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toosutoIt's something that's bothered me for some time in that I could recognize the hole that was there but just wasn't sure what fit in it. Some background:
I was raised Catholic without a lot of the hang-ups that I see even with post Vatican II Catholicism. I think this can be attributed to the fact that my mother was the born Catholic while my father converted (about the time he married my mother I would assume.) When I was still in elementary school (grades 5-6) my mother got her M. Div from Gonzaga and went on to the pastoral associate for a couple of different Catholic parishes in town. Her longest stint (she retired last summer) was at our own parish: St. Ann's, a church kind of cut loose from normal rules of dogma etc. since it had been run by the Franciscans who pulled all their priests in the early 90s. St. Ann's never got a full time priest and instead relied on my mother and part time volunteers (teachers at GU or priests on sabbatical there) to cover all the sacraments. Needless to say it was a progressive and very liberal church. St. Ann's was one of the first parishes in the nation to host refugees from El Salvador in the mid 80s, in the late 90s the Vatican sent a letter to our local bishop because some jackass (who attended the cathedral) came to St. Ann's and saw that we were breaking canon law (because there was no full time priest laity took over the preaching duties--primarily my mother--currently the church has approximately 14 people that can, and do, deliver homilies) by have the laity give the homily. He went over the bishop's head and wrote directly to the Vatican. The sent a letter to the bishop saying that this had better stop or else.
Suffice to say I was brought up to think for myself and question anything anyone tried to tell me was True. When I was in high school I was part of a citywide youth group (geared for teens who wanted to do more out of a church youth group than to play Jesus themed ice breakers.) I was placed in a small group with the two most inflexible and conservative group leaders. Within a month they stopped volunteering since we gave them nothing but trouble since they simple could not quote bible verses at us and have us swoon at their apparent piety and logic. We were critical thinkers who demand real answers not pat bible sound clips. Looking back I think that we were assigned to that couple purposefully because we were a) the least likely to go along with anything they said, minimizing their ultra-conservative impact on young minds and b) were the most likely make them not want to volunteer (eliminating the threat all together.) Since m mother was very active in the interfaith community I had many friends who were Protestant and then, from my catholic school upbringing, even more friends who were protestant. This is where I think I became disenchanted with christianity. I spent my entire high school (at a Jesuit prep school no less) with friends who attempted to convert me to christianity. (Pure comedy gold!) They were from an evangelical fundamentalist church close to my house (for years when they'd knock on our door and ask if we had been saved I would calmly reply "Yes Satan had indeed saved us from the wretched belief in a weak savior but thanks for stopping by but we really must finish sacrificing the goat." I was in jr. high what do you expect, plus they always looked so truly frightened of me!)
I went to their youth program once and was horrified. They would spend an hour or so singing at top volume and then once they were all good and euphoric from oxygen deprivation they would 'testify' which generally was pabulum about how they were saved from the fiery fires of hell and thank Jesus they were no longer sinners! Needless to say they were very nice in the "oh, the poor sinner is going straight to hell, we should at least be polite to him" sort of way. Critical discussing their faith was a big no-no as was even entertaining the thought of the bible as a historical document, at the same time as I was evaluating their church, faith and dogma I was really coming into conflict with all the hypocrisy of my own. I was very involved and at one point applied to a part of the youth council that coordinated the local catholic youth congress. I was rejected because I was honest about my opinions and where I differed from the church's official stance (pretty much everything to do with sex and partially on reproductive rights) while other teens I knew went in and blatantly lied in their interviews and then were selected and held up as model catholic youth. It ultimately came down to this (especially in the early 90s) I was far out of line with every christian churches teaching regarding almost everything (or so it seemed at the time.) All these churches supposedly were based on the sacrifice of a man who had one message that he never veered from: "Be kind to one another, help each other out, I mean it: don't be dick" but that somehow in 2000 years we'd ended up with these bloated organizations that were more concerned with his divinity and laws from the old covenant that was supposedly null and void with acceptance of the new testament than with encouraging people to actually do what he said. And to a certain extant I still feel that way.
The thing that I am most uncomfortable with in christianity (at a base level, dogmatic views on women, queers etc. not withstanding) now is the concept of grace, that we as fallible human beings simply cannot possess it by ourselves. I cannot believe that any god would find us unacceptable simply because we don't worship his son or engage in ritual cannibalism or whatever. I must believe that god (whatever, whoever he/she/it is) would find us acceptable as we are. I think feel that it is pretty clear that god does not meddle with the universe. I believe in miracles and mysticism but I believe these fit within the mechanics of the universe as it came into being. Why should an omnipotent being pay attention to the dogmatic squabbles of a statistically infinitesimal section of creation?
