Broken Churches, Violent Nations, and the True Kingdom

Eric Shansby

It’s a difficult time to be a peace-loving American and a follower of Christ.

On one hand are the apologists for the Catholic church who are starting to circle the wagons.

“If you leave the church, you’re doing what Satan wants you to do.” Nice shaming of people who can’t deal with the abuse and the hypocrisy anymore. Do you also say that to battered women who want to leave their husbands?

“If you walk away, then you were never really one of us to begin with.” Ah, yes, the old No True Scotsman fallacy. It's how true believers tune out criticism. Evangelicals use that one too, to describe the backsliders in their midst. 

Bishops are pointing fingers at gay men. Other bishops are pointing fingers at the pope. The pope offers tepid apologies and asks the entire church to fast and pray, for the sins of men that the church will do nothing about.

It’s obvious at this point that nothing will change unless the church is forced to change. At a bare minimum, that means withholding money from the collection plate until the church makes it clear that it's serious about getting its act together. 

On my way to church last Sunday (not a Catholic church, mind you), I turned on the car radio. It was set to EWTN, the Catholic radio station, from a previous trip. The first thing I heard was two women discussing the consistency of cervical mucus. These were tips for how you can engage in natural family planning – because, of course, policing the use of contraception is something the church should be really worried about when its priests rape children and their superiors cover up for them. So remember, check your cervical mucus so God doesn't send you to hell for using a pill. And if you do use birth control, no communion for you – but if you’re a priest who violates a child, we’ll just move you to another parish and pay off the victims, and could you please prepare communion for Mass?

Later, there was a priest offering a prayer for people who “suffer” from same-sex attraction. He asked that God would open their eyes to the divine plans he had in mind for the union of men and women. As if gay people have a disease that can be cured with some kind of holiness pill. Since many in the church are already blaming gay men for the abuse crisis, I suppose this shouldn’t be a surprise, but it was certainly eye-opening. The church says nice things about gay people, going on about how it welcomes them into worship – but then it turns around and condemns them to a life of celibacy. Remind me again how well celibacy has worked out for your priests.

A few days later came the death of John McCain. I could never have expected the over-the-top hagiographies that liberals, of all people, would be offering for this man. The man who was the very embodiment of American militarism and imperialism, who never met a war or military intervention he didn’t like, whose policies led to the suffering and death of hundreds of thousands of human beings around the globe, who once referred to peace activists as “low-life scum.” From peace to civil liberties, McCain could be reliably counted on to be on the wrong side of every issue. If you ever wanted some kind of gauge on where to stand on a topic, all you had to do was look at where McCain and Lindsey Graham stood, and it was generally a safe bet to take the opposite view.

I think there are two things at play in the glorification of John McCain. One is that he criticized Donald Trump. So leftists are rushing in to praise him as a voice of reason in the Republican Party, I guess so they can look bipartisan, or just so they can tweak Trump. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. The irony, of course, is that if McCain had succeeded in his 2008 presidential campaign, he would be remembered today not as some kind of towering hero but as the man who denied Barack Obama the presidency and foisted Sarah Palin on the nation. Political amnesia, it seems, has reached epidemic proportions.

Second, Americans have been thoroughly conditioned, for going on 17 years now, to reflexively support anything to do with the military. So McCain becomes an automatic “hero” for “serving his country.” That it was in a war Americans had no business being involved in doesn’t matter in the slightest. In this sense, we’re seeing the result of years of being told to “support the troops,” which, as Noam Chomsky once pointed out, deflects us from asking the real questions, like why are we fighting these wars in the first place?

We can’t ask those questions, because then we might discover that the idea we’re “fighting for our freedom” is a myth – that we’re actually propagandizing young men and women to put on a uniform not in defense of their country, but in pursuit of propping up American empire and appeasing the shareholders of defense contractors. The entire edifice would come crumbling down if the truth were revealed.

And so we have to prop up the nationalistic myths that keep the war machine running. Part and parcel of that process is to glorify anyone who has ever put on a uniform, which we do, by uncritically thanking everyone “for their service.” And that’s why we now have people – from the political left! – losing their minds that a flag over the White House isn’t at half-staff in honor of a warmonger. If there ever was a clearer sign of how nationalism brings out the worst tribal tendencies in human beings, and of how far to the right our entire nation has lurched politically, I have yet to see it.

As all this nonsense unfolds, I’m beginning to see the wisdom of the traditional Anabaptist view of turning one’s back on the corrupt kingdoms of this world. The kingdoms of this world don’t know peace. They know conflict and violence. They elevate their own tribe over others, based on nothing more than fictional political borders, and employ nationalistic myths to unite the populace behind them.

The Way Redux

Only in a nation that has confused Jesus with national interests could Christians make excuses for why we shouldn’t feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and welcome the stranger, but why we should pour more than $700 billion of our financial resources into making even more planes and bombs, so we can fight even more wars. (That the obscenely bloated $717 billion defense bill was named in McCain’s honor is a sadly fitting epitaph that sums up his regrettable legacy.) We’re then left trying to explain why Jesus didn’t really say what he meant. And so we filter the words of Jesus through Paul and the Old Testament, rather than the other way around, because where Paul and the Old Testament leave room for violence and judgment, subjugation and condemnation, Jesus holds us to a higher standard.

He reserved his harshest rebukes for the self-righteous religious hypocrites who laid heavy burdens on people but then refused to lift a finger to help.

He rebuked Peter for using violence in his defense, and said that all who lived by the sword will die by the sword.

He met people where they were, dining with sinners and outcasts, causing scandal among the pious religious classes as he poured out love, mercy, compassion, and forgiveness in abundance.

He said to look past an eye for an eye.

He said “blessed are the peacemakers,” not the makers of war.

He said “blessed are the merciful,” not the vengeful.

He didn’t ask his followers to avenge his death, but rather forgave those who crucified him.

These are not values consistent with the kingdoms of the world. The kingdoms of the world cannot function without violence or the threat of violence. The kingdom of God, in contrast, cannot function without love and mercy. When we try to make the kingdom of God run on the values of the kingdoms of this world, we end up distorting God and serving two masters. We take two incompatible things and try to make them compatible.

We are called to bring the kingdom of God into this world, but not by imposing God’s kingdom onto the worldly kingdoms. We are to be a people set apart, known by our love, witnessing for the values Christ wanted us to embrace, so that we can make the kingdom of God attractive to others disillusioned with the values of this world and looking for a new way to live, a new way to be.

Glorifying flags and wars, embracing nationalist myths, promoting violence. These things don’t bring us closer to the kingdom of God.

Overlooking the abuses of religious leaders in defense of an institution in desperate need of reform – that won’t bring us closer to the kingdom, either. Nor will shaming those who walk away from the corruption and choose to follow Christ elsewhere.

We have much work to do. Changing the way we look at the world isn’t easy. But we are promised that the results will be worth the effort.

So what’s stopping us?

The Church's Let-Them-Eat-Cake Moment

Dave Granlund

It saddens me to see the fallout from the church sex-abuse scandal over the past week. From bishops and far-right traditionalist groups trying to scapegoat gays, to a report from the Catholic League trying to parse the meaning of the word “rape,” to a cardinal in Mexico who says the victims should look at the skeletons in their own closets (no joke), it’s obvious that church leadership doesn’t have a clue. Even the pope, whom I generally like, took a week to release a statement, and when he did, it included asking the entire church to fast and pray – as if we should all be doing penance rather than the perpetrators.

