Category Archives: Thriving Spirits

Understanding Catholicism #1 – Catholics & A Biblical Worldview

Well helloooo, long-lost blog-land! Just when I thought I’d hung up my blogger’s hat, a pivotal moment came along that has my fingertips itching to get the explosion of thoughts out of my head just so that I can sleep tonight. Who’m I kidding? I’m not sleeping tonight. After three years of intensive prayer and research of the Catholic faith, then ultimately becoming Catholic almost seven years ago (wow! not a newbie anymore!), Lukus and I settled into a nice little intellectual reprieve, simply living our faith and raising our family. But since a recent move, I’ve found myself having all the same conversations I was so saturated in years ago, but this time with new friends as I explain and defend Catholicism. I gotta say, it’s quite the mix of thrilling, exhausting, bonding, and frustrating, so I figured I would take the frustrating part and channel it into something halfway productive.

I made the mistake of thinking that I wouldn’t need to ever write about Catholic doctrine. I could get away with just writing my own story of conversion, and my experience in the Catholic faith. After all, far more brilliant and educated minds than mine have plumbed the depths of Catholic doctrine and written substantial treatises, so who am I?

Turns out, I’m people’s friend, and that’s my essential qualification. People don’t know what they don’t know until they have a friend who knows. And apparently, it appears that most Catholics and Protestants do not run in the same circles, and therefore do not get to know one another or their beliefs, nor do most people read the foundational writings of other doctrines (Ain’t nobody got time for dat). Or if they do run in the same circles, most people tend to avoid controversy and discussing their differences.

But now I find myself the sole Catholic in a wonderful new-to-me community of other Christians. These friendships have been a balm to my heart after years of loneliness and rejection, and they accept and respect who I am and my beliefs without sweeping them under the rug and ignoring our differences. I’ve loved how we’ve been able to engage on topics so openly and respectfully! The thing is, my friends and I are all part of a bigger organization that I was surprised to find does not allow Catholics in leadership. This struck me as odd for a non-denominational Christian organization that welcomes Catholic and Orthodox families as members. While I could understand a distinctly Baptist organization saying that only Baptists can lead a group, or an Anglican group only hiring Anglicans, I struggle to accept the logic of a broadly Christian group rejecting a Catholic who adheres to the core Christian tenets of the faith. With all the members having a very wide range of varying doctrinal beliefs, why draw the line at Catholics? Being a former Protestant, I know exactly where the concerns about Catholics lie, but being a former Protestant, I also know exactly where the misinformation and misunderstandings lie. So here I am on a Friday night, utterly compelled to put something out there that clears the air.

I intend to do a series of the various hang-ups with Catholicism, but I’ll start with this: It was suggested that Catholics do not have a biblical worldview. Oh boy, where to begin with that one?! I’m sure my Catholic friends in our small group Bible study would wonder what we’ve been up to if we weren’t gaining a biblical worldview from our studies! Again, as a former Protestant who learned John 3:16 at age four from my big sister, who carried my Egermeier Bible Story Book around with me everywhere for years, who attended Christian school and competed in memory verse competitions, practiced daily Bible study, had scripture quoted to me by my mom as I raced out the door to school…I know what a biblical worldview means and what it looks like, and that’s what I see in the Catholic Church. If Catholics don’t have a biblical worldview, no one does.

Here’s why:

First off, the Bible was canonized over a series of councils beginning in 325 A.D. and culminating in the Council of Rome in 382 A.D. under Pope Demasus during the reign of Constantine I, which means that the Church had practiced the Christian faith without a Bible for over 300 years. Yes, there were the Gospels, and there were many letters written by apostles and pastors, but nothing was definitively settled as the “divinely inspired Word of God” until 382. Until then, Christians relied on Apostolic Tradition, trusting God that He was divinely guiding the apostles, bishops and priests before there was a completed Bible. And what did these divinely inspired people do? They compiled a Bible, voting on which letters were significant enough to be called “Scripture” and which were not. So not only did the Church come before the Bible and functioned quite effectively without one for those 350 years, but by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, it recognized the need for the Bible and gave us one. The Church then continued to preserve, translate, copy, and teach the Bible from that point to this day.