I think I'm pushing these issues for myself because I now have someone that I am responsible for. I am going to have to explain the question why to some degree to her because we all need the answer to that question. That's the reason we have religion we need answers to questions that cannot be found in science, or logic or sometimes even common sense. I need a filter to see my place in creation and to be able to find my purpose. As a parent I need some sort of larger framework to point to and say, "This is how things hang together, the things I am telling you gain their authority from some sort of common consensus (that you should by all means question) that has been reached.” I guess I am looking into these because I realize what a large part religion, christianity and my interaction with those entities worked together to form who I am and I want to be able to a) give Rona the same, or better, tools to work with them as I had, b) the benefit of that interaction c) possibly the same OCD complex I have with lists.
Damn, when I write about religion I write a lot.
I was raised Catholic without a lot of the hang-ups that I see even with post Vatican II Catholicism. I think this can be attributed to the fact that my mother was the born Catholic while my father converted (about the time he married my mother I would assume.) When I was still in elementary school (grades 5-6) my mother got her M. Div from Gonzaga and went on to the pastoral associate for a couple of different Catholic parishes in town. Her longest stint (she retired last summer) was at our own parish: St. Ann's, a church kind of cut loose from normal rules of dogma etc. since it had been run by the Franciscans who pulled all their priests in the early 90s. St. Ann's never got a full time priest and instead relied on my mother and part time volunteers (teachers at GU or priests on sabbatical there) to cover all the sacraments. Needless to say it was a progressive and very liberal church. St. Ann's was one of the first parishes in the nation to host refugees from El Salvador in the mid 80s, in the late 90s the Vatican sent a letter to our local bishop because some jackass (who attended the cathedral) came to St. Ann's and saw that we were breaking canon law (because there was no full time priest laity took over the preaching duties--primarily my mother--currently the church has approximately 14 people that can, and do, deliver homilies) by have the laity give the homily. He went over the bishop's head and wrote directly to the Vatican. The sent a letter to the bishop saying that this had better stop or else.
Suffice to say I was brought up to think for myself and question anything anyone tried to tell me was True. When I was in high school I was part of a citywide youth group (geared for teens who wanted to do more out of a church youth group than to play Jesus themed ice breakers.) I was placed in a small group with the two most inflexible and conservative group leaders. Within a month they stopped volunteering since we gave them nothing but trouble since they simple could not quote bible verses at us and have us swoon at their apparent piety and logic. We were critical thinkers who demand real answers not pat bible sound clips. Looking back I think that we were assigned to that couple purposefully because we were a) the least likely to go along with anything they said, minimizing their ultra-conservative impact on young minds and b) were the most likely make them not want to volunteer (eliminating the threat all together.) Since m mother was very active in the interfaith community I had many friends who were Protestant and then, from my catholic school upbringing, even more friends who were protestant. This is where I think I became disenchanted with christianity. I spent my entire high school (at a Jesuit prep school no less) with friends who attempted to convert me to christianity. (Pure comedy gold!) They were from an evangelical fundamentalist church close to my house (for years when they'd knock on our door and ask if we had been saved I would calmly reply "Yes Satan had indeed saved us from the wretched belief in a weak savior but thanks for stopping by but we really must finish sacrificing the goat." I was in jr. high what do you expect, plus they always looked so truly frightened of me!)
I went to their youth program once and was horrified. They would spend an hour or so singing at top volume and then once they were all good and euphoric from oxygen deprivation they would 'testify' which generally was pabulum about how they were saved from the fiery fires of hell and thank Jesus they were no longer sinners! Needless to say they were very nice in the "oh, the poor sinner is going straight to hell, we should at least be polite to him" sort of way. Critical discussing their faith was a big no-no as was even entertaining the thought of the bible as a historical document, at the same time as I was evaluating their church, faith and dogma I was really coming into conflict with all the hypocrisy of my own. I was very involved and at one point applied to a part of the youth council that coordinated the local catholic youth congress. I was rejected because I was honest about my opinions and where I differed from the church's official stance (pretty much everything to do with sex and partially on reproductive rights) while other teens I knew went in and blatantly lied in their interviews and then were selected and held up as model catholic youth. It ultimately came down to this (especially in the early 90s) I was far out of line with every christian churches teaching regarding almost everything (or so it seemed at the time.) All these churches supposedly were based on the sacrifice of a man who had one message that he never veered from: "Be kind to one another, help each other out, I mean it: don't be dick" but that somehow in 2000 years we'd ended up with these bloated organizations that were more concerned with his divinity and laws from the old covenant that was supposedly null and void with acceptance of the new testament than with encouraging people to actually do what he said. And to a certain extant I still feel that way.