Blaming gay men, blaming victims, blaming everyone but themselves.

What should be happening is a purge. The Vatican should be demanding the immediate resignations of anyone still in the church who took part in the abuse or helped cover it up. Instead, we’re hearing a lot of the same things we did back in 2002 – unconvincing apologies and half-hearted promises to do better. When even the best the pope can do is offer platitudes that sound like the empty "thoughts and prayers" that follow every mass shooting, it's clear that this problem is not going to go away quickly, if at all.

Indeed, the reaction so far tells me that nothing is likely to change until the church feels a financial repercussion. People will have to vote with their feet and their pocketbooks. Money talks, even in the Catholic church.

To his credit, the pope did point a finger at clericalism in the church, and that is part of the problem. Some people in church leadership act as if this is still the 12th century and the clergy are all unaccountable demi-princes with no time for the common riff-raff of the laity. If they're sorry about anything, they're only sorry the church got caught. But that's also serving as a stark reminder that the church is, inherently, a hierarchical institution that's accustomed to barking down orders from on high while the laity are supposed to blindly obey and never question their authority figures, no matter how wrong they may be. The church is not a democratic institution in which the voices of the everyday people count. It never has been, and it probably never will be. 

The church has been run by an old boys’ club for literally centuries. They look out for their own, and it’s clear that many feel themselves above reproach. The same thing happens anytime a group of men are given power over others. But you know what cleans up the back-room deals, cover-ups, and all-around secrecy and corruption of all-male clubs? Letting women in. It changes the dynamic every time. Men act differently in the presence of women. We all know this to be true. Most of the time, they act better.

The church has always maintained that it can’t ordain women because Jesus only had male disciples. The only problem is, that’s not true. Mary Magdalene was the apostle to the apostles. Women followed Jesus from town to town and at least partially funded his ministry. He treated women like equals in a time when women were literally the property of men. The early church was populated with female deacons, prophets, and hosts of house churches.

Yes, it’s true that the church venerates the Blessed Virgin Mary, but it’s notable that for Mary and all the female saints, what many seem to value the most about them is their virginity. You never hear about it if a male saint was a virgin, but it almost always comes up for the women. Meanwhile, Paul says it’s better to marry than to burn. So we end up with a dichotomy for women that values them either for their virginity, or for their ability to act as a sexual receptacle for men so that the men don’t burn with lust. But where are women valued for simply being women? Why should women with a gift for ministry be prohibited from leading a flock? Why should we not value their natural gifts for nurturing and compassion and allow those characteristics to help reshape the church?

Allowing the ordination of women won’t clean up this mess by itself, but it would be a big step in the right direction.  

Then there’s the problem of scapegoating gay priests. Far-right Catholic groups, along with a small number of bishops, have been loudly condemning a supposed “lavender mafia” in the church, in an attempt to portray the abuse problem as a homosexual problem. Polls have suggested that as many as 50% or 60% of priests are gay, so in that sense it’s not a surprise that many of the abused have been male. But to say that the abuse problem is therefore a “gay” problem is to miss the point that abuse is not about sexual gratification as much as it is about power and control. When straight men abuse girls and women, we don’t blame it on the fact that they’re heterosexual. We acknowledge that they’re abusing their power over others to get what they want. It’s no different for gay men. To be gay does not make you a predator. We can’t overlook the fact that women and little girls were abused, too, and that nuns have also complained of systemic sexual abuse.

No correlation has ever been found between homosexuality and pedophilia. Despite the persistent myth, the idea that gay men are predisposed to pedophilia is as baseless, and as bigoted, as the long-discredited racist claim that black men were predisposed to raping white women. In fact, studies show that the typical pedophile is a middle-aged married man with children. 

So why are so many boys abused? Because studies also show that pedophiles are attracted to age groups rather than to gender. So a male pedophile who may otherwise appear straight to the outside world could be just as likely to rape a boy as a girl. And in the case of the Catholic church, whom do abusive priests have more access to? Boys.

The larger issue appears to be that men with sexual problems are entering the clergy, either to gain access to children and subordinates, or to try to escape from their own urges. And that’s why I wouldn’t mind seeing the church give up its celibacy rule.

I’m not making the absurd argument that celibacy turns men into pedophiles, or that marriage cures pedophilia. What I’m saying is that without the celibacy rule, men seeking refuge from their sexual desires may not find the priesthood as welcoming of an escape any longer. It would certainly widen the field of candidates to include men who may be otherwise eminently qualified to be a priest, save for being married. And it therefore may also attract men who are more sexually balanced in the first place. It’s notable that other liturgical churches that allow their priests to marry – Orthodox, Episcopal, even Eastern Catholic – don’t deal with these sex scandals to anywhere the same degree the Roman Catholic church does.

Maybe, then, dropping the celibacy rule would create a church that’s less sexually obsessed, and that's led by men (and women) who aren’t so sexually stunted. From a practical standpoint, it would be nice if engaged and married couples could receive counseling from a priest who actually knows what married life is like. To be counseled on marriage by a celibate man is absurd at best, hypocritical at worst.

Speaking of hypocrisy, the church would do well to stop punishing people for their own personal relational choices until it cleans up its own act. Divorced? No communion. Using contraceptives? No communion. Catholic and didn’t get married before a priest? No communion. But oh, you’re a priest and you sexually abused a child? We’ll move you to another parish, and don’t forget to consecrate the Eucharist on Sunday.

"They tie up heavy burdens and lay them on men's shoulders, but they themselves are unwilling to move them with so much as a finger."

Jesus dined with sinners and didn’t withhold the bread and wine from anyone at the Last Supper. But he had a whole lot to say about hypocrites, especially religious hypocrites, and warned that it would be best for a millstone to be tied around one’s neck than to lead a child astray.

Frankly, we’re well past the point of needing to flip tables in the temple. We need nothing less than a modern Reformation.

Whether the insular, corrupt leadership of the church will do anything remains to be seen. Right now I think they’re happy to feed the antigay narrative and try to pin the whole problem on a shadowy lavender mafia. If they have a scapegoat, they don’t need to change a thing. But good luck getting that to fix the problems with the church. All it’s going to do is inflame antigay hatred while unaccountable men continue to abuse their power.

And for those in the pews who are trying to shame the people who have left the church over this issue: Stop. Please. For those for whom abuse hits home, either at the hands of a clergyman or someone in their family, they may have no choice but to leave for their own mental well-being. The combination of horrific abuse and systemic cover-up will be a bridge too far for some. Others simply aren’t going to be able to stomach the self-serving hypocrisy anymore. Everyone has a breaking point. To tell those who leave that that’s what Satan wants them to do is like telling a battered woman to stay in her marriage because her husband is still a good guy sometimes.

For those who stay, do some good. Don’t let the leadership allow this incident to blow over. Don’t allow them to scapegoat people or blame the victims. Demand more oversight, accountability, and transparency. Hold your offering from the collection basket if necessary. Be a thorn in their side until they respond.

For those who leave, I know how hard this is and how angry you are. And I don’t blame you for your decision.

Being the Church You Wish to See

The church I envision doesn't exist.

Like the Quakers, the church I envision believes in the equality of all people. Anyone can be a minister. All it requires is an openness to the continuing revelation of the Spirit, born of sitting in reverent silence and listening for the still, small voice within.

