Religious Thoughts

Hello all! It's been a while since I've written and after another busy semester of grad school, I apologize to the Taylors for not replying to your last response which indicated your response in itself was a desire to see more writing from me. Your comments were right on and I appreciate them, especially your comment on the first of my political questions. But at the moment, I feel obliged to move to religion since I have recently converted to Roman Catholicism, a move I would have never DREAMED of making even just a year ago. So I feel some dialogue is warranted. Like, for starters, why did I do such a crazy thing? The simple answer is, for better or worse, FEELING. I say that with emphasis because anyone that knows me knows that I'm not one to rely on emotions or whimsical ideas to guide my decision making. I was most recently a product of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC), who value intellect and mind to guide their faith. But when I moved to Alaska and they had no OPC, I was forced to find another church community to worship with. And even before I moved, I had a desire to try out the Catholic church, even though when I expressed this desire at my OPC going away party, it was received with something less than enthusiasm. Because of that fact and my desire to respect the knowledge of my elders, I made the local Lutheran church in Seward my "official" church home, but I also discovered the Saturday afternoon Mass at Sacred Heard Catholic Church and went to that too. While I have a special place in my heart for both, I admit that by the end of my time in Seward, I was much more interested in the Catholic church than the Lutheran, even though most of my acquaintances were from the latter. When I arrived in Oxford, Ohio on a Friday, my intense desire was to go to the local Catholic church that Sunday, but because of an awkward scheduling dilemma typical of college towns, I had missed the only Mass that day at 8am. So I went to the Presbyterian service and, while it was fine, I spent the next week feeling empty having missed Mass. The next Sunday all I could think about was getting to Mass and when I got there, I felt revived and restored. I wanted to go nowhere else until I communicated through email to my elders from the old OPC in Chattanooga that I had fallen in love with the Catholic church. They were not amused. They told me the Mass was offensive to God because it celebrated the daily re-sacrifice of Christ, instead of viewing his sacrifice as sufficiently once-and-for-all (I have later learned that the Mass celebrates OUR DAILY CELEBRATION of His ONCE-AND-FOR-ALL sacrifice). In any event, respecting their advice, I decided to boycott Catholicism until I could get to the bottom of this. That lasted one week. I skipped Mass the following Sunday and went to the local Lutheran church instead. I was bored to tears. I sat my butt in a pew almost the whole time. I felt deprived that I couldn't kneel before my Almighty, or make the sign of the cross that symbolized our Family, etc. I was troubled about what to do; on the one hand, brought up to rely on intellectualism and not feeling, I thought I would have to suck it up and get re-used to Protestant worship. On the other hand, I couldn't deny the strong feeling of sincere and reverent worship I had been offering to God at the Mass. In the name of humility, I wanted to respect the advice of my OPC elders to reject Catholicism, but I spoke to a friend who rhetorically asked, "What would have happened if Martin Luther had listened to his elders?" I prayed a lot and decided to resume attending St. Mary Church, where I had met wonderful friends and encountered unexpected faith. At the start of the 2008 school year in August, a good friend invited me to attend RCIA classes (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults, the adult join-the-Catholic-church class). That year-long class is for adults to join the Catholic church and when I was invited, I told her I had significant doctrinal issues with the Catholic church and had no intention or desire of joining; while I loved the church and its reverent worship style, there were a few doctrinal issues that my conscience would not allow me to accept (all the typical Protestant concerns like the "worship" of Mary and transubstantiation). But she told me I could attend the classes just to learn, as a student, and being that I am a college student anyway, why not? So I started attending and learning a lot, still with no intention of joining. But around March, we were due for one of our rites for initiation into the Church, where we were to gather at an assembly of the Archbishop and begin our "final descent" into communion with the Catholic church. I had a tough decision to make. I had never intended to join, but yet I had been through the class for all this time and was offered the chance to move forward with full communion and membership. I thought to myself, "what does it matter if I actually 'join'? Why can't I just keep attending without officially joining the church?" But I also respected the human institution of official union ceremonies, much the same way a guy and a girl can simply elope and claim to have marriage, but there is still value in going forth with an official ceremony with witnesses to make it more official. So I decided to meet with our Priest, Father Jeff, who had attended all our RCIA classes. When I told him I wanted to meet, I explained my situation, that I liked worshipping in the Catholic church but that I had some serious doctrinal problems in a few areas. He was more than happy to welcome me to a meeting. To put it mildly, I was BEOYND impressed with my conversation with him, and with his wisdom. I guess I had a stereotype feeling that Catholics, while definitely believers, were very ignorant and lethargic with their faith, but Father Jeff destroyed that stereotype by presenting wise theological answers to my questions that were beyond anything I expected. I won't go into the details here (although for those curious I'll be happy to explain the intricacies of our conservation), but suffice to say, by the end of our discussion, he had more than adequately responded to all the typical protestant complaints I brought about things like the veneration of Mary, etc. But even more powerful than that was his overall conclusion to me, that the study and debate of doctrinal issues was important, but even more important was our faith and our family. He told me that I was welcome to have plenty of disagreements with the Catholic Church's doctrines, but as long as I accepted Christ as our Savior and acknowledged myself and all other humans as flawed creatures in need of deliverance, I was welcome. His almost-exact words which impressed me so much were, "None of us agree on all things about our faith, but our primary goal is to embark on a journey to become more Christ-like every day, and if you want to join us on this journey, flawed as we may be, you are more than welcome." I was speechless. This guy has a masters degree in both chemistry and theology...in other words, he's pretty smart. And yet his humility stood in stark contrast to the genuine but overly-sure-of-themselves theology I had experienced at my former Presbyterian church. In short, I was sold. I did spend some time praying and talking to friends after this conversation but in the end, I decided that despite any doctrinal disagreements, I had found a church that humbly and genuinely welcomed me to join them on a journey to be united with Christ in his ever-approaching Kingdom ("may your Kingdom come"). As I mentioned earlier, this whole thing started as a result of FEELING; I felt irritation that there was so much disagreement amongst believers and I wanted to defy that by showing that I could worship in any Christ-honoring church, and that petty bickering over doctrines, even as "radical" as those of the Catholic church, cannot be more important than love and union amongst God's believers. But, while I still believe that furiously, I now even am considering and beginning to believe many of the Catholic beliefs I once considered ridiculous. My aforementioned friend who invited me to participate in the RCIA became my sponsor. Through several great debates and conversations with her, I concluded the Catholics were right-on in some of their ideas that I had previously denied, including their appreciation of the family relationship and how contraception worked against that sacred union where the love of two people was so powerful, it produces an offspring (the TWO become ONE), and our united Family, which should stick together, and not split, even when disagreements occur. So that's the story. Though this post is obnoxiously long, it doesn't come close to fully explaining the reasons why I found it important to convert to Roman Catholicism. But I hope it at least explains my mentality and I'm happy to discuss in much more detail to anyone who is curious. Peace out.