This does not begin with, “The problem with Catholicism is…” Like all things human, the religion has its list of problems. For some, these problems are reason enough to move to another religion. Others simply doubt the whole concept of faith. Others become simply used to it. For them religion is not the central focus of life. The central focus of life is something else besides.
But having religion does have its share of conveniences. For one, it provides us the markers we need to structure our lives, the events by which we might recall what we have gone through in our travel through time, baptism, confirmation, first confession, first communion, marriage, birth, death. These are rituals of a cyclical order. They mark not only our own lives but everyone else’s. And that reassures us in a way that we often do not think about too much. Its just there, like some monumental immutable part of the planet, like infrastructure, our world, kalibutan.
And whoever questions that?
Does anyone ever ask, Why is the sky blue? Or the leaves green? Or rock, hard? And clay, soft? Well, we do pose those questions. But we always accept their answers as a small fact of science. Not a revelation that could ever change our lives and our world. Why is the religion there? We never ask that. That would be like asking, Why do we climb a mountain? Or swim a sea, or sail over oceans? Those questions have but one answer. And it is such an old ancient answer we do not even care to ask who said it first: We climb the mountain because it is there.
That is the consequence of being born into the neighborhood religion, the national religion, the religion of our parents. And many of us are Catholics by virtue of that fact. Our religious experiences are defined by it. It might be peculiar but we cannot say that with certainty. We are Catholics that way. We are Catholics not because we need to or chose to. It is simply a convenient fact.
Others might say this is despicable. Those of us who have been raised under religious tutelage were taught that our religiosity should be the most important thing about us. But we also take this teaching as a hopeful ideal more than anything else. We expect our priests and our teachers to say these things. But now as ever before, we remember this teaching only for short moments after which we go back to life savoring its excitement. We go about our family, our work, our friends. How can we fully go at life if all we think about is God, religion, and the sacraments?
The truth is, we go to church on Sundays dragging our kids with us sometimes thrashing and kicking every step of the way, Sunday being the last hours of the weekend. Tomorrow will be another blue Monday. And they know as much as we do that by then we will all be back to the grinder, back to school, back to work. If asked, they could pose better alternatives to spending those hours in church praying.
But still we take them and ourselves there. And we take them there at great sacrifice. And we tell ourselves, this sacrifice is necessary if only to impress on our kids the notion that religion is important. God is important. They should not even think too much about it. They can always argue but failing anything else, that argument can always end with: “While you’re still living under my roof and so on.”
But we do pray. And while this is all a convenient religion for most of us, we are loyal to our church or want to be within reason. As for believing in God and keeping faith, well, we all know that’s another thing entirely. As it should well be. The religion itself can go rot. But that should not mean our faith, our belief in God, our propensity to live by the teachings, as well as our capacity to love ourselves and others will rot with it.
We have after all come to a time of fragmentation. The information age has brought all of us to a point where there is just so much information about everything its hard to know what to believe. Is the world ending this year? Is God an idea planted into our brains by ancient aliens? Did the Vatican condone Hitler and the killing of Jews? Is the church institution corrupted? Who can tell? They are only indeterminate mysteries.
But our own attachments both personal and to the world around us are not. We know how we feel. And if we are serious believers we may go about our lives this way: We wake up. By nine in the morning, we might come to doubt God’s existence. This might come with a disagreement over some news of the clergy’s behavior or what happened centuries ago with the church. After giving it some thought, we brush this aside. We go and think of “more important things.” Come dusk, we might contemplate the travel of this particular day. And we know this must be because of some mysterious reason. It is something we do not do daily for lack of time.
We might say to ourselves: It is God calling me. He watches. But always from behind and from a far and convenient distance. Like a shepherd He watches as my parents once did.