Like the Catholics, it embraces the rhythm of the liturgical seasons and doesn't shy away from sacred tradition. It pursues goodness, truth, and beauty as key to the spiritual life. It has its share of mystics and contemplatives who plumb the deeper meanings of scripture and discover an intimate connection to the divine that can't be expressed, only experienced. It possesses a rich social teaching that reminds us that it is our Christian duty to help the "least of these." It embraces the communion of saints and shows great reverence to the Blessed Virgin.

Like the Orthodox, it embraces tradition and finds itself more comfortable with mystery and less concerned with dogmatic definitions.

Like the Episcopalians, it allows men and women alike to lead their flocks, and it acknowledges that the communion table is God's, not the church's, and is therefore open to all.

Like the Anabaptists, it takes Jesus' message of nonviolent enemy-love seriously. Rather than pushing aside Jesus' challenging teachings and making excuses for why we don't have to pay attention to what he said, it puts the Sermon on the Mount front and center and assumes that Jesus actually meant what he said. It makes Jesus the lens through which we view the rest of scripture, rather than going first to Paul and the Old Testament and reducing Jesus to a creed or a ticket to heaven.

Like no mainstream church does, it seeks to raise up and exalt the Sacred Feminine, both for a culture that needs more nurturing tenderness and less heated aggression, and to restore balance to a spiritual tradition that has largely shut out women's voices. It celebrates the women of the Bible and the inspiring stories of the female saints. It exalts Mary as our spiritual mother, a model Christian, and an unsurpassed example of faith and humility. And it rediscovers the role of Sophia and her contribution to the history of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

This church, then, doesn't see God exclusively as male but also doesn't shy away from tradition in calling him Father. Yet it also actively seeks out the Mother, in Sophia, in the Holy Spirit, in the Blessed Virgin, in creation itself.

The church I envision puts Christ's words first, seeks God in contemplation, pursues peace and justice, sees Jesus in the poor and marginalized and forgotten, embraces radical nonviolence and nonresistance, raises up the sacred feminine, treats all with equality and dignity, allows men and women alike to lead, and opens its table to all who approach. 

It's open to fresh ideas and continuing revelation yet doesn't allow itself to be blown to and fro by every modern whim and innovation that comes along. 

It holds that how you act is far more important than what you say you believe, and it accordingly doesn't bury Christ under dogmas and creeds. 

It avoids the alluring trap of cheap grace and takes seriously the proclamation that faith without works is dead. 

It finds no glory in war but rather sees violence as a human failure, and believes that you can't love your enemy if you're trying to kill him. 

It puts its faith in the Kingdom of God, not the kingdoms of men, and therefore seeks to disentangle the cross from the flag and Jesus from empire. 

It doesn't worship the Bible, but rather believes that the written word forever points us toward the Living Word of God.

Most importantly, it always leads with love. Love is its eternal default.

When you can't find the church you envision, do you settle for the best you can find from the existing options, or do you start your own? That's the question of the day. If time and health were in more abundance for me, the answer would be simple. For now, it's something I need to take some time to reflect upon in prayer and contemplation.

Farewell to Rome?

As a consistent-life Catholic, I was thrilled with the news that Pope Francis has declared the death penalty inadmissible.

The church has been moving toward this stance ever since Pope John Paul II declared capital punishment unacceptable except in rare circumstances where it would be necessary to ensure public safety.

Now Francis has made part of the official catechism what his predecessor had already stated -- that the death penalty is "an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person." That's sensible, and in line with Christian ethics. Even the worst criminal is still made in the image of God.

Sadly, and predictably, right-wing U.S. Catholics are losing their minds over this, as they do every time Francis demonstrates a spirit of Christ-like mercy. From more-Catholic-than-the-pope Raymond Arroyo, to the reliably anti-Francis extremists at OnePeterFive, the calls of heresy are running rampant. The Catholic governor of Nebraska says outright that he doesn't care what the pope declares and will continue to defend execution in his state. And he's not alone, considering a majority of American Catholics still support the death penalty, apparently proud that the United States keeps company with Islamic theocracies and Communist dictatorships in continuing the barbaric practice of killing people to show that killing is wrong.

People are actually calling Pope Francis a heretic over this announcement. That's right: Not wanting to kill people is being called heresy. Let that sink in good and deep.

And this is the crux of the heresy-hunters' argument: How dare the pope say we can't kill people?

If that's your argument, frankly, you don't get it.

You don't get "Thou shalt not kill."

You don't get that Jesus spared the life of the woman caught in adultery, who, under the law, was eligible to be stoned to death.

You don't get that he told us to love our enemies.

You don't get that he told Peter to put his sword away, for all who live by the sword will die by the sword.

You don't get that the early church, for the first few hundred years after Christ, was staunchly opposed to the taking of life in all forms.

You don't get that Jesus himself was an innocent victim of state-sanctioned capital punishment.

I hear lots of appeals to Romans 13 to explain away how it's OK for the state to kill people. Yet when it comes to abortion, which is the law of the land, these same people endlessly rail against Roe v. Wade and call for its repeal. Well, Jesus had a thing or two to say about hypocrites. Either you believe in submitting to the law or you don't. Either you support the preservation of human life or you don't.

And frankly, a lot of people who claim to be pro-life showed their hand all too clearly when they ran to the defense of the Trump administration's policy of separating immigrant children from their parents at the border, using the most dehumanizing terms imaginable for those fleeing to safety -- often as a result of our own foreign policy.

It's been said that maybe, instead of a wall, we should install a giant mirror at the border, so we can reflect on what kind of nation we've become.

But maybe the church could use a mirror, too -- not just for some of the laypeople in the pews, but for many of its leaders as well, considering the news this week of yet another sexual-abuse scandal and cover-up.

I came back to the church after the original scandal came to light, and it gave me pause about returning. Yet after assurances from higher-ups in the church that positive steps were being taken to address the scandal, rather than shuffling around priests from church to church following allegations against them, we now have the bombshell report that Cardinal Theodore McCarrick has resigned, amid allegations that he sexually abused minors and adult seminarians for decades. The New York Times reports that the church reached financial settlements with some of his abuse victims in New Jersey, which is a nice way of saying the church purchased their silence while allowing McCarrick to continue in his leadership role.

In the meantime, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is about to release a grand jury report detailing sexual abuse charges against more than 300 priests. And that's just from six dioceses in one state. It would be naive to think the problem isn't as widespread in other dioceses around the nation and world.

Indeed, the church in Chile is dealing with its own scandal, with 70 clergy and laypeople under investigation, facing allegations of abuse from 104 potential victims.

The rot, it seems, runs deep.

And here's the thing. I don't want to hear about about how abuse in the church isn't any worse than in any other professional organization. That's not the point. The point is the church holds itself out to the world as a bastion of morality. The point is that if you represent yourself as a man of God, you have a responsibility to be a mirror of Christ to those in your flock. "Let the children come to me," Jesus said. We'd all like to think we could trust our clergy as much as we might trust our kids in the lap of the savior himself.

Of course, being human and broken, we will all stumble from time to time. But this is not just stumbling. This is the systematic, predatory abuse and violation of innocent children, by men who are trusted to be upright guardians of the faith, given cover by an institution that, until its hand was forced by public outrage, appeared more concerned about its reputation than about saving children from abuse.

