Only a moron puts a blog out into the ether and yet believes that it's private. Okay, I didn't think it was private, exactly, but it didn't occur to me that anyone cared that it was here. I use this space, as you know, to start figuring things out. It's a place to put the ideas and thoughts that are rattling around in my head and cluttering up the place, preventing my brain from figuring out where my car keys are. Or (and?) it's a place to find and chat with like-minded people whom I wouldn't otherwise have "met".
But here's what happened a few days ago and yesterday. These events may be unrelated, but somehow I'm dubious. A few days ago there was an anonymous comment on a months-old post -something about gay marriage and Catholicism. The comment suggested that I wasn't actually Catholic. Since, in spite of such a cowardly (anonymous!) declaration, no one's revoked my baptism, I didn't give it another thought. Yesterday I went to church (Mike, where were you? I needed you!) and someone whose name I don't even know came up to me and said that she felt duty-bound to tattle about my blog to the parish priests. I'm afraid that the sarcasm that I usually only think, rather than say, did actually spill out of my mouth. So, I must take some responsibility for possibly having escalated this situation.
That's as far as it's gotten. I have no message from any of the priests. No one's called. They're probably going to try to divert this person to more salubrious ministries.
Yet, in case you're a parish priest and reading this blog for the first time, here's the thing. Welcome. Get comfortable. Stay a while and make comments and have fun with us. I love dialogue, even when it gets intense -as long as it's respectful. My hard-nosed rule, though, is that I will not be summoned. If you want to talk about these issues, let's do it here, for now.
Come, let us reason together.
5 comments:
Andrea, I love that you are as true to yourself and still faithful. As a lapsed Catholic who left for all the reasons you point out (lack of women, intolerance, etc.), I take inspiration that you can hold your personal beliefs and still go to Mass every week and work within to serve. You inspire me to go back to Mass.
Sorry! When I couldn't see across the street when I got up yesterday morning, or when I was about ready to leave for church, I decided that discretion was the better part of valor and stayed home.
You may have discovered a new take on being dooced
Wear it like a bloggers badge of honour, baby!
I also am a lapsed Catholic, and it's nice to see that others share my discomfort with the attitude Rome has taken about homosexuality. Discomfort is the wrong word...for me it's developed into something more like horror. I moved from the Catholic church to a very liberal and multi-cultural Episcopalian parish with a fabulous priest. Unfotunately, when the whole gay bishop issue reared it's head the predomonantly black parishioners were up in arms, and basically ran our liberal priest out of town on a rail. So we no longer go there either.
The most interesting part of this for me, is that my son, who was 12 at the time, went with us to a parish meeting to discuss the issue. My son stood up and asked, with genuine innocence, how a group of black people could think that it's OK to discriminate against a group of people who have no control over the way God made them? My son, who is now 17, has recently come out of the closet to a select few...his immediate family and close friends (thus my careful anonymity). Looking back on it now, on my son as a toddler, as a middle schooler...it's so crystal clear that this is the way he has alway sbeen...the way God made him. As a parent, It's heartbreaking to take your child to church where he ought to feel succored and safe, and hear that God thinks you are bad. Somehow, so far, he is amazingly comfortable about it and has an incredible amount of clarity, but god, do I worry. I'm encouraging him to speak up and own his identity (I hate to use the word "pride")...I tell him that his voice as a young person who has yet to become sexually active is uniquely powerful. I can only support him as I stand back and watch him make his way in a nation that doesn't seem to have learned anything from the civil rights movement.
Wow, Andrea! You've really arrived when you start to piss off people in high places.
I don't think your parish priests are going to get all up in arms about this, even if they do come and read your blog. These guys have spent many hours in divinity school, and they know that religious issues are not as cut and dried as some of their less imaginitive flock (read "sheep") contend...
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