Second of all, once the Catholic Church gave us the Bible, it protected the integrity of the complete text, which is why Catholics today have the same 73 book canon that Christians had from 382 A.D. But in the 1500s, Martin Luther deleted 7 Old Testament books, attempted to eliminate James, and added his own words to the book of Romans. Luther may have had some legitimate critiques of the Church during his era, but that is beside the point for this discussion. It seems ironic that the originator of the idea of “Sola Scriptura” took it upon himself to alter Holy Scripture sola himself. Catholics have claim to almost 2,000 years of the same Word of God as compiled by a series of councils over the course of 60 years by many bishops. Protestants, who prize God’s Word above all, have a 500 year old Bible that has been edited and altered by a single individual.

Third of all, the Catholic Church has combed over every word of Scripture in order to interpret it properly. This is where I could diverge onto the parallel subject of Church authority in interpretation, but I’ll try to stick as closely as I can to the topic of “biblical worldview” in this post. The Catholic Church has stood faithful to biblical doctrine for 2,000 years. While various Christian denominations have changed with the times, altering their stances on divorce, homosexuality, abortion, etc., Catholicism has adhered steadfastly to biblical teaching, holding the line so that the Christian faith is not watered down regardless of cultural shifts. A “biblical worldview” means believing in a loving Creator Triune God who made a good world, Man willfully sinning and being separated from God, God promising a Savior that would reunite Himself to Man, that Savior coming in the form of Jesus who was fully God and fully Man miraculously born of a virgin, sacrificing Himself on the cross out of great love, rising again in glory, offering salvation to all who accept the gift by grace through faith so that we may live lives of holiness by the power of the Holy Spirit, free from sin to do good works and redeem a lost world, and be welcomed to Heaven as we await the second coming of Christ. The Nicene Creed says it more beautifully, but this is a biblical worldview. This is everything the Bible and life are about. Additionally, a biblical worldview upholds the sanctity of life, views every individual with love, acknowledges the sins listed in the Bible as sin, looks to the example of Jesus in every area of life, compassionately meets the needs of the afflicted, and never caves to hopelessness, hate, or hedonism. This is the Catholic worldview because it is a biblical one.

Fourth, Scripture plays a central role in Catholic worship. There are two distinct sections of the Mass: The Liturgy of the Word, and The Liturgy of the Eucharist. No one who’s paying attention could sit through The Liturgy of the Word and claim that Catholics do not have a biblical worldview. We do four readings at every single Mass: one from the Old Testament, a Psalm, the New Testament (Acts – Revelation), and another from the Holy Gospels. Every Mass. Four readings. I didn’t do that much scripture reading in my biblical survey classes in college! At Mass, we read through the entirety of the Bible in a 3-year cycle, then the priest gives a simple sermon focusing on the message of the gospel. He frequently closes with, “Go in peace, glorifying the Lord with your lives,” a biblical commission if there ever was one.

And finally, Catholic Bible study groups are growing and flourishing everywhere. We left ours in Oklahoma City only to jump right into another one here in Spokane where we studied the book of Acts together. My intercessory prayer group always opens with a Bible reading. And the 4th through 6th graders that I teach on Sunday mornings all received their own Bibles from the church, and along with reading and discussing the scriptures, we are memorizing a scripture a week. Admittedly, personal Bible study for Catholics is a fairly new thing, and by new, I mean the 1950s when the Second Vatican Council took place and a lot of changes occurred that brought about a spiritual renewal. It doesn’t mean that Catholics didn’t have a biblical worldview before that, but rather that personal in-depth study is a more recent addition. But I would think that 80 years might be enough for an old reputation to fade. Obviously, there are “bad Catholics” out there just like there are “bad Protestants/church-goers/so-called believers” out there – people who claim a church or a certain set of beliefs, but don’t really know, or understand, or care enough to live it out. However, those people cannot be held up as representatives of the faith.

So let’s review: The Catholic Church gave us the Bible through the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the Catholic Church has preserved the biblical text these 2,000 years without alteration despite the Reformation changes, the Catholic Church has maintained the biblical morals, values, and doctrine as defined in the Bible for 2,000 years despite cultural changes, the Catholic Church reads and preaches the Bible, and exhorts biblical living at every Mass, and Catholics study the Bible for growth in personal holiness and devotion to Jesus. While Christians – Catholic and Protestant alike – can debate all the live-long day the various interpretations of Scripture or the minutiae of traditions, it is only in absolute ignorance that anyone could claim that a genuine Catholic does not, at the very least, have a biblical worldview. Let us have that preposterous notion put to bed once and for all.