I can't remember where I read it, but I'll never forget the heartbreaking story of a man who recounted looking up at a picture of Jesus on the wall of the priest's office when he was a boy, while the priest was violating him, and wondering why Jesus wasn't coming to save him.

And this is what the church was covering up for decades, to protect its own interests.

I have tried and tried to come to peace with the church and the issues I hold in tension with it. And I dearly love Pope Francis. I think he's a beautiful man of God who tries his best to reflect the love and mercy of Christ. But I'm no longer convinced he can save the church. From mean-spirited people in the pews who only care about life when it's unborn, to the unending stories of predatory clergy, I'm hanging on by a thread to the church at this point.

I was already frustrated with the church's policy on fencing off the Eucharist, and with its insistence that it will never ordain women. Now I'm having an extraordinarily hard time defending the church at all in good conscience.

If the church focused on the sage words of beautiful Catholic voices like Dorothy Day, John Dear, Henri Nouwen, Helen Prejean, Thomas Merton, and the Berrigan brothers, and on the actions of groups like Pax Christi and the Catholic Worker Movement, maybe I'd feel as if there was still something worth hanging on to. Those are the voices and groups that echo the mercy of Christ and embody the best of Catholic social teaching.

But their voices are not central to the church. To the contrary, they're pushed to the margins, while people like Arroyo, and Michael Voris at Church Militant, broadcast their fear-filled and divisive rhetoric to the masses. And far too many parishioners appear to gobble it up.

No, I am not perfect. Far from it. But how can I fellowship with people whose values run so deeply contrary to the Gospel? How can I tolerate a church whose hierarchy is infested with sexual predators, that buys silence to protect the guilty, and that tries to cover up its crimes?

Perhaps it was always too much to hope that a church that came to power by making a deal with the devil 1,700 years ago would ever truly redeem itself. Following its unholy alliance with Constantine and empire, the church went almost overnight from persecuted to persecutor, unleashing a millennium of terror in which millions were jailed, tortured, and executed for the mere "crime" of heresy, while the cross was twisted from a symbol of sacrificial love into one of imperial domination.

The church has apologized for many of its past sins, but one wonders if it truly is repentant, and if it will ever change. After all, it still holds firm to its own "just-war" policy, which, unsurprisingly, has never been used to oppose a war, but has been used many times to rationalize why this or that war was just fine to carry out. So even though the church is solidly pro-life and has taken a positive step on capital punishment, it still has a tremendous blind spot when it comes to enemy-love and the defense of life. And the corruption in its ranks, from abuse to cover-up, is nearly too much to stomach.

This is a difficult struggle for me, as I'm sure it must be for many. I was raised Catholic. Catholicism is in my blood. I love the beautiful church buildings, the rhythm of the liturgical seasons, the bells and smells, the devotions to Mary and the saints, all the deep and rich traditions. Walking into a cathedral, for me, is like walking into heaven. And I truly do love Pope Francis. I also acknowledge that the church has done a great deal of good in the world, from the establishment of schools and hospitals to its social teachings that continue to inspire many to help "the least of these" around the world.   

But I'm tired of seeing Christ buried under dogma.

I'm tired of those who are more worried about heresy-hunting, about holding the right beliefs, than they are about showing mercy and compassion to their fellow humans.

I'm tired of the legalisms.

I'm tired of seeing the hurt inflicted on people who are denied the Eucharist, and on women with a gift for ministry who are denied the opportunity to lead a flock.

I'm tired of those who are so passionate about abortion but don't seem to care about any other suffering human being.

I'm tired of those who filter Jesus through the lens of Paul and the Old Testament, rather than the other way around.

I'm tired of those who would wrap the cross in a flag, embracing imperial militarism and the worst aspects of nationalist tribalism, and fail to see their own idolatry.

I'm tired of those who, like the Nicene Creed, skip over Jesus' life and ministry and reduce him to a free ticket to heaven.

I'm tired of people who act like Paul is God and ignore the Gospels.

I just want a peace-loving, Christ-centric, truly pro-life church that does its best to live out the Sermon on the Mount. Because if Jesus' radical message of sacrificial love means nothing, then there's no reason for the church to exist. It doesn't exist so we can judge heretics or elect Republicans to enforce religion on the populace. It doesn't exist in the hopes that some kind of super-violent Rambo Jesus will come back one day, toting a machine gun to mow down the unrighteous. It exists to bring us into the Kingdom of God, where we find the Prince of Peace, a savior who is gentle and humble in heart. We can find that kingdom right here and now, in our very own hearts, if we can only drop our fear and anger and let love and mercy reign. We don't need priests or dogma for that. We only need an open heart.

I don't know what my way forward is going to look like, but I do wish Pope Francis luck. He's going to need it.

One Year Later, a New Perspective

Universal Life Church

As Advent approaches, so does my first anniversary back in the Catholic church. It's not been an easy year, and one thing I've learned for certain is that there is no perfect church for me.

It's not that the Catholic church and I have differences of opinion. We do, and I've mostly learned to live with that. It's that other people leave me disillusioned with how they put political partisanship ahead of listening to the fullness of the church's message.

On the right are the traditionalists and fundamentalists who argue with each other about why the other group is going to burn in hell, all while they glorify violence and war and sneer at the poor and marginalized. They wrap themselves in the flag and imagine their Jesus as a vengeful warrior who will come back one day to mow down the sinners. Right-wing Catholics even bash their own pope. They've replaced love and mercy and compassion and a vision of the Kingdom of God with rules and regulations and judgments and a cross wrapped in a flag. Their hearts are hard, and they're led by fear. Fear of change, fear of the "other," fear of damnation.

And on the left I see people concerned about social justice, which Jesus would surely be pleased with, but they've drained any sense of spiritual mystery out of their churches. They may as well be humanist social clubs that happen to talk about Jesus now and then. Actual theological discussion is rarely broached, since anything that may potentially cause the slightest bit of offense to anyone is expunged.

To that end, most progressive churches will even refuse to acknowledge God the Father the way the entire biblical tradition does, as a "he." They'll just repeat the word "God" -- "God revealed Godself" and the like. Now, I fully embrace the concept of Sophia as the feminine aspect of God, and I'm with Julian of Norwich, the great Catholic mystic, in believing that God is Mother as well as Father. I realize that God is spirit and beyond human gender, and I acknowledge that the image of an all-male Trinity is problematic. But the metaphor we have of God as a loving father, protector, and provider -- as the forgiving father in the parable of the Prodigal Son who always welcomes us back with open arms, unconditionally -- exists for a reason. Without it, you change the essence of Christianity and turn Jesus, who himself called God his Father, into a liar. "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father," he said. Would Jesus have spoken in different terms had he not been born into a patriarchal culture? Maybe. But even so, the tradition is what it is.

Crisis magazine

If you do want to still give God pronouns, though, apparently some Christian progressives will allow you to use "she" or "ze." That one hit me when I visited a Quaker meeting recently. One of the first things I spotted when I came in was a table of buttons, from which you could choose the one that listed your preferred pronouns. A few minutes into the service, one man rose to address how the meetinghouse bulletin treated an excerpt from the writings of John Woolman, an 18th-century Quaker. This is what appeared in the bulletin:

As Christians, all we possess is the gift of God, and in the distribution of it we act as his (God's/her/zir) stewards. It becomes us, therefore, to act agreeably to that divine wisdom which he (God/ze/she) graciously gives to his (God's/zir/her) servants. 

