I spent part of my Holy Week reading Colleen Dulle’s “Struck Down, Not Destroyed: Keeping the Faith as a Vatican Reporter.” It’s a book about struggling to remain Catholic amidst the many scandals and failures of the Roman Catholic Church. I didn’t need to read Dulle‘s book to foreground these thoughts — as a practicing Catholic in contemporary America, these conflicts and tensions are on my mind all the time — but the book did help me reflect during this holiest time of the year on why I remain, despite the struggles.
Early in the book, Dulle writes, “No Catholic I know has an uncomplicated relationship with the church. … Most of all, many Catholics feel deeply scandalized by the church and its leaders because of abuse, corruption, cover-ups, and reluctant apologies. These Catholics understandably question whether or to what degree they can remain in this institution. They are caught in a crisis of conscience: They don’t know whether they can stay or whether they can really leave.”
LISTEN: Keeping the Faith Amid Political and Church Division
I have been holding these two ideas in tension for most of my adult life. I am a lifelong Catholic; I attended Catholic schools from first grade through my PhD (I studied Catholic literature at Loyola Chicago), and then I went on to teach at a Catholic university for a decade, and for the past couple of years I’ve aligned myself with public-facing Catholic organizations like the Jesuit Media Lab (and even had a brief stint as interim editor-in-chief here at Busted Halo). As Dulle notes, this kind of public alignment with the Church requires an even more rigorous evaluation of why one is willing to identify oneself with an organization that has struggled so notoriously with sexual abuse, and which holds regressive views on many social issues.
Like most Catholics, I cannot claim to adhere to every single Church teaching, but when we ran through the renewal of the Baptismal Promises during the Easter Vigil, I could, in good conscience, respond with affirmation. I have had doubts and struggles with belief, and my prayer and devotional life waxes and wanes, but the same goes for all things that I know are right and true: I am bad at adhering to fitness routines and committing to daily writing practices, and preparing healthy meals for myself and my family. It is hard to stick to things that I know are best for my body, mind, and soul, and I have found that much of adulthood is about acknowledging these repeated failures and regularly recommitting to doing the things that will allow me to be the best, most authentic version of myself.
Over the years, I have learned that attending Mass and receiving the sacraments are a key part of this pursuit of authenticity and integrity, and this is probably the single biggest reason I remain Catholic. Still, I have become used to the strange dynamic of being seen as the most conservative person in many social gatherings in my progressive town, because my family is the one that still goes to church on a weekly basis, while at the same time knowing that many of my Catholic friends and relations think of me as being not a ‘real Catholic’ because I am not socially conservative. I have long since come to peace with the dreaded label of “cafeteria Catholic,” since every member of the Body of Christ is picking and choosing which aspects of the Gospel and the tradition they prioritize (whether they are willing to admit this or not).
READ: What Flannery O’Connor’s Stories Taught Me About Spirituality and Creativity
But as I sat in the quiet before each of the Triduum services during Holy Week, with my mind occupied by Dulle’s chapters on the Church’s tepid response to the sexual abuse scandals, and the second class status of women in the Church, and even the insanely high costs associated with the official process of declaring someone a saint, I found myself needing to articulate specific reasons why I still enthusiastically embrace Catholicism.
The first that came to mind is something I study and teach: the Catholic Imagination — a way of seeing the world as “charged with the grandeur of God,” to borrow Gerard Manley Hopkins’ lovely phrase. I love Catholic writers, like Flannery O’Connor, who capture the disorienting strangeness of God‘s grace, even as I roll my eyes at the deluge of Catholic writing that is overly simplistic or pious or strident. I value the witness of priests, like Thomas Merton and James Martin, who write about the mysterious challenges of the faith, even as I resist many of the public faces of Catholicism, who write about the Church as if it is a wing of the Republican Party. And I take solace in the prophetic witness of Dorothy Day and her successors in the Catholic Worker, who resist warmongering and advocate for justice and solidarity with the poor, even as I decry the Catholics voicing support for the bombing of Iran. I believe deeply and passionately in the preferential option for the poor, and I love that this is a valued tradition in the Church.
In many ways, I am a pretty standard “progressive Catholic,” but I embrace both words in this description. I did, after all, draft much of this essay in the quiet before services throughout the Triduum. I enjoy a High Church service — incense and candles and songs in Latin all make my soul soar, and the fact that many people I disagree with politically also celebrate these elements of the Mass simply demonstrates something we all know already: the Church contains multitudes. I realize that this is a bit like an undergrad concluding a not particularly successful composition essay, but what is obvious can also be true.
RELATED: Why I Stay Catholic in the Face of the Clergy Abuse Scandal
And I truly love the long, strange traditions of Catholicism. As I was waiting my turn to venerate the cross on Good Friday, I found myself thinking of the pilgrim Egeria’s account of Holy Week in Jerusalem in the 380s, where she describes how “the people, both faithful and catechumens, come one by one and bow down at the table, kiss the sacred wood and pass through.” It brought me great joy to know that Christians have been celebrating this holy day in just this way since (at least) the late 300s. But my favorite part of Egeria’s account is when she tells us that the cross needed to be guarded by deacons “because, I know not when, someone is said to have bitten off and stolen a portion of the sacred wood.” I love that Catholics have been crazy for millennia!
I remain Catholic because I believe in the truths that the Church preaches. But I also remain because when I mentioned this bonkers detail to other Catholics on Easter, it inevitably led to a series of reminiscences of other (less extreme, but still funny) Triduum mishaps: someone recounted how a fellow altar server had to run to keep up with an elderly priest’s too rapid recitation of the Stations of the Cross, and ended up tripping on his robes and cracking the crucifix in half; this led directly to the story of a different altar server inhaling too much incense and vomiting all over the altar; which in turn gave rise to four different stories of people setting either themselves, their seatmates, and even the celebrant on fire during the candlelit part of the Vigil.
We are, and always have been, a deeply fallible people. We have the desire to give God glory, but because we are human, we will always come up short, in ways that are amusing, and in ways that are very much not. And yet God still loves us and uses our brokenness to move in the world. There is something in this tension between our failures and God’s grace, and how deeply entwined this dynamic is in the 2000 years of Church history, that helps me keep the faith and embrace my Catholicism.
Questions for Reflection
- Michael discusses how faith and politics inevitably go hand-in-hand in today’s society. Do you feel this tension in your own life? How does this impact your life and interactions with others?
- The Church, as Michael says, “contains multitudes” – even if her members hold different beliefs. How might you foster understanding and conversation with those you may not agree with? How can you live this out beyond the walls of your parish?
- Michael shares his love for the Triduum Masses. What are some of your favorite Catholic traditions, and how do they keep you grounded in your faith when things are difficult?
- Michael mentions some of his favorite Catholic thinkers and witnesses like Flannery O’Connor, Thomas Merton, and Dorothy Day. Pick one of these figures and learn more about them. How can their lives inspire you?
