy, it seems.

But I'm working my way through it. I've decided to start small and then work up to bigger things later.

Baby steps.

More to follow...

Serving- You're Doing It Wrong

As a fire-breathing evangelical, one of the things I noticed pretty quickly was how unwilling some evangelical church members tend to be to get involved, monetarily support the church, serve in any type of role or much of anything else.

Kurt Cobain said it best: Here we are now, entertain us.

I find that attitude inexcusable in any context, but especially in evangelicalism because they offer more opportunities to serve and lead in greater numbers than I've seen so far in the Catholic Church.

And believe it or not, that isn't a criticism of the Mother Church. It's a criticism of evangelicalism. My view now is that ordained clergy should lead everything or, in things they simply can't because of time constraints, they nevertheless keep the lay-leaders on a tight leash.

But when I was an evangelical, I saw so many opportunities to serve in leadership that my mind was blown when people would whine about being unable to get involved. I guess they were waiting for the lead pastor and a group of deacons to visit their home and beg them to do something.

In any case, I served in various things. Initially, I handled Southern Baptist Church #1's podcast. It was easy work so I was happy to do it. I knew less about audio editing then than I do now, otherwise it would be even easier to do these days. Which is really saying something.

Speaking of brainless work, after that I was a member of a small group for 20 and 30-somethings and handled the group's attendance records. I passed around a spiral notebook into which everybody wrote their name and then filled in the blanks on the necessary form. As redundant as it sounds, there was a method to the madness for doing attendance in such a roundabout way. I just can't remember what it was.

Finally, as I've said before, I became that small group's teacher. That went fine for a while. And then all hell broke loose. But I've talked about that before.

Throughout, though, what I noticed was that church members were encouraged to get involved in such things. They had to be encouraged. Usually once or twice per month, the lead pastor of SB Church #1 would bring it up during his sermon, whether it was a casual mention in passing or if that was the entire point of his lesson.

What NEVER happened during my membership class though was someone affiliated with the church presenting a list of different options and asking me how I want to contribute. But during my last RCIA class, the Catechist told my group of Inquirers that when we're fully accepted into the Church, we'll be given a month or two or three to just be Catholic, after which we'll meet with somebody (a priest, a deacon, SOMEBODY), be shown a list of different things we can do and then asked which we'd like to consider.

Apart from being welcome at least to me, this was abjectly foreign to my church-going experience. I was accustomed to having the very highest levels of church bureaucracy practically begging people to get involved, mid-level church bureaucracy gumming up the works and apathetic members sabotaging anybody who tried to make an effort.

So the notion of the Church proactively reaching out to help the laity figure out where they can fit in and make a contribution beyond just writing a check was and is a new idea for me.

Apart from that though, the Catechist rattled off a few suggestions. Here's an incomplete list of what was already an incomplete list:

Extraordinary Eucharistic Minister- My parish has such a huge number of members that there's no way the priests can personally distribute Holy Communion so they use laypeople as extraordinary ministers. Not sure what to think of this, actually. I'm not opposed to it. And I definitely want to help. But part of me thinks it'd be weird for someone so new to the faith distributing Holy Communion to people who were knee-deep in the faith before I was even born. So I don't know.

Usher- This looks most attractive. It's a small but important task.

Catechist- Skipping the Church's lingo for just a minute, I'd be teaching again. No thanks. I don't do that stuff anymore. No.

Cantor- I can't sing so this one's out.

Lector- This is the second most attractive after the usher.

Those were what I can remember the Catechist mentioning but I'd imagine there are other choices. But as I say what impresses me is that the clergy from the get-go is extracting some kind of commitment and involvement from the new Church members. Everybody's expected to contribute something. That works for me as the Body of Christ is made up of many members who perform diverse functions. We should all be doing this.

To put it another way, Rome's bureaucracy works while at least SB Church #1's bureaucracy simultaneously begs for and chases off volunteers.

Catching Up

Complete dearth of updates lately. Partly it's been lack of time on my part. But partly it's been a lack of anything really interesting to talk about.