No joke.

The fellow who rose to speak pointed out what a ridiculous overreach it was to impose this choose-your-pronoun nonsense onto an 18th-century document written by a man who, like most in his time, saw God the Father as just that, a father. Not a "zir," whatever that completely made-up word is supposed to mean. "This crap has gone too far," the man said pointedly. "Just stop."

I hadn't even looked at the bulletin yet. When I saw what he was complaining about, I nearly rose to say "Friend speaks my mind," as Quakers will do in support of another's comments. Instead, I quietly walked out a few minutes later, with no intention of returning.

In short: Right-wing Christians are obsessed with rules, mean to the less fortunate, caught up in the idolatry of nationalism, and enthralled with violence. And left-wing Christians have simply lost any semblance of common sense.

Sympathy for the devil

In light of all the craziness on either side, Catholicism is at least familiar. It's the devil I know. Maybe that's the most I can ever hope for.

My wife was gracious enough to go before a priest and convalidate our marriage, so that I could receive Communion in good conscience. Of course, the problem is that no one should have to qualify to receive in the first place. Jesus' table is meant to be open to everyone. But to Pope Francis' credit, I think he's trying to move the church more in the direction of taking mercy on people who were married outside the church or who have been divorced. Life happens, and compassion ought to trump small-minded Pharisaical rules.

Closed communion is my biggest area of disagreement with the church. But I'm also not on board with its refusal to ordain women or allow married priests. And I think it should be acceptable for married couples to use contraceptives that aren't abortifacients.

CatholicMatch.com

Moreover, I find the church far too legalistic. It tries to define and control every minute detail of the religious experience, and its dogmas sometimes simply reach too far. The entire annulment process is a prime example of how the church clumsily tries to deal with real-life messiness. It creates a legal fiction, pretending that a marriage never existed, to allow divorced Catholics to partake in the sacramental life -- when it could just show mercy and welcome them to the sacramental life anyway.

Yet despite all those misgivings, I still feel the pull of the Catholic church. Maybe it's just in my blood. And I do find much to admire in the church's pursuit of goodness, truth, and beauty. The grandeur of the greatest church buildings, the church's history, its traditions and rituals, the comforting rhythm of the liturgical season, the bells and smells -- all of those things being me comfort and help connect me to the divine. They elevate my soul and humble me at the same time.

There's also the matter of Matthew 16:18 to contend with. Non-Catholic denominations try to impose various interpretations on what Jesus meant when he changed Simon Bar-Jonah's name to Peter, Rock. But the plain meaning of the verse is impossible to ignore. If there is a church Christ founded, it is the one built on Peter, to whom Christ handed the keys to the kingdom.

When in doubt, call on Mom

On top of all that, I'm deeply devoted to the Mother of God. If you love the Virgin Mary, there's really nowhere else you can go but to the Catholic or Orthodox churches. And it's the Blessed Mother who brought me back to the church in the first place, as I've mentioned in the past, so I almost feel as if I owe her a debt of gratitude and feel obligated to stay where I am.

Here's the thing. All my life, I've felt the pull between wanting to believe in something bigger than myself and a logical mind that tells me to dismiss superstition. My Catholic upbringing was that of many Catholics -- immersed in guilt. So I'm sure part of me was afraid to give up my early beliefs, out of fear of the consequences. That's how they keep people coming back to church, right?

Yet there was more to my struggle than just trying to give up "superstition." I could never fully commit to calling myself an atheist, for example, because atheism seemed like throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

It was that conflicted, questioning person, having visited Buddhism and Taoism, Confucianism and Hinduism, Caodai and Konkokyo and Shinto and paganism, not to mention the teachings of Gurdjieff, Krishnamurti, and many others, that found himself unexpectedly face to face with the Virgin Mary.

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Mary was the one part of my Catholic upbringing that I'd never abandoned. She was a loving mother figure, a softening feminine influence in a religious system that was overwhelmingly male, from its Trinitarian God to its clergy. For a kid who didn't have a terrific childhood, I didn't need the fire-and-brimstone judgment of God as much as I needed the tender, maternal love that Mary represented. Even at my furthest point from Christianity, when I had an altar full of pagan goddesses in my meditation nook, Mary was there, in the corner of the altar, looking over everyone else, patiently and prayerfully, as if letting me know she was still there if I ever wanted to seek her out. She was the last remaining strand of faith I had in Christianity.

There came a time when I started to experience ill health and my sister-in-law died very young and very unexpectedly, and it began to bring a lot of things in my life into focus. Visiting my hometown around that same time reminded me of my Catholic upbringing, and although I was convinced at the time that Catholicism just wasn't for me, I did feel a pull to somehow connect again with Christianity, my birthright faith. I ended up with the Quakers, whom I still admire for their commitment to the social gospel, doing their best to live out Jesus' example on Earth in caring for the "least of these," rather than using Christ as a tool of judgment over others.

The Liberal Quakers seem to have jumped the shark, as I pointed out earlier, but we'll set that aside for the moment. In the end, Quakerism wasn't quite what I was looking for anyway, so I drifted back into Buddhism for a while. But then that also went nowhere.

Finally, it was time to revisit a Catholic church, which I did with some trepidation at the beginning of Advent 2016. I still wasn't sure that was where I belonged, until I started to develop a deeper relationship with the Blessed Mother. I didn't yet know quite how to relate to her Son, or to God, so I talked to her instead. And to my surprise, I found my relationship with her deepening, very quickly. I felt as if she understood me and was accepting me just as I was.

Then one day at a church in Seattle, without even thinking about it, I reached out to take the hand of the Mary statue I was standing before. And the instant I made contact, I felt an overwhelming rush of emotion flooding over me. Chills shot up my back and I felt my eyes welling up with tears as I looked up at the Blessed Virgin's serene expression.

All my life, all I had ever wanted was some kind of sign that someone was out there, caring about me and the struggles I was going through. And at long last, here it was. The feeling Mary gave me was one of unconditional love. She didn't speak a word to me, yet she made it unmistakably known that I was loved, more than I could ever comprehend, and that if I needed her to, she would take me by the hand and lead me to the source of that love.

Suddenly, I understood why people were so deeply moved by their experiences with Mother Mary, from personal revelations like mine to the many famous apparitions of her throughout the centuries. She is our loving Mother, and as such, she only wants the best for us.

Well, knowing of the church's veneration of Mary, I took this as a sign that I was in the right place. Immediately I began going to Mass every day and praying the Rosary every night. I was back on the team, no questions asked, taking whatever was revealed to me on faith.

And central to that experience was the Eucharist. Daily Communion was my spiritual fuel. It centered my experience and made me want to come back for more. It also humbled me. I felt a deeper understanding of Jesus' teachings, and I was able to accept my ongoing mystery illness with more grace than I had before. I'd been angry about my illness, about my upbringing, about the world in general. I'd also burned a lot of bridges, and now I was finding the faith and courage to approach people I'd wronged in the past and ask for their forgiveness. That was a huge step for me. For people no longer living, it was too late to ask forgiveness. Others simply wouldn't offer it. All I could do was my best.

