One of the best things about Catholics is that Catholics are fun.  Cool, hipster Protestants are starting to catch up, but it’s a little like inviting freshmen to the senior party.  Catholics are seniors at merrymaking. While the prohibitionists were spewing the evils of alcohol, the Catholics were testifying to its convivial attributes with eloquent, confident, slurred speech.  While the Puritans were making sure their necks and ankles weren’t showing, Michelangelo was sculpting the most magnificent naked man that Channing Tatum wishes he could be.  And well, we all know what Catholics enjoy doing just based on the size of their families.  Not to mention that Catholics have more feast days than you could possibly keep up with.  It was probably a priest that invented the famous joke opening, “A priest, a rabbi, and a penguin walk into a bar…”

Catholics are fun, and this alone testifies to me that they grasp something about God that many others don’t.  They understand what we were intended for in the Garden, what heaven will be like, and that we were made simply to enjoy God and each other.  Life is beautiful.  It’s not a drudgery to endure.  Earth is not toxic to our souls.  What God called “good” is still “good” in the Catholic paradigm – not that sin hasn’t tainted this world, but it makes the good and the beautiful stand out all the more.  Catholics understand how to enjoy this place that God made for us.  And while not everyone may see “fun” as the same holy act that I do, I can’t help but think of all the times Jesus was criticized for basically having too much fun.  Personally?  I want to be like Jesus.