Culture shock

 

What do you think Catholic Culture is?

I THOUGHT I knew what Catholic culture was: go to church on Sundays, try not to eat meat on Fridays during Lent, be annoyed whenever a Protestant friend tries to figure out if you're "saved", feel bad when you forget a holy day of obligation, send your kids to CCD. If we can call this a "culture", then this is the one I know. It's the one I grew up with (though I think my mom, on her own, very much imparted to us all that SHE had and I'm being a bit blase). 

Then I got on the internet and HOO BOY I met some different Catholics. It all took a while for me to absorb and understand and filter and learn, but I sincerely hadn't known these Catholics existed. The families with many many children, the women who wore veils, the modesty debate, the altars at home, NFP as 1) a thing people actually did and 2) a thing about which people had EXTREMELY STRONG OPINIONS. Also the folks who think we need to go back to the Latin Mass, or at the very least scrub any piece of music written after the 20th century from the liturgy, because the way Mass is now is... I don't know. Dead? Unserious? Unbeautiful? No WONDER young people aren't going to Mass if they have to sit through THIS tripe, etc. 

I know all that is not a culture in itself and that people who find themselves in one or two of these camps will not find themselves in all of them. That said, every single one of these things was (some still) VERY UNFAMILIAR TO ME. And was the biggest reason (only reason?) I had to give up reading Catholic blogs. Being the half-Protestant hater-of-NFP that I am (though I tried, I really truly sincerely tried), I felt Not Catholic Enough which led me down the road to Not Good Enough. 

(I am no longer in that place, THANK YOU JESUS.)

Two things of which I'm absolutely certain: God has called me and convicted me to remain and be Catholic. I've told you guys that Phillip and I spent a year discerning this. Mass DID feel dead to us (for other reasons than guitar music, btw) and we truthfully and faithfully wondered where God would have us. God spoke to me in a huge way. YOU ARE CATHOLIC. Okay! Noted! A few years later I heard him tell me that my mission field (!) is the Catholic church (!!!). 

Those things being true, the people to whom I feel called to get to know are Catholics (or anybody, really) of the first "culture". The "we go to church, but it's a private thing and no big deal" or the "I believe in God, but it's not my whole life" kind of thing. I know these people. I am FAMILIAR with these people. I know how to hang with them and be good friends with them and oh yes I am EXTREMELY intentional about MANY of these relationships. 

The handful of young women I know living in a former convent, being in community, half of them discerning, some who wear veils, who can chant and know all the mysteries of the Rosary and ring a bell for night prayer... they throw me. I mean, they are lovely and I've shared a few mugs of tea with them, but holy cats do I find their lives intimidating. Part of this is because I sense they are afraid of MINE. Not outwardly so, but my embrace of Protestant worship and culture, my okayness with my not-super-Catholic-ness, my embrace of not-Christian stuff, are things that I sense they are hiding from, in some way, by living in this community. I mean, how horrid must it be to want to date when you are 25, live in Seattle, and are devoutly Catholic? Maybe I would live in an old convent too. 

(I should say this isn't personal. We don't know each other well enough to be intimidated/afraid by each other. It's just something I sense and that I'm throwing out there. I would love to sit down with one of these girls and interrogate them some day, in a very loving way obvs. Heh.) 

I have absolutely no idea where I'm going with this. Let me think. Hmmm.

I am reminded of something more than a few people said to me after the election (which maybe I will write about at some point, PROBABLY NOT): "we all have different assignments". I am going to dare to say that even if Phillip and I found NFP (or, even better, not bothering to do it) the easiest most marriage-strengthening thing in the world, I suspect my assignment is NOT to be a matriarch who leads her children in the Liturgy of the Hours and teaches them about all the saints and celebrates their feast days. GOD BLESS THOSE AMAZING WOMEN. God has made ME an ambitious crazypants charismatic who cannot stand doing crafts and can barely take note of Advent let alone the holy days throughout the year. My four years in the Non-Denominational Christian Fellowship, where I met my HUSBAND and my BEST FRIENDS, was part of God's plan for my life. HE MADE ME HALF-PROTESTANT! He made me comfortable in wackadoodle retreats and conferences, he made me bilingual and a translator, you know? He made me desire Christian unity with my whole heart, and the rant you may or may not have seen on Twitter yesterday, where I absolutely could not stand the latest person bitching about regular people Mass and how the music sucks and the mystery is gone, well maybe that was not very Christian of me. But you cannot tell me that the folks worshipping God in a gym and without the Blessed Sacrament do not have Jesus. We need each other, folks, and holing up in our respective safe places is not what God wants for his children. 

I had a word spoken over me recently, that God is going to give me "more little sisters". I am 37 and a half and Catholic blogs no longer make me feel less than (which they never should have done in the first place, it is not their fault, I want that to be CLEAR!) and I am less and less afraid to talk about God out loud with people who don't know him. 37 and a half is old enough to know that I know some things now, but young enough to know that I have a LOT more things to learn. I feel comfortable here and both of these Catholic "cultures", for want of a better word, feel more open to me than they ever have. I am QUITE looking forward to these little sisters and hearing about their lives and what Catholic culture (or plain old FAITH culture) is for THEM. I am praying for boldness and to become someone who can pull out the thread of truth no matter who she's talking to. 

 

 

Comments

[Steph]

Your blog is my favorite. :)