Take this, some of you, and eat of it

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Then I hit a huge brick wall, when I realized the church wouldn't want me to receive Communion at all. That's because I was married in the years I was away from the church. If you're Catholic and don't receive a dispensation to get married outside the church, then the church considers your marriage invalid, which means, in the church's eyes, you're living in mortal sin, condemned to hell unless you rectify the situation.

I talked to several priests and confirmed that this was indeed the case, according to church law. My remedy was to pursue a convalidation, which would mean bringing my wife into a church and having her say our vows before a priest.

Because I desperately wanted to continue to receive Communion in good conscience, I initially gave this option some serious consideration. But the more I reflected on it, the more I realized that the church was placing the letter of the law ahead of mercy. Here I was, coming back to the church, enthusiastic about my faith for the first time in my life, and the church was putting my soul in the same league with murderers and the worst of all sinners, all because I didn't get married in front of a priest.

Reflecting on that made me think about the Pharisees, and how hard Jesus worked to expose their hypocrisy of placing law before love. I thought about how Jesus, in the Gospel of John, called himself the Bread of Life, and how he said he would never turn away anyone who came to him.

That's when it began to occur to me that the church gets Communion backwards. The church thinks you have to meet certain criteria before you can receive -- that you have to be properly holy and worthy. But who is holy and worthy enough to receive the body and blood of Christ? No one. That's why Catholics repeat the words of the Centurion before Communion, that we are not worthy to receive, yet all the Lord must do is say the word and our souls shall be healed. Thus, receiving makes us more holy and worthy.

So why do churches close off Communion, when Jesus ate freely with sinners? When he even had Judas, his own betrayer, sitting at the table with him?

Because of Paul.

Liberalslikechrist.org

It is from Paul, and Paul alone, that churches justify fencing off the body and blood. Because it was Paul, commenting on abuses of the communal meal at the church in Corinth, who said that those who approach the Eucharist in an unworthy manner end up eating and drinking condemnation upon themselves.

So the church claims it's only protecting you from yourself when it bars you from communing with Jesus. But in truth, it comes down to control. The church forces people who want to partake in the sacraments to follow its rules, however arcane or unjust or un-Christ-like those rules might be. Jesus never said you could break bread with him only if you agreed to his rules. He didn't only feed select people who came to see him speak. Just the opposite: He multiplied the loaves and fishes so that everyone could partake and none would go away hungry.

Reflecting on the situation made me think of how many other ways the church reflects Paul more than it does Jesus. The answer I came to was: a lot.

I realized that from Paul we get the subjugation of women, after Jesus took the radical step in his day of treating women as equals. We also get from Paul the idea of penal substitutionary atonement, the notion that an enraged God demanded a bloody sacrifice before he could forgive humanity of its sins.

Perhaps most tragically, Paul reduces Jesus to a belief in the death and resurrection, essentially erasing Jesus' life. Tying this view in with Paul's insistence that we're saved through faith alone, Christians never have to act the least bit Christ-like. When I saw someone online making this argument, pointing out how Paul completely ignores everything about the life of Jesus, including the exquisite Sermon on the Mount, one person who replied to him dismissed those things as "trivial," because the only thing that matters is eternal life.

Getoutofhellfree.com

And that, right there, is the crux of the problem with Christianity today. The Sermon on the Mount, perhaps the most perfect expression of human ethics ever made, would utterly transform our world if we were to all live by it. Instead, it's been reduced to a piece of trivia -- and all because we've turned Jesus to some kind of magic incantation, as if just professing a belief in him gives us some kind of "get out of hell free" card. If that's all Jesus means, then his life meant nothing. No need for the Holy Family to run off to Egypt -- Herod may as well have been allowed to kill Jesus as an infant.

And from Paul was also born the idea of Original Sin, as expounded on by Augustine, who misinterpreted Paul's words on the matter because he didn't fully understand Greek. And from Augustine's notion of Original Sin came the Calvinistic notion of total depravity, the idea that humanity is so hopelessly debased that it has no chance of avoiding eternal damnation except through the mercy of an enraged deity who's disgusted with us and owes us nothing.

And that circles right back around to the guilt I grew up with in the Catholic church. Yet it's not just the Catholic church, but the Western church in general, that sets up this adversarial relationship between humanity and God, as if we're lowly worms not deserving of the slightest bit of love and mercy.

Tragically, it's that very notion of God -- the violent, bloodthirsty tyrant of the Old Testament -- that Jesus came to dispel. If Christians accept that Jesus is God, then it follows that God must be mercy and love and forgiveness, because that's what Jesus taught. He taught loving our enemies, giving up all we have to follow him, doing unto others, and caring for the poor, the outcast, the forgotten. That was the message of his life. It was as if he came to tell us, "You're getting God all wrong. He's not like that. I'll show you what he's really like, and you can follow my example." I think the best metaphor we have of God is the tender, loving, forgiving father in the parable of the Prodigal Son. Yet in the centuries since Jesus walked the earth, we seem to have reverted right back to an image of God as wrathful deity, more interested in pronouncing judgment and condemnation on his creation than in showing it love and mercy.

Paul's Christianity, of course, eventually aligned itself with the power of the Roman Empire, the same empire that put Jesus to death, and it's that version of Christianity that's been handed down to us. It's long since been neutered of any of Jesus' attempts to speak truth to power, because now it represents power. Constantine converted and placed the chi ro symbol on his soldiers' shields, turning the Prince of Peace into a symbol of aggression and violence. The Crusades, the Inquisition, and the witch hunts were all fueled by this same violent spirit. It continues to this day, every time the congregants in a megachurch chant USA-USA and cheer on death at the hands of our military. Through people like these, Christianity has been stripped of its love and mercy.

It really doesn't seem like there's much of Christ left in Christianity these days. So what can we do? Well, I figure the only thing any of us can do is to continue to focus on those red letters in the Gospels and actually be the hands, feet, and eyes of Jesus in the world. To love others, to care for the forgotten, to be humble, to lead by example. To be perfect as our Father is perfect.

Looking east

The Mendeleyev Journal

That attempt to deify our own lives is a process more known to the Eastern church than to the Western one. The Orthodox church calls it theosis. And when I hit my brick wall with the Catholic church, I seriously began exploring Orthodoxy for a while. As I threw myself headlong into the Orthodox Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday services, my wife asked me what I was getting out of all this. And that was a fair question. Why was I doing this?

Well, even though the legacy of Paul is seen in the Orthodox church as well -- in a lack of female clergy, closed Communion, the veils the women wear on their heads, and many other things -- the beauty of the Orthodox service lifted my spirits in a way the Catholic church never did. Orthodox worship feels ancient, steeped in history, as if we're re-enacting how the first Christians carried out their church services. And there's more mysticism and less dogma. The Orthodox don't feel the need to suffocate God with rules. They acknowledge the mysteries of the faith and don't attempt to define what cannot be defined.

But then I hit yet another wall, as I found out that if I wanted to convert to Orthodoxy, I'd have to be rebaptized. I've since learned that not all Orthodox churches require rebaptism of Catholics, but the two churches I was exploring -- Russian Orthodox and Coptic Orthodox -- both do.

So here was the Catholic church telling me my marriage wasn't valid, and the Orthodox church telling me my baptism wasn't valid. There was also a particular prayer during the Orthodox Great Litany, a prayer for the military, that never sat right with me. So at that point, I pretty much gave up and went home to Rome, as I broke down and asked my wife for a convalidation.

