I am sitting here, writing this, listening to Bach's Unaccompanied Cello Concertos. I suppose I should be listening to this instead, but I've never really thought of it as "death" music. I know. Oliver Stone ruined that adagio for you, but conveniently, as I've never seen Platoon, I have nothing to fear in this department.
Bach works well for what I'm about to write, and this particular piece of Bach's prolific catalogue works even better than some overwrought, organ grinding, gut churning fugue ever would.
Bear with me while I explain.
I was listening to our local classical station in the days after 9/11 and one of the DJ's announced out of the blue that they were going to play all of Bach's Unaccompanied Cello Concertos. This is a goodly bit of music, about an hour long, and as MPR usually just plays a movement here or an overture there, this was an unusual move. The DJ then gave their reasoning: at Ground Zero apparently there was a lone cellist playing this exact piece for the workers, as they searched for bodies. The DJ said that this lone cellist was a music teacher; that they were unable to help with the search efforts and yet they wanted to help, so they brought their cello and a chair down to Ground Zero and started playing.
From there on in I've associated this piece with the heartbreak of that tragedy, but also with the thought that someone, in their best Little Drummer Boy fashion, brought what they had and offered it up to make life better for someone else. That act touched me tremendously. It is in this spirit that I have pulled the Bach up on the WinAmp, have placed the headphones over my ears and have immersed myself in the gentle caressing of the cello strings to offer what I can for my church. So that I can, in my best Little Drummer Boy fashion, try and make life easier for others.
If such a thing is possible.
As I wrote in the first post, there were many things about the Roman Catholic Church under the leadership of Pope John Paul II that challenged my faith. And to explain what I mean by "faith" I must go even more detail about my life as a Catholic.
I have always believed. Belief is not a hard thing for me, for whatever reason. I am more likely to believe what someone tells me than I am to disbelieve it. That's just the way I am: the original Pollyanna. What cynicism I do possess has been hard-earned over the years and it's been a defense mechanism that I've developed to protect myself from liars. Because there are many more liars out there than there are people who tell the truth. Knowing this, it should be no great shock to many people that I have never had any issues believing in God. In Jesus Christ. In the Holy Spirit. In all of the stuff that you're taught when you're a young Catholic. I believed it all. And, what's even more amazing, is that I still believe. I've never had to pull the walls of my defense system up to protect my faith in the message of Jesus. That has remained as pure as it was the first day I could comprehend all of it.
But faith in the word, in the message, in the Trinity, I have learned, is different from faith in the Church. This is distinct no-no when it comes to Holy Mother Church. This is called heresy. When you're a Catholic, these two things are supposed to be the same. It's called "The Apostolic Tradition," and the basic precept behind it is that you, as a Catholic, accept that the Roman Catholic Church is the one, true Church, because it was started by Peter, one of Jesus' disciples. This way, it is supposed, the message of Jesus is to remain pure; as if the priest up on the altar today is simply repeating the message Jesus delivered at His Sermon on the Mount yesterday. After all, what's two-thousand years between disciples? It's nothing, according to the Church. Absolutely nothing.
While this is pretty neat and gives the Church great street cred as far as authenticity is concerned, the Apostolic Tradition doesn't just cover Jesus' message; it also covers everything the Church has ever done or will ever do. You accept that these men in charge of the Church are following God's Will with their words and deeds. This is all well and good until these men make massive blunders. And the blunders of the Church are many. They include, but are not limited to: the Inquisition; the selling of indulgences; ecclesiastical courts; the forced conversions of indigenous peoples in the name of a God who these people had no idea of; excommunication of scientists whose teachings Church officials feared would undermine the Church, etc.
But, as many would say, if you take the good, you must take the bad. Well, I don't see it that way.
This is where I've had to divorce my "faith" from the Church. "Divorce" probably isn't the right word. Separation works better, I suppose, because that is what I have done: separated myself on some issues because I cannot stay with the Church any longer when it comes to these issues. There is a disconnect on some issues, as I see it, between Jesus' message and what the Church does and I simply cannot, for reasons of conscience, follow them blindly. The men who run the Church may be a part of the Apostolic Tradition, but when I see them acting not very much like the Apostles of Christ, I have issues with it. It's hard to see straight as a Catholic when it's apparent that these men see threats in the wrong corners and defend accordingly; when they won't listen to your warnings or your desires because it goes against two thousand years of dogmatic teaching. And that's the only reason they won't listen, because it goes against teachings developed by man, and not by Christ. Sure, they were part of the Apostolic Tradition, but to my mind, the Tradition covers up too many sins as well as proving that the Roman Catholic Church is the one, true church. There's something very wrong with that action.
Over the past ten years, it's been exceedingly hard for me to go to mass, to hear the beautiful message of our Lord and Savior, the Son of God who died on the cross for our sins, and then come home, open up the paper and read yet another story about the wickedness the Church propagated on some person or persons with its actions. It's just been really hard. By the time you are done with the paper, you are begging to know where the message of Jesus is in their actions. Where has it gone in the time it took to you to get home from mass and the time you were done reading the Sunday paper? You question yourself. You question your judgment. You question everything you know as a Catholic. You try to defend the Church, but when it turns out the story is true, what are you to do? The old saying goes, "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me." What are you to do when the organization fooling you more times than you can shake a stick at is the Church?