However, I've had a few musings that I thought I'd share. First, when I began attending a nearby Anglican (not Episcopalian) parish, I developed a taste for high church Anglo-Catholicism. However, I eventually came to realize that my parish had many Anglo-Catholic tendencies, it wasn't quite as high church as I'd have liked. Bells and smells. That stuff. In fact, I noticed a real lack of high church Anglo-Catholicism anywhere in my local area. I was given to understand that this was common almost to the point of being ubiquitous. So why was it such a pain in the neck for me to find it?

I eventually realized that the reason for this is due at least in part to Pope Benedict XVI establishing an ordinariate several years ago that Anglican parishes all over the place took advantage of. Being as they were Anglo-Catholic to begin with and thus likely very high church, it stands to reason that their joining with the Church would necessarily result in far fewer high church Anglo-Catholic parishes dotting the landscape.

Completely new subject now. Something else is I saw a YouTube video by John Cleese that purports to show the spread of various religions over something like 5 or 6,000 years in a minute and a half. Shall we say The Other Side is very accomplished at presenting "facts" (if that's what we're calling them now) without commentary and making you fill in the blanks on your own. If you show any manner of outrage, they can accurately (if not completely truthfully) say they themselves asserted nothing. They're just messengers. Don't shoot the messenger!

Unfortunately the commenters were perfectly willing to speak out where the video itself was silent. And sure enough there were comparisons to the spread of cancer and, my personal favorite, accusations of "cultural genocide".

That accusation has always fascinated me. Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, supposedly developed the Prime Directive in reaction to Christian missionaries going overseas to share the gospel with natives of unchurched (dare I say "heathen") places. It seems that the sentiment is that such people ought to be left alone to develop their own unique culture rather than having big mean western imperialist religion crammed down their throats.

Now, personally I disagree with that. Partly it's because I'm a Christian myself and partly it's because missionaries spread more than just religion. They also spread medicine, sanitation techniques, immunizations against disease and other objectively good things as well. But The Other Side still considers this cultural genocide. They view the Church moving to some new area and effectively trampling that peoples' native culture with Christianity to be a no-no. Fair enough.

So please explain to me then why the Church is just as frequently (if not more frequently) picked on for absorbing influences from other cultures. Valentine's Day, Easter, Christmas, all have at best a mixed biblical origin. You can tie Easter in with the Bible more easily than you could with ancient pagan fertility pageants and whatnot. But at the same time, you can't deny the influence paganism had on the placement of Easter on the liturgical calendar and elements of the observance.

Which is it? Is the Church mean and evil because it spreads to areas and effectively wipes out the native culture? Or is it mean and evil because it has been influenced by other cultures and religions? You can't have it both ways. Either the Church should be completely original and effectively smother all other religious expression when it preaches the gospel in a new area (which we're told is bad) or it should be willing to be shaped by the newcomers as much as it shapes them (which we're also told is bad).

Pick one and stick with it.

Separately from all that, we watched a History Channel documentary about the Shroud of Turin in my RCIA class a few days ago. The Church's history is actually one of the main reasons why I'm joining to begin with. The Catholic Church can trace her history directly back to Christ Himself in an unbroken line of apostolic succession. That's a 2,000 year history. ANY institution that's survived that long will invariably have some amazing and fascinating history to it. And that's right in my wheelhouse.

As to the Shroud, members of the Church believed for centuries that it was the burial cloth of Christ. Back before we had modern computers and carbon-dating and other things to support their argument, several faithful Catholics took the authenticity of the Shroud for granted. The more time goes on, the more the evidence supports the conclusion that the Shroud is indeed Christ's burial cloth.

Usually this is where somebody says (or thinks) that it's not a matter of salvation. You can be a faithful Catholic and believe the Shroud is the genuine article. You can also be a faithful Catholic and believe it's a hoax or a misunderstanding. That's completely not my point. I'm not talking about one's faithfulness or salvation. I'm talking about the authenticity of the cloth. It irritates the hell out of me when people say patronizing BS like that because it has nothing to do with the point at hand.