You can go back home again

Beliefnet

So I've found as much peace with the Catholic church as I probably ever will. I'm a Dorothy Day-Thomas Merton Catholic, in terms of how I view the Catholic call to activism and spiritual contemplation. The Carmelite mystics Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross are two of my favorite saints. I've been enrolled in the Brown Scapular. I'm a member of Pax Christi. And because of my attachment to the divine feminine, I'm finding that my focus lies on the feminine triad of Sophia-Holy Spirit-Virgin Mary. (Yes, I see the indwelling Holy Spirit as a feminine force, as many in the early church did.)

If that all makes me an unorthodox Catholic, so be it. I've never been good about following things by the book; I need to make things work in a way that resonates with me.

At this point in my spiritual journey, I'm reminded of the old Zen saying that when a young man sat out on the path toward enlightenment, mountains were mountains and rivers were rivers. Then as he began to gain insight, mountains are no longer mountains and rivers are no longer rivers. But once he reached enlightenment and found rest, mountains were once again mountains and rivers were once again rivers.

To me, that spells out the difference between literalist fundamentalism and spiritual maturity. It's the difference between fire insurance -- religion based in fear -- and a spiritual life rooted in love for the world and awe of the universe. It's what happens when you realize that symbols and myths point to much deeper truths and aren't necessarily to be taken at literal face value.

Now, does that mean I don't literally believe in the tenets of my faith tradition? Well, that answer is complicated. I think it's OK to take things on faith sometimes, as long as you don't feel the need to check your brain at the door. I think it's humble of us to acknowledge that we are tiny beings in an incomprehensibly vast universe, and there is much that our feeble minds can never hope to understand. All we can do is try to grasp at the greater meanings of our lives and our universe by drawing from the traditions that have shaped our world, our cultures, our families, our nations, our churches and temples. I was raised in the Catholic tradition, so the Catholic tradition makes sense to me as a particular way of trying to comprehend the divine. For better or worse, it's the stained-glass lens through which I view the cosmos.

In any event, I think getting caught up in dogma and rules misses the whole point. Is Jesus not resurrected every time we bring his love into the world? Every time we help those who have no one? And isn't that what ultimately matters? That's the understanding of the resurrection that makes a difference in the here and now. But that view doesn't preclude a more literal understanding of the resurrection -- it just adds another dimension, one that we can act on tangibly in the here and now.

What happens next

Anyway, to sum all this up: In my year back in the church, I've come to a new understanding of what it means to follow Christ, while some of the reservations I used to have about Christianity haven't gone away. Some of the old questions have been answered, but new ones have popped up in their place.

And that's OK. I don't feel as if I need to have it all figured out. Christ left me enough examples that I can figure out how he wanted me to act in his name. The rest I'm content to take on faith.

Mary brought me back for a reason. She wouldn't lie to me.

Taking the Long Way Home

Pastorjoe.me

After stopping by the University Friends Meeting in Seattle this past weekend, I looked back through this blog to see when I last visited. Turns out it was exactly one year ago, to the weekend. How strange that I'd get the urge to go for a visit at the same time of year.

I visited because there are things about the Quaker way of doing things that still appeal to me. I like that Quakerism is a mystical tradition of sorts -- looking for our inner light and seeing "that of God" in everyone; listening for the Spirit to speak through us and minister to others; seeing Scripture not as a limiting rulebook but as one recorded moment of ongoing revelation. I appreciate the lack of hierarchy and the emphasis on the equality of all people. I love the enveloping, peaceful silence. And I very strongly embrace the Peace Testimony. You won't find many Quakers draping themselves in the flag and rallying everyone to "support the troops."

But now, having attended another meeting, I'm pretty sure I have no need to go back, at least at this point on my spiritual journey.

Here's the problem: Had you gone to Sunday's meeting, you never would have known Quakerism was a Christian denomination. One problem I've always had with progressive religion is that sometimes it seems so eager to strip away all theology that there's no obvious difference between a progressive church and a liberal social club. I can stay home and listen to NPR, or I can trek out to a Quaker meeting and hear people rise to say the same things I'd hear on the radio.

Not that there was no spiritual content at all at the meeting. There was. But it was about Islam.

I have nothing against Islam. But I'm still trying to come to grips with the seeming contradiction in the testimony I heard. It went like this: A teacher rose to talk about the dress she was wearing, given to her by her Islamic students. She used that as a springboard to talk about religious plurality, which is all well and good. But she made a point of saying it was hard to get used to how Muslim men won't shake a woman's hand, or how they'll often show disrespect to single female teachers at the school. Yet she closed her comments by saying how much she honors those of the Muslim faith.

So wait -- you say it's hard to deal with disrespect from Muslims you come into contact with, but two minutes later you say how you honor their faith?

Here's what I don't get about this. If the context were changed -- if it were an average Caucasian male refusing to shake hands or disrespecting female teachers -- I have no doubt this same person would have given us a lecture, and justifiably so, about how men have to get with the program and stop treating women in a subservient way. Surely she wouldn't say she honored their views in that case, would she? Why would you honor rude behavior in one instance but not in another? Why should someone's religion make them exempt from criticism?

I'm reaching the point of not being able to understand the political left anymore. There's a sense of fundamentalism creeping up around progressive social discussion, such that it's straining relations between races, sexes, and religions and creating a chilling effect on the free exchange of ideas. Much of what I'm hearing these days seems nonsensical and contradictory, yet it's spoken with an increasing relentless stridency, and, most disturbingly, with a growing intolerance of opposing views. That's not progressive. It's the very opposite.

Moreover, it's dividing people into smaller and smaller identity groups. And we don't need more division. As much as it's good to celebrate our differences, it's just as important to cherish the things that bind us together, if not more so. The narcissism inherent in embracing micro-identities is not healthy for our culture or our world.

That's not to say I've become a conservative, because I reject war and capital punishment and cuts to the social safety net. I dislike guns. I have little use for patriotism and militarism. I support the separation of church and state -- I don't want to see flags in a church sanctuary. And I like to celebrate our human differences (again, as long as we also observe what unites us).

I already knew I don't have a political home. But everything seems to be so politicized these days that the political world is starting to creep into religious and spiritual life as well. I'm not a fan. I really do believe in separating church and state, in every sense. When I want politics, I can pull up the news on my computer. But when I go to church, I want to forget about that and nourish my spirit for an hour. I don't want my religion served up with an agenda.

That's the main reason I couldn't stick with Orthodoxy, which I was exploring for a few months earlier this year. In every single Orthodox liturgy, there's a prayer for the armed forces. I simply can't participate in that. As a pacifist, the only prayer I can offer for the armed forces is for them to lay down their arms and come home. That wasn't my only issue with Orthodoxy, but it was the one that nagged at me the most -- and in the end, I couldn't reconcile that prayer with my own faith life.

The Anglicans and Episcopalians also didn't work out for me, for related (but not identical) reasons. A local Gnostic group I find quite interesting, yet even there a pre-Eucharistic prayer is offered up for "the worldly authority of our country, the people and institutions of our land."

So I've ended up, almost by default, back in the Catholic church. In a way I don't mind. It's where I was raised, and for now it's where I'm (more or less) comfortable. God is still allowed his pronouns in most Catholic churches, and I can feel close to my Blessed Mother Mary in a way that almost no other church allows. The Orthodox love Mary, too, but in the end, it was time to come back to what I know. It wasn't for a lack of trying to find another place to call home, that's for sure. In the end, the Catholic church seems to be my least bad option.