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Chapter 12 – Physics, The Eucharist, And As Nerdy As It Gets

So I want to go ahead and address the whole, “So do you seriously believe that the bread and wine actually turn into the body and blood of Christ?” question.  Yeah, I do.  It wasn’t easy, lemme tell ya.  A lot of my hang-up was the arrogance of the Catholic Church saying that it only happened in THEIR church (well, and the Orthodox Church), and therefore, I hadn’t really ever received a “real” communion in my whole life.  How insulting!  But it was also grasping the extent to which Catholics believe in the transubstantiation of the elements.  I’ve always believed the bread and the wine REPRESENTED the body and blood of Christ, but jumping from that to they ARE NOW the body and blood of Christ isn’t a single leap.  It’s like there’s several steps in between.  I’m not quite sure how to explain it, but it’s recognizing that the elements are more than representatives, and yet, still not believing they’re the actual thing.  I hung out in the in-between for a long time.

When Lukus was talking to one of his brothers about our confirmation that was coming up, he explained that the biggest significance was going to be that we could partake in the Eucharist for the first time.  We got to talking about what that meant, about the priest consecrating the bread and wine, and at that moment, the elements become the flesh of Christ.  His brother responded that that sounded really hocus-pocus-y.  Which I totally understand.  I was there too.  But when you start to realize how many insanely weird things Jesus did (spitting in mud and sticking it in a guy’s eye to heal his blindness, sending a swarm of demons into a herd of pigs), it ALL sounds pretty hocus-pocus-y if you’re hearing it for the first time.  It’s just that there are some miracles we’re used to and comfortable with, and some, well, they creep us out.

I’m not going to go into a litany of logical, scriptural, or historical reasons as to why the Eucharist is what the Catholic Church claims it to be – there are plenty of blogs, books, lectures and podcasts dedicated to that one subject by far better equipped and knowledgeable people than I.  My intent is to share my own experience, and how I came to process the concept.

First of all, because the Church preceded Scripture, compiled Scripture into the book we have today, and for 400 years before that, practiced and interpreted Scripture, I’ve come to place a pretty heavy weight on what historical traditions and Church practices there were alongside Scripture.  So if for 400 years, the early Christians believed that the bread and wine were ACTUALLY the body and blood of Christ, I have to take that into account.  Lukus flooded me with writings from early Church fathers who wrote very specifically on the subject.  So that was probably Phase 1 of recognizing more than just a representation going on.

Phase 2 had me pondering what communion was really even for.  It always seemed so abstract in the Protestant Church, like it was partly a simple meal of mutual fellowship, and, well, I don’t really know what else.  It was supposed to have an element of transformative or healing power, but that was all kind of up to your faith and how earnestly you received it.  It was kind of up to me about whether I was receiving just bread and wine (or more commonly, grape juice), or if by my faith it somehow was something more.  It was a practice that I’d always enjoyed in church, but it was all so ambiguous – something we did just because disciples of Jesus did this thing.

I felt like there had to be more to it than that.  God’s ways are always deeper and richer than what they appear to be on the surface.  So I prayed about it.

Then God got all science-y on me.  Several years ago, I had done a personal study on the book of Genesis.  If you compare the first verses of John 1 to the first verses of Genesis 1, you’ll see that there are some interesting similarities.  In fact, don’t read Genesis 1 out of the context of John 1, because it’s so much more awesome to read together.  John 1 establishes that Jesus, before He became flesh, was in the beginning with God in the form of “the Word”.  Then God says (through the power of His WORD) “Let there be light.”  John 1 then goes on to describe the incarnate Jesus as “the Light which was the life of men.”  Are you with me?  So Jesus was in the beginning as “the Word”, then God said, “Let there be light” and Jesus was that light.  This is only accentuated by the fact that God had not yet created the sun.  I looked up what the ancient word “light” meant in that verse, and what God actually said was, “Let there be energy and life.”  Brilliant!  So I got carried away, and started to do some self-study about the science of light.  Yeah, I’m a nerd.  A cute nerd, at least.

Obviously, light is a form of energy, and what are we taught in junior year physics about energy?  The Law of the Conservation of Energy (I had a really great physics teacher who used puppets to teach 17 year olds.  Best science class ever!): energy cannot be naturally created or destroyed; it can only be changed from one form into another.  What the heck does this have to do with the Eucharist?!  I’m getting there.

So Christ is the Light, the Energy and Life of the universe, literally the One in whom all things are held together (Colossians 1:17).  But energy is constantly being transferred from one thing to another – it never stays put for long.  And did you know, that the more light something absorbs, the more energized it becomes?  So here we have Christ as THE energy, constantly transferring Himself throughout creation in various ways, but His primary intent is to energize us, and the more we absorb who He is, the more energized we become, and the more we share in the works produced by that energy!

