I'm Having an Affair--No, Not that Kind of Affair


I have a confession to make.  For all of my life, I have been a member of the Catholic Church.  Our relationship has certainly had its ups and downs.  I was once in the priesthood, then I wasn't.  I have been in parishes where I felt a strong connection to the church and to my fellow parishoners, and others where I felt I was going through the motions.  But, through it all, I have stuck with Catholicism.

Right after Easter this year, I felt a strong sense of disconnect from the church, despite the fact that I was very happy with the election of Pope Francis.  I'm not entirely sure the reasons behind this--that's something I hope to figure out in time.  But it was real, and it made it hard to go to church on Sundays.  It felt like I was stuck in neutral, without any way to go anywhere, let alone toward a destination.

For a couple of weeks, I didn't go to church at all.  I figured it was maybe time for a bit of space--a trial separation if you will.  That proved wholly unsatisfactory.  I felt that something very key was missing from my Sundays.  More importantly, I couldn't let this situation persist, and I felt I needed to do something to attempt to figure out what was going on inside my mind and my heart.  I needed to try something, to see if it might be a way to break out of this stasis.

So, four weeks ago I started my affair--I went to the Episcopal church in downtown Columbus.
Trinity is a smallish old church, right across the street from the Ohio state Capitol.  Upon walking in for the first time, I immediately felt like an outsider.  Note that the people at Trinity certainly didn't make me feel like an outsider; the sense of being an interloper was entirely in my head.  Despite this, the liturgy was similar enough that it felt comfortable, and was done in a simple but reverent style.  There was a mix of people of all races and ages.  The preaching was good.  Everyone was friendly.

After the second week, I realized something very disconcerting.  I kind of like going to Trinity Episcopal Church.

The fact I liked it scared me.  I think it raised some uncomfortable questions in my mind, questions that I wasn't ready to address.  As a result, I skipped Trinity two weeks ago.  But, yesterday, I went back.  The pastor was back from vacation, and he picked me out as the newcomer before service and made a point of greeting me.  I told him (in the too-quick staccato voice of a person who has been caught with a hand in the cookie jar) that I was a Catholic who was just visiting, which was greeted with an invitation to come back any time.  His sermon was excellent.

Truly, this feels like I am having an affair.  I know that is silly and irrational, but that is how it feels.  Perhaps the love (or lust) will fade and I will realize that there is more to life than these passing flirtations.  Perhaps this will cause me to look at faith in a different way and be enriched by the whole thing.  Or, perhaps this is the beginning of a 90 degree turn on the religion front.  We'll see.

One thing I do know, though.  I am going back on Sunday.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Another Theology of the Body, Part VI--A Theological Exploration of the Clitoris

I was introduced to The Body's Grace by Frank from Letters to the Catholic Right in this post , where he quotes Williams saying: It puts the question which is also raised for some kinds of moralist by the existence of the clitoris in women; something whose function is joy. If the creator were quite so instrumentalist in ‘his’ attitude to sexuality, these hints of prodigality and redundancy in the way the whole thing works might cause us to worry about whether he was, after all, in full rational control of it. But if God made us for joy…? I want to talk about the first part of that quote here, regarding the clitoris.  I am not aware of any theology that has been done on the clitoris, but there should be.  As Williams alludes to, the existence and nature of the clitoris is a theological "problem," especially if you want to hold on to traditional Christian sexual morality.  It is especially problematic if you want to hold that sexuality needs to be understood through the...
Read more

On a Pelagian Politics, and Why It Would Be Good

I have two very hot takes.  The first is that Joe Biden is the best United States President in my lifetime, and probably the best since Franklin Roosevelt, and his many critics on both the right and the left are wrong.  The second is that the Irish monk Pelagius and his (mostly Celtic) disciples were basically right, and more specifically Pelagius's great opponent Augustine (and by extension the rest of the Western Church ever since) was wrong.  But the hottest take, the Hegelian synthesis of this Hotness, is that these two takes are ultimately the same take.  I believe that Biden is a great President because I am a Pelagian with a Pelagian world view, whereas American politics is fundamentally Calvinist, which is just Augustinianism taken to its logical conclusion. Let me try to justify this ball of hot takes. 1. Most of what we know of Pelagius comes from his opponents, especially Augustine and Jerome, who attempted (more or less successfully) to have him cast out ...
Read more

A Reflection on the Past, and Also on Art

Exactly twenty-two years ago, in February of 2002, I was living in River Forest, Illinois, finishing up my undergraduate degree.  I was living in an enormous old priory, hoping that I would be able to join the Dominicans when I was done with school in the summer (which, in fact, happened).  The priory was built in the 50s, when the Dominicans would have classes of a fifty or sixty students a year.  Those days were long gone, and so I was the only person living on the hall, on the far other side of the building from the actual Dominicans.  Other than meals, I was basically living entirely by myself. In my evenings, after getting done with my homework, I had a ritual on weekdays.  I would turn on the radio to the Chicago rock radio station Q101 and listen to the syndicated show Loveline .  Loveline  was a call-in show, focused on giving sex and relationship advice to teenagers and twenty-somethings.  The hosts of the show were comedian Adam Corolla ...
Read more