By Margery Eagan
Boston Herald
April 10, 2011
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view/2011_0410catholics_keep_the_faith_despite_tough_journeys/
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| RELECTIONS: A parishioner prays at St. Albert the Great. |
Being a Catholic in 2011 is like being a Republican in Cambridge.
You are constantly asked to defend yourself.
How can you belong to a church that:
A. Coddles pedophiles (see the long list at BishopAccountability.org).
B. Rewards pedophile enablers.
C. Treats women, gays, children, the divorced and remarried as less than fully human. No explanation needed.
D. Turns even on its own, including courageous priests such as Bob Bowers, Walter Cuenin, Ron Coyne and the late Bob Bullock who stood up to Cardinal Bernard Law and were promptly Siberia-ized.
It's a lot to overlook, obviously. That's one reason why the aforementioned Bob Bowers, now doing outreach and reconciliation for downtown's Paulist Center, thinks the archdiocese should have added a word to its "Catholics Come Home" campaign.
"Catholics Come Home....Please," quips Bowers. Being a Catholic in 2011, he says, requires "cognitive dissonance," a "for better or worse" perseverance and a sometimes hopeless search for even halfway decent preaching and music.
So what's the upside? Why bang your head against the wall?
Well, many Catholics will tell you about the pull of what they fell in love with as children and cannot find, with due respect, even among near-beer Episcopalians. That's the mystery, the ritual, the Eucharist, the incense, the Mass and Rosary with their meditative prayers that can bring comfort, joy, strength, and sometimes, on the best days, transcendence. Many Catholics will tell you about the attraction of faith, a rock upon which they prefer to stand. They'll tell you with pride too about Catholic compassion for the poor, about good priests, good nuns, good deeds, good people in the pews and, of course, the Good Word, which is not about trashing and judging but about forgiving and lifting up.
Practicing Catholics I know have managed to separate that from a hierarchy that's been hypocritical and corrupt for much of its 2,000-year history, actually, made up of old, white, isolated men who too often suffer from the bigotry of the ignorant. But on the bright side, this means their often ridiculous dicta can in good conscience be ignored.
During a Monday night Lenten service at my own parish, one parishioner this week spoke of being asked by an evangelical friend, "But have you been born again?" The parishioner said he winced, realizing the question was meant to challenge his own less rapturous spiritual journey. But then he thought about his life as an on-and-off again Catholic: turning away from the church, coming back, leaving, returning; questioning his faith, losing it, finding it anew. What really was all this ebb and flow and struggle and effort about, he said, if not being "born again" — not once — but again and again and again and again?
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