In Defense of my Mother, the Church

 "Not 100 in the United States hate the Roman Catholic Church, but millions hate what they mistakenly think the Roman Catholic Church is." -- Bishop Fulton J. Sheen

 

My sister spent all day last Saturday at a Eucharistic Congress sponsored by the Diocese of Charlotte. She called me on Sunday to share her impressions and thoughts about the day with me. She was so excited that I could hardly sneak a word in. "I kept thinking about you and wished you were there with me! You have to come down next year!" she exclaimed as she rattled off the dates for next year's event. The event typically begins with a Eucharistic Procession through the streets of Charlotte. How cool is that?! As the Catholic News Herald (Charlotte's diocesan newspaper) states on its event page:

"The 2012 Eucharistic Procession drew thousands of Catholics from across the Diocese of Charlotte. The spectacular procession takes the Blessed Sacrament from St. Peter Church to the Charlotte Convention Center, where the Eucharist is placed at the center of worship and attention throughout the two-day Congress"

My sister had an awesome, uplifting experience and she filled me in on all the highlights -- the best part for her was watching our older brother, one of the many Charlotte diocesan priests in attendance, witnessing and ministering to others as a true and humble servant of Christ and His Church. My sister related how moved she was to see him process into Mass with Bishop Jugis and all his brother priests. He has accomplished so much through God's grace, despite carrying the burden of cerebral palsy. She is so proud of him - as am I. And although it embarrasses him to no end - my sister and I both agree that we think he is a saint and will someday be counted among the great ones. She wishes all of our siblings had been there to see him. She just knew they, too, would be so proud of him.

My sister and I chatted for the better part of an hour. We shared how blessed we both felt to be faithful Catholic women. Sadly, I think there are a lot of non-Catholics and formerly baptized Catholics who leave the Church who do not fully understand what a treasure she really and truly is. I could have very easily been one of them and am grateful now that I resisted the temptation in my early adulthood to completely walk away. 

The majority of Catholics of my generation, for whatever reason, were very poorly catechized.  My sister and I both acknowledge that we didn't always adhere to Catholic teaching, partly due to bad catechesis and partly due to allowing ourselves to be swept up into the popular, secular culture. Rather than completely abandon the Church, we continued to half-heartedly practice our faith, ignoring or discarding those doctrines and teachings that hampered our so-called freedom to live as we wished, yet realizing, too, that the Church provided a steady anchor, a constant in a topsy-turvy world. And so, however imperfectly we continued to cling to her. And I'm so glad we did.

A variety of experiences - unique to our own circumstances - finally brought us both to a much broader and clearer understanding of the truth that the Church has promulgated from her inception over 2000 years ago. Rather than feeling oppressed by the same teachings we had formerly rejected, we soon found ourselves on fire for the faith and exceedingly eager to learn more. Fortunately, my sister and I sought out the proper, reliable sources to read and to study.  Most of what I had rejected were the teachings on contraception and reproductive health. After a while, I grew weary of the purely emotional rants that I had heard and rehearsed over and over again against Church teaching. I just wanted to formulate and cling to an argument based on reason, but what I discovered instead was a very reasonable answer in defense of Church teaching! Oddly enough, this all came about because my friend, a fellow catechist and I went to battle with our DRE and pastor (of a former parish) over the use of Protestant bibles being handed out to teachers and children for use in a Catholic religious education program. But that's a whole other story and I won't go into all the details here - only to say that dealing with this particular problem led me to delve into a whole slew of wonderful, enlightening explanations about why Catholics do what they do. Everything started making so much more sense, and I realized how wrong I had been. Praise God!

I know many Protestants of varying denominations - some of whom I am quite close to and a few of them I love with all my heart. I would jump in front of a bus for them, I love them that much. Despite our differences, I know that we share a mutual respect for our individual beliefs. The following beef is in no way intended to offend them. We are conservative Christians who are bound by our common fight against the atrocities of abortion, euthanasia and a host of other societal ills.

I have been increasingly annoyed, however, by those pesky little affronts against the Catholic Church posted by a variety of non-Catholic scoundrels in the comment boxes of Facebook posts, online articles and blog posts. You know the ones I mean: the Catholic Church is the whore of Babylon, the Pope is a sinner (duh!), Catholics pray to dead people and we worship Mary, just for starters. The internet is peppered with the nonsense. Part of me is flabbergasted that in this day and age these criticisms and untruths still exist. I remember fending off rails against our faith shortly after my family relocated to rural North Carolina from New York over 40 years ago. I recall that to some of the more hardcore fundamentalists we were Catholic Yankees doomed to Hell.  Some of them behaved as though we grew horns and ate our young! In varying degrees these attitudes still exists today. Most of what I encounter online, just like what I encountered all those years ago, is clearly based on ignorance of Catholicism and deep-seated misconceptions about what we believe and maybe even a little fear. Of course, I don't expect everyone to agree with the tenets of Catholicism, but I wish they would stop pretending to be an authority on Church teaching when clearly they have no idea what they are talking about! And how about we just let God worry about the salvation of my soul, hmm?

Should I just ignore these comments and anti-Catholic diatribes? Probably not a bad idea. I seriously doubt that rebuttals against Facebook rants ever really change minds and hearts anyway. But on the other hand, I have grown weary of saying or doing nothing in defense of something that means more to me than life itself. Does it behoove me to speak up against untruths, abuse and heresy? I think it does. Great men and women gave up their lives in defense of Holy Mother Church. If these great saints truly are my heroes (and they are) shouldn't I emulate them as best I can?

And so ...  I hope, here on my blog, to address some of the more misunderstood tenets of my faith in future posts. For the time being, however, I have discovered this Catholic apologetics site whose creator, John Salza, uses Scripture to defend and explain many of the teachings that non-Catholics find so troubling. Hopefully, it proves helpful to those interested in understanding more about Catholicism, especially my fellow Catholics. It is, of course, only one of many, many excellent sources out there.

Finally, as my sister expressed to me over the phone, I, too, cherish the profound beauty, the richness, the truth and the holiness of the Catholic Church. I will embrace Her until my dying day, because Christ lives in her - she is His Church. Through her members, His body, He reaches out to save the world. And it is where I go to meet Him, to receive Him intimately, to become one with Him in a loving embrace.

May God bless us all.