Anyway, to bring it back to topic, the evidence supports the conclusion that the Shroud is absolutely for real. Now, I don't have a dog in the race either way apart from thinking it would be awesome if the Shroud IS real. What interests me though is the vehemence with which the Shroud's authenticity is attacked. Putting aside how spurious the contrary evidence is (which, for the purposes of this discussion, includes questionable carbon dating samples), the nay-sayers seem to have WAY too personal an interest in destroying the credibility not only of the Shroud but of anybody who believes the Shroud could be authentic.

We're so often told that science is a fair, objective, unbiased series of methods to uncover the truth. Or at least facts. And that may even be true. But scientists are generally smarmy, puffed up, arrogant, self-absorbed, immature brats who don't know half as much as they think they do. Their determination to undermine the Shroud's authenticity in spite of the evidence rather than because of it is just a reminder to us who the objective free-thinkers and who the petulant little children are.

Next, and finally, RCIA's been going great. I've really been enjoying it. The standout lessons so far have been the tour of the parish building (because of all the layers of symbolism and meaning) and the lesson about the Shroud. The Catechists are friendly, knowledgeable and have answered pretty much every question we've fired their way. But the rest of the time we've watched a video series. And honestly, while those videos are informative, I could watch videos in the comfort of my own home rather than driving to the parish building once a week to watch them there. It's a hoop so I'm jumping through it but I can't help but feel that our time would be better spent watching this stuff on our own, writing down questions we may have and then asking those questions in a Q&A format with the Catechists and the other Inquirers. But nobody cares what I think.

Anyway. Apart from little quibbles like that, I've found my spiritual home. Couldn't be happier.

Catching Up On My Catholic Year

So. Started RCIA. Night One was on Thursday, January 9. Pretty eye-opening, actually. Not "informative" so much since I'd already discovered all or most of that stuff on my own. But informative more from the angle of the "culture" of Catholicism. That is new. The Catechists talked about Pope Francis a fair bit and what I eventually understood is that they view him the same basic way that a lot of Southern Baptists view the lead pastor at their churches. That is to say the spiritual leader and authority. Admittedly it's not a perfect comparison but it's the best I've got. It never really soaked through until then because I didn't really understand the concept. But it makes more sense now.

I figured most of my fellow Inquirers would be coming at this from more or less the same background as me. However, I was shown to be wrong. If I learned nothing else on that first night, it's that these people have all kinds of backgrounds. Two of the chicks come from Buddhist backgrounds but for everyone else it's the ABC's of Christianity as you might expect. I mention all of this though to say that what surprised me was how diverse the group was. Not just ethnically (although that too) but in terms of peoples' lives and stuff. The Catholic Church is not a homogenized institution by any stretch.

Something else though. Weeks ago, I dug deeper and researched the split that took place in the Episcopal Church USA that basically gave us the Anglican Church in North America and in particular how it affected the membership numbers for both institutions. I reached the conclusion that, by membership numbers, the schism hasn't benefited ECUSA or ACNA.

And that didn't make much sense because the sheer number of churches that split off from ECUSA should've made ACNA an overnight religious force to be reckoned with. I mean, it's just simple numbers, you know? But that's not what happened. ACNA's growth has moved at a snail's pace. It just mystified me. But either way, and as I said before, you can stick a fork in Anglicanism in America; it's done. I just couldn't understand why.

Well, RCIA Night 1 gave me at least part of the answer. Sure, a lot of parishes and even entire dioceses split off from ECUSA. That's been happening for at least a decade'ish. Maybe longer. But not all have moved to ACNA or one of the other Anglican schism groups.

Nope, a fair number of whole parishes joined up with Rome. Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI at different times set up an ordinariate to accommodate Anglican clergy and, if necessary, their parishes. If even 20% of disgruntled Episcopal Church parishes have joined up with Rome, that would tend to account for why ACNA's growth has been so relatively anemic. It seems I incorrectly linked dropping out of ECUSA with joining up with ACNA. Looks like a fair number of Episcopal parishes and clergy washed their hands of Canterbury entirely.