The thing that I am most uncomfortable with in christianity (at a base level, dogmatic views on women, queers etc. not withstanding) now is the concept of grace, that we as fallible human beings simply cannot possess it by ourselves. I cannot believe that any god would find us unacceptable simply because we don't worship his son or engage in ritual cannibalism or whatever. I must believe that god (whatever, whoever he/she/it is) would find us acceptable as we are. I think feel that it is pretty clear that god does not meddle with the universe. I believe in miracles and mysticism but I believe these fit within the mechanics of the universe as it came into being. Why should an omnipotent being pay attention to the dogmatic squabbles of a statistically infinitesimal section of creation?
I think I'm pushing these issues for myself because I now have someone that I am responsible for. I am going to have to explain the question why to some degree to her because we all need the answer to that question. That's the reason we have religion we need answers to questions that cannot be found in science, or logic or sometimes even common sense. I need a filter to see my place in creation and to be able to find my purpose. As a parent I need some sort of larger framework to point to and say, "This is how things hang together, the things I am telling you gain their authority from some sort of common consensus (that you should by all means question) that has been reached.” I guess I am looking into these because I realize what a large part religion, christianity and my interaction with those entities worked together to form who I am and I want to be able to a) give Rona the same, or better, tools to work with them as I had, b) the benefit of that interaction c) possibly the same OCD complex I have with lists.
Damn, when I write about religion I write a lot.
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Re: A comment on Grace
Date: 29 Sep 2004 23:58 (UTC)Grace basically means that God has said "yo, I like you." That is to say, God finds you acceptable, regardless of the fact that you can't possibly hope to be cool enough on your own for God (who is, like, GOD) to think you're really cool.
And it's not like you have any choice in the matter. What religion you follow (or don't) is totally irrelevant, as is anything you do or fail to do. Whether you like it or not, you have been given grace, so take it, bitch!
So yeah, anybody who claims to be able to say under what conditions God is going to bestow grace is probably overstepping their bounds just a leeeetle bit. Even if they are boss of their own religion.
"Grace" is God-speak for "yeah, yeah, you're all imperfect and flawed and human; get over your bad self and get on with living a good life, wouldja?"
At least, that's what I think.
Re: A comment on Grace
Date: 30 Sep 2004 00:57 (UTC)Re: A comment on Grace
Date: 30 Sep 2004 15:16 (UTC)1) What if grace isn't forced on us? I agree with a great deal of what
2)RE:
and finally
3) I don't think that either grace or the idea of heaven removes our responsibility for each other and the world one iota. In fact, it should empower and enable such things (see
Re: A comment on Grace
Date: 30 Sep 2004 20:02 (UTC)2) Exactly (i think) I don't think that we need grace handed to us from an outside source, I think that we are by our very nature beings of grace. But years of television and other influences can destroy, obscure or otherwise make it difficult for us to behave in ways the belies our grace. I think that in one sense it is extended to us, it is the way we were intended to be. I think that when one rejects the responsibilites we have as cognizant, thinking beings (i.e. a responsibility to take care of each other and the world we live in) that is rejecting our true nature as beings and be association that grace.
3) That is exactly what I believe but it is all to easy (and I think common) to expect the 'kingdom of god' to the afterlife, all this rich men going through needles and crap, I think it has become a sort of smokescreen (and a double standard) "it's ok if I/you are suffering/poor/disenfranchised because when we are dead god will make it all better once i/you die" but on the other side "i deserve to be rich and priviledged because I have recieved god's grace, his blessing, etc. and thus deserve all that I have while you deserve god's disfavor and the economic/oppression you are at the recieving end of, but its ok because god will make it all better when we die" I believe that if there was any truth to the whole kingdom of god thing in christianity NOW is the kingdom of god, if we all did these things and behaved according to our inner grace (ignoreing any institutional edicts/dogma/etc the kingdom of god would be present and we would all reap the benefits.
4) I am HUGE communist. like that was a big surprise.
Re: A comment on Grace
Date: 30 Sep 2004 20:04 (UTC)