This is why I said that the Church, led by John Paul II, has shaken my faith more than any other person or organization has ever done. I can stand up to my Mormon nieces and nephews who are misguided yet earnest in spreading the Good News about Captain Moroni to their Catholic auntie. I have no issues with defending my faith against Evangelical Christians, who are hell-bent-for-leather on saving my soul. I can even read an Islamic-conversion pamphlet that the husband was handed by a well-meaning Pakistani security guard whilst he was in Kuwait. Hare Krishnas? Well, they're not too hard to blow off, are they? None of this shakes my faith. Therefore, it's ironic in the extreme that the men of the Church I follow are the ones who have given me many, many bad days about following the Gospels as preached by the Roman Catholic Church.
To keep my faith, as I know it best, with the Church I know best, I had to start picking and choosing what I would listen to them on and what I wouldn't. For that action, I am probably a prime candidate for excommunication. Fine, so be it. At least I should get a trial if they do that and they'll be forced to listen to me, for once. For the heretics out there (and Bless You for making it this far into this post) I am what is commonly referred to as a "Cafeteria Catholic," someone who picks and chooses which teachings they'll follow, like I'm picking between the jello and the salad at a buffet. When someone calls me this, I'm not ashamed. It's been a hard thing to do, coming to this decision. If you think I arrived at this overnight, or that I'm picking the easy path, you're kidding yourself. For someone who was raised in the Church as I was, this is hard, hard stuff. Nor do I think I need to be kicked out of the Church, as some would undoubtedly argue. The way I see it God gave me a brain and He gave me Free Will. I'm using them. If I'm using them improperly, well, I'll find out about it at Judgment Day, won't I?
After that bit of longwindedness, I suppose it's time to explain to what I feel abou Pope John Paul II. And, gracious, I just realized that it's really hard for me not to just blindly type "The Pope," anymore. I can't do that. He was pope for so long, it feels unnatural to not just whip those words out and have it be common knowledge as to just which pope I'm referring to. But, a couple of years from now, someone will come across this post and they'll think "who the heck is she talking about? Which pope?" Tempus fugit, I suppose, works best to describe this, because time is fleeting. The clock is ticking here in the real world, time is fleeting for all of us, and it's time for the clock of the Roman Catholic Church to start ticking again, because it hasn't for the past twenty-six years.
I firmly believe that John Paul II has been a caretaker pope. I know I'm definitely in the minority when it comes to this opinion, but not much has changed over those twenty-six years. His leadership has been steady. His teachings have been reaffirmations of what we already knew. He went back to basics, and given the world we live in, I can see why he would think this a necessary thing. Perhaps it was because of his experience in Communist Poland that set him on this defensive path. He also took his show on the road, preaching to the masses, to make sure they got the message as well. He took care of the Church. He felt that was what God was calling him to do.
This is all well and good. I have no issues with the fact he felt this was his mission. I feel John Paul II was a holy man. I just think he took the Church down the wrong road. I don't claim to have the answers. I don't claim to have anything even remotely near the answers, I just call it like I see it, and from my viewpoint, the Roman Catholic Church has been stuck in 1978. We haven't moved forward. The Church's notion of biology and their views on artificial birth control has proved even more out-of-date in the wake of the HIV/AIDS crisis than it seemed in 1978, when all anyone wanted was a reliable method of birth control. We have lost God only knows how many members because they were told in a big booming voice they had to take it all---the good and the bad---or leave. We have lost too many priests and nuns, people who were devoted to serving God through His Church, because they felt they could serve God better with a different vocation. A pedophile scandal finally came to a head during his tenure and how many young men and women were hurt because the Church would not see the errors of its ways for years? How much evidence do you need to know that while John Paul II was a good man and a good leader and a good and devoted servant to God, he nonetheless took our Church down the wrong road? He was a wonderful shepherd who took a wrong turn.
Lots of people will disagree with me, I am sure, and they are more than welcome to do it. God gave them a brain and free will, too.
What I hope for John Paul's successor more than anything is that he works to make the Church more inclusive, that he doesn't feel the need to be on the defensive all the time so the Church can move forward into the 21st century. I don't think that's a whole lot to ask, do you? Many people don't think the Church will survive if it does move forward, if it stops acting as a bulwark against what it percieves to be the evils of our modern society. I am obviously not one of them. I want my Church to be strong, but I do not find strength in the act of protection; I find it in the act of being brave. In admitting past mistakes and moving on, in becoming more a part of the society we are living in. In perhaps looking at the situation and finding new solutions to problems that are not rooted solely in dogma, but rather in the reality of the world we find ourselves in. This way, I feel, it will be more able to help its members when they have crises of conscience. These members will feel more able to follow the Church's teachings if, like a teenager, they have a support system, rather than a blindly disapproving parent. While many people don't think this is a good way for the Church to follow, I think it's the brave way, it's the way Jesus himself would have taken.
I don't want the next pope to be a radical, obviously, but I just want to move past 1978 and I hope our next pope will help us, those who make up the Roman Catholic Church, to do that.
Posted by Kathy at April 5, 2005 12:31 AM