Back to the Church

I have changed in the last ten years, more than I sometimes realize. At 19, when I left the Church, I had major problems with the Apostle's Creed:

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, the Creator of heaven and
earth, and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord:

Who was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into hell. On the third day, he rose again. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From thence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting.

Amen.

Faced with the bigotry I found inherent to the Church's teachings, I found myself uneasy with the line "I believe in... the holy Catholic church." When I went to Mass, I could not say it. I could not, in good conscience repeat such a line, when the Church was so obviously against my own conscience in social justice issues.

And so I didn't repeat that line. Which led to more lines that I found myself compelled to drop. Did I really believe in the communion of saints? Weren't some of these stories just folk tales? What about the resurrection of the body? Or the Virgin Mother? Could it just be part of the Church's disdain for sexuality, and for women, that only a woman who was a virgin could be held in high enough regard to be Mother of God? For that matter, how did I know that Jesus was the Son of God? How did I know that God himself was the Creator of heaven and earth? The Genesis story had some obvious problems with literal reality. And really, what evidence did I have that God even existed?

Line by line, the Apostle's Creed fell away from me. When I could no longer repeat a single line of it with any conviction at all, I considered that I was no longer a Catholic. I stopped going to Church. I didn't really miss it. It had been a long time since I'd been to Communion, the focal point of the Mass. I couldn't participate in Communion without first going to Confession, and I certainly couldn't go to Confession without confessing masturbation. And I couldn't confess masturbation without resolving that I wouldn't do it again. And I wasn't prepared to resolve that! I didn't even believe it to be a sin. How could masturbation possibly have any impact on anyone but myself? How could it be a sinful action?

I felt the same way about homosexuality. I couldn't understand how love, between any two people, could be considered to have a negative effect on society. All of the arguments to that effect seemed to be predicated upon the fact that our society is homophobic. If society accepted its gay members, then homosexuality would have no power to divide that society. But as long as a portion of society holds onto that bigotry, they can claim that homosexuality is destructive to their beliefs. I really couldn't see it any other way. Stop being a bigot, and then you won't have to be afraid of the people you are pointing the finger at. Stop being a bigot, and we can all get along.

And these beliefs, fundamental to my own sense of justice, informed my decision to leave the Church. Nineteen is an idealistic age. I couldn't conceive of belonging to a Church that was any less than perfect.

I have changed, somehow, over the last decade. At thirty, I am just as dedicated to causes of social justice. But I recognize that no institution is perfect. There are basically three options available to me: I can leave God utterly; I can find another denomination, one that is closer to my own views; I can attempt to effect change within my own Church.

I attempted the first option in my early twenties. It really didn't work. My faith in God had been deeply ingrained in me from the time I was a child. And without that sense of spirituality, I felt I was missing something. Perhaps God didn't exist, but I felt happier believing that he did. Perhaps I could take it on faith, or even, "for the sake of argument."

Which led me to the second option. I went to university late, in my mid-twenties. I took World Religions, hoping to find something to fill my spiritual void. But I found that my deeply-ingrained Catholicism made it impossible for me to accept anything polytheistic. I also found it impossible to feel comfortable in a faith without Christ. I wasn't entirely without doubt that he was the son of God, but I wasn't without entirely without faith either. If there was a God, I believed that there must be a myriad of ways to worship Him. But Christianity must be my way. Anything else just wasn't comfortable.

I soon found that Protestantism wasn't for me, either. Close, but just not home. Where was the belief in transubstantiation that lay at the heart of my faith, such as it was? Where was the reverance for Mary, as the mother of God?

My upcoming wedding lent an urgency to my soul-searching. I wanted a church wedding. I wanted to raise my children with a faith and trust in God. But I wanted to do it in a church in which I could feel comfortable. My future husband was not raised in any religious tradition, and so it was solely my choice.

I turned to the Anglican church, feeling that its liberal beliefs suited my conscience, while its rich rituals and traditions, so close to the Catholicism of my childhood, suited my need for feeling a familiarity, a sense of "home" in the church.

But! My mother had other ideas. She saw this as a betrayal of her values. She didn't know if she could even attend the ceremony. Wasn't it a mortal sin to attend the wedding of a baptized Catholic in a non-Catholic church? I believe this is a pre-Vatican II dictum of the church. In today's day and age, permission can be obtained from the bishop to be married outside the church. But I didn't want to seek the bishop's permission, because I didn't want to remain Catholic.

A Catholic friend of mine pointed out that Catholics were not necessarily a homogenous group. When he went through a similar crisis of faith, he "decided to stay and fight it out from the inside."

I thought a lot about this, the third option to stay and attempt to effect change in the Church. And I decided that there have been many reasons, over the years, for the Church to split. There have been many very good reasons for Protestant denominations to form. But my path does not seem to be to leave my Church in protest. Perhaps it's equally valid to fight from the inside. I've decided not to leave the Church to those who don't question, to those who hold bigotry as Gospel. And the more I learn, the more I realize that there is a place for me in this Church after all.

And the Apostle's Creed? The creed that I couldn't repeat, which was what finally severed my relationship with the church ten years ago? I have absolutely no issue with saying it now. I can take its credos on faith. Perhaps it is a performative speech act. The more I say "I believe in [each precept]" the more I actually believe in each precept. I will come to each of the credos within the Apostle's Creed, determining my own way to infuse meaning into each of them. I do not have the idealistic fanaticism of the 19-year-old who must understand and endorse every piece in order to repeat it. I can take some things on faith. And I realize that there is more than one meaning to infuse into the line, "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church."

My fiance mentioned once to my sister, that I am more religious than I think I am. Turns out he was right.