The Catholic church is imperfect in many ways, but it does feel like home. I've done what's necessary to get myself back in good standing with the church -- playing by its rules so I can receive the sacraments. So for now, for better or worse, that's where I'll stay.

Giving Up Church for Lent

Anyone who's read this blog would probably be astonished to know that since my last post, I found myself thrown headlong into Catholicism, the faith I was born into and raised in. Yes, after sampling beliefs from all over the world, I ended up right back where I started. And I didn't step back in half-heartedly: I was attending Mass every single day and saying the Rosary every night before bed.

The short answer to what happened was that I had a very profound religious experience that led me back. The long answer isn't something I'm willing to divulge at the moment. In the time since it happened, I've taken to heart some advice from Orthodox author Frederica Mathewes-Green, who cautions people to be wary of religious experiences, as they quite often come down to emotional projection.

I will say that the time back in church has done me some good. I think it's humbled me and made me less angry and spiteful. I've been better able to come to terms with whatever mystery illness is having its way with my body, and I'm finding the humility to seek forgiveness from people with whom I've burned bridges in the past.

But now I've hit a couple of walls. One has to do with negative Christian attitudes toward "the least of these" -- the poor, the outcasts, the forgotten, those on the margins of society. The very ones Christ embraced during his earthly ministry.

But the larger issue I'm having is one of church policy on the sacraments.

Anyone raised Catholic knows the importance of the Eucharist to spiritual life. One of the main reasons I was going to Mass every day was that communion was my spiritual fuel. That amazing, intimate encounter with Christ every day brought me closer to him and to God. It deepened my prayer life. It helped open a lot of doors and answer a lot of questions I'd always had about Christianity and had never had answered. I felt like I was finally getting it -- as if I'd had a Catholic version of Enlightenment.

Well, it didn't occur to me at first that the church doesn't recognize my marriage as valid. I was very happily partaking in the sacraments and making progress on my spiritual path, until the day I realized the church wouldn't even want me taking communion, because I got married 13 years ago when the church wasn't a part of my life. Back then, I didn't even give it a second thought. Why would I? I'd moved on and never intended on going back.

Slam on the brakes. Now what do I do?

Well, I had a few options. I could pursue a convalidation, which basically means reciting my wedding vows in front of a priest, so that the church would see the marriage as legitimate. I could pursue a radical sanation, which means the church validates the marriage without a convalidation if one party is unwilling to take part in a proclamation of vows in the church. Or I could just take communion anyway, knowing the church considers me to be living in a state of mortal sin, and let God and my conscience sort things out.

A convalidation is always an option, and I know my wife would go through with one if I asked, but she's not a Christian and never has practiced organized religion. She was baptized Catholic as an infant, but that's it. I would be asking her to compromise her conscience by having her recite our vows in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, before a priest, in a church whose theology she doesn't believe in.

As for option No. 2, I've been told in so many words that a radical sanation would probably not be granted.

That leaves option No. 3. That's the path I was determined to take at first, but I'm uneasy with it, knowing that the church does not want me to partake.

But it's not just that. It's a matter of principle. Because here is the utter absurdity of my situation: I could divorce my wife, get an annulment from the church -- since it doesn't recognize my marriage -- and receive communion in good standing; or I could continue to be a faithful husband and good father, keep my family intact, and be told by the church that I'm committing a mortal sin and am unwelcome at the table.

Tell me: On what planet does that even remotely make sense?

It's when I came to that realization that it hit me, and hit me hard, how the church gets the Eucharist entirely backwards. For those unaware, the Catholic church only offers communion to Catholics -- but not all Catholics. Only those who have been baptized and received the sacrament of reconciliation (confession) can partake. And even then there are exceptions. If you're aware of a mortal sin, you are also not to partake. That includes Catholics in civil marriages (i.e., marriages that didn't take place in the Catholic church) and Catholics who have divorced and remarried, regardless of circumstance.

Yes, you can get an annulment. Yes, you can get a convalidation. But both situations express a rigidity that the church would do well to back away from, because all it succeeds in doing is alienating people with sometimes difficult life circumstances. It judges all equally -- Catholics who got married when away from the church along with active Catholics who deliberately flout the requirement to marry in the church; and Catholics who may have had no choice but to divorce along with those who for whatever reason simply didn't take their marriage vows seriously. 

The bottom line is this: We shouldn't have to qualify in some way to receive. Jesus didn't shut anyone out. He simply said "Do this in remembrance of me" at the Last Supper -- where even Judas was present, for goodness' sake. Jesus didn't pick and choose who got the loaves and fishes when he spoke -- he just fed everyone who showed up, and multiplied the food to make sure none went away hungry. In the Gospel of John, Jesus says, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty." Then he adds: "The one who comes to me I will never turn away."

I heard a Catholic apologist recently justifying the church's closed communion, pointing out what Paul said in 1 Corinthians about those who were acting in an unbecoming way toward the Eucharist. Some in the church at Corinth were taking all the bread and not sharing with others, while some were getting drunk on the wine. To save the Eucharist from scandalous behavior, this apologist said, the church regulates who can and cannot receive -- and, moreover, he said, the church is only trying to save people from themselves, since Paul said that those not in a proper state of grace who partake in communion will be eating and drinking condemnation on themselves. 

But that's not for the church to decide. If it were, the person distributing communion would have to quiz every communicant before handing over the bread and wine. Even Paul said, in that same context, that it's up to every person to examine his own conscience before receiving. It's not the priest's job. It's between God and ourselves. 

In fencing off communion, the church seems to think we have to be holy and worthy before we receive, but none of us is ever worthy. We profess as much at every Mass, when we recite the words of the centurion: "Lord, I am not worthy that you should come under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed." Instead, we should always be able to receive in an attempt to make ourselves more holy and worthy.

I read once about a priest who said he was only able to administer communion to non-Catholics in case of an emergency. He said that anytime a Christian came to him seeking communion, he considered it an emergency. That's as it should be. Jesus didn't fence himself off. "The one who comes to me I will never turn away."

If I didn't care about the church, if it hadn't been helping and fulfilling me in other ways, I wouldn't care so deeply about this issue. But I know I can't be the only one in this situation, and frankly, it's both hurtful and insulting. This is an issue the church desperately needs to examine.

So with all this in mind, I've decided that for Lent this year, I'm giving up church. It breaks my heart to say that, but I feel the church has given me no other choice. I'll try to continue with my prayer life on my own the best I can. I do have a few meetings coming up with people in the church that were already scheduled, and I'll see those through. I may also continue to explore other options in the Christian family, including the Orthodox church (which appeals to me in some ways but also has its own issues, in my opinion) and the Episcopal church (which offers open communion and is welcoming to all, but sometimes seems so open that it doesn't appear to really stand for anything, a common problem with left-leaning social-justice denominations). But once Lent is over, I have no idea where I'm going to be. Maybe I'll find nowhere else to go and end up right back here, although I can't see that happening right now.

At the moment, I have health issues to contend with and plenty of other responsibilities to family and work. So I'll be busy and distracted, but I still can't say I'm happy to feel as though I've been forced into making this decision. I want to be part of the church. But I've discovered, sadly, that the church will push you out the door just as quickly as it pulls you in.