The Catechist then said that the ordinariate for my city is headquartered directly out of the Catholic parish at which I was attending RCIA. As a matter of fact, they have apartments on-site for priests, seminarians and other clergy to live in. And soon they'll have to build more apartments because Anglican clergy are joining the Catholic Church... and the married ones are bringing their families along. And this was where the aforementioned pontiffs had to take an active hand. Normally, as a religious discipline, the Church doesn't allow married people to be clergy. Simple as that. So those Popes had to set up an ordinariate specifically to deal with incoming married Episcopalian clergy.

And these clergy are apparently still allowed to be distinctly Anglican. They're permitted to hang on to their Anglican customs. The main difference is they're in communion with Rome now. But otherwise they're still "Anglican" in terms of their customs.

This all seemed really messed up to me. Frankly, I had a hard time believing any of it so I decided to check it out. And sure enough, a quick web search revealed this very thing is indeed happening and seems to at least partly account for why ACNA hasn't taken off the why I thought the number of ECUSA evacuations would have implied.

The common thread through a lot of the ECUSA dropouts finding refuge in Rome is that these Episcopalians/Anglicans were happy where they were so long as progress was being made (however slowly) to some kind of reconciliation with Rome. But when it became obvious that reunification was off the table (as ECUSA is all in for ordaining women, homosexuals and who the hell knows what else is coming), these priests and even entire parishes had to deal with matters on their own. And apparently they would sooner tempt their fates in Rome than with a breakaway wing of Anglicanism.

Of all people, I understand.

And to be fair to these refugees, ACNA isn't in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury. So these ECUSA washouts faced a dilemma: They couldn't stay in ECUSA but they obviously didn't feel right about joining up with ACNA either. So what the hell other option is there, you know?

All of this is a *VERY* long way of saying that I'd always assumed that the Catholic Church is a fairly monolithic institution, both in terms of membership and of religious practice. Turns out they're a lot more flexible than I ever gave them credit for.

Incidentally, this has also inspired me to e-mail the rector of my old ACNA parish to let him know about the ordinariate as he may not have heard. I love and respect him even now and it would be a joy to see him every Sunday again.

But anyway. There are some complications with all this though. Minor ones but still. For one thing, they want to see my baptism certificate. Normally I'd be willing to comply with that... except I don't have one. Because one never existed to my knowledge. See, I was baptized by my grandfather when I was 16 AT a Church of Christ but not BY that Church of Christ. So if I had to "document" my baptism, I wouldn't be able to.

Not that it matters anyway because that Church of Christ no longer exists in the form which I attended as a kid. There was a split in the congregation, and of all things it was over musical instruments in the church. The Churches of Christ teach that instrumentation is badevilwickednastynobueno.

That's been settled policy for them for decades so why it suddenly flared up in my town is beyond me. Anyway, but apparently the pro-instrument people won because what's left of the Church of Christ from my childhood is now located in some rundown old shack in a dumpy part of town as opposed to the original building.

So even if there was a baptism certificate for me at one time, methinks it's not on file anymore anyway. And this doesn't touch on how I'm suddenly not sure how canonically valid my baptism is because I'm starting to think of the Churches of Christ as a cult.

What I'm driving at here is that I think it might be necessary for the Catholics to do what they call a "conditional baptism", which basically says "If you were baptized before, you're only getting wet right now. But if you weren't baptized before, you're baptized now".

Since I'm here, may as well talk about RCIA Night Two. Basically the original group from the first night consisted of a total of 13 people. Four men and the rest were women. Going from memory, the numbers for the second week were down one man and two women.

People who know a lot more about this stuff than I do assure me the numbers will probably continue dwindling, either through lack of commitment or an unwillingness to obey the Church's teachings.

And to be honest, I think this is where all the study I did before even joining RCIA will pay off because I've already resolved my problems with the Church's most challenging doctrines. My agenda is to join the Church at this point rather than be persuaded that the Catholic Church is right.

I already know the Catholic Church is right.