When I began to truly recognize that Christ is literally, atomically holding together my bed, my glass bowl, my body, my piece of toast, I began to see that He was surely capable of invigorating ordinary bread and wine with a greater voltage of Himself so that it actually becomes His body and His blood.  And not only that, but that extra stored energy encased in the Eucharist is energy for us to absorb to become more like Him!  Bread is already naturally energy for the body, but through the power of Christ, it becomes energy for the spirit.

For the first time ever, science found a use in my life.  I began to recognize my desperate need for energy in my life; energy to do what’s right, energy to pursue God, energy to do more than survive each day.  And I no longer wanted just ordinary bread and grape juice and their 47 calories worth of energy.  I wanted the power of Christ in my life in a new way.

Maybe the Catholic Church doesn’t go all Mr. Veri (my high school physics teacher) on the Eucharist, but it does have a richer, deeper understanding of what the Eucharist is, what it’s for, and it’s amazing power.  The Catholic Church understands that, just like Christ multiplied the loaves and fishes to be more than enough to feed the crowds, He has more importantly supplied an abundance of Himself, so that, we too, can partake of His divine nature, and be energized with His very life.

I realize that no serious scholar is probably ever going to make this same argument for the transubstantiation, and no serious scientist would accept my argument as any kind of “proof”.  But it’s what God used to speak to me, to help ME wrap my little head around this elusive concept when I couldn’t just take it on faith.  And even though my first experience with the Eucharist was a bit underwhelming, let me just say that I did have an unnatural shot of energy on my second go around.  This last Sunday, I barely made it to church.  I felt miserable, exhausted, and borderline sick.  Throughout the entire Mass, I just wanted to lie down in my pew and go to sleep.  But in the few steps between partaking of the Body and the Blood, and returning to my seat, I felt completely and totally reinvigorated.  It kinda startled me.  But there it was – pure, raw Energy…and it didn’t come from mere bread.

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Chapter 11 – Peanut Butter Eucharist

The wedding day has finally come.  The bride has spent months planning her special day, from place cards to her vows, and everything is going exactly as planned.  The event is perfect, the minister says, “Husband and wife”, and the happy couple takes off on their honeymoon.  But the next morning…the next morning the bride wakes up, the biggest event in her life now over, she rolls over to see her snoring husband with bad morning breath and thinks, “What have I done, and what the hell do I do now?”

Which is exactly how I felt immediately following our confirmation.  Holy Week had been full of wonderful experiences – getting my feet washed, kissing the Cross, all those “little gifts” I’d received from God.  And while confirmation was extraordinarily long (3 hours long), it still felt like a happy wedding day of sorts – kind of our marriage to the Church, so to speak.  We got to see our friends get baptized (we’d already been baptized as kids, and any baptism done “in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit” is considered valid), we were anointed with oil and prayed over, and then the biggest moment of all came: we got to receive the Eucharist for the first time.

I had really struggled with the idea of the Eucharist being THE body and blood of Christ (an issue I’ll address at some point), but I did eventually come to hope and believe in it.  But hoping in something doesn’t mean you automatically connect with it.  I was hoping that I would find some sense of connection in receiving the Eucharist – some sort of internal, defining moment that brought these last four years to their ultimate climax, something that FINALLY made me FEEL Catholic for real.

But then that little wafer of Christ’s body got stuck on the roof of my mouth, and as I approached the blood, I felt like a dog that had just been given a slice of bread with peanut butter smeared on it.  There’s nothing more pitiable than a dog with a slice of peanut butter bread stuck to the roof of it’s mouth – well, except maybe a girl who’s got Christ’s body causing her to choke so that she has to try to gracefully gulp down a big enough swig of the blood to wash it down.  So the closest sense of connection I got to the Eucharist that night was the near-need for the heimlich maneuver.  The experience was disappointingly underwhelming.

Confirmation and after-photos went until about midnight on Easter vigil, so on Sunday morning, I was still fast asleep when Easter Mass began at 10 am.  But I couldn’t imagine not going to church at all on Easter, so I rushed over to a later service at our old church – my beloved, Protestant, former church home.  I saw all my old friends, they played some great songs…and there I was, like a day-old bride, wondering what on earth I’d done.  I missed this place!

I sank low the following week.  I didn’t go to Mass the next Sunday either.  I’ve spent the last 11 days wondering what I’ve gotten myself into, and if my relationship with God will ever be the same again.  Thankfully, our RCIA group is still meeting on Tuesday nights (yep, I’m now blogging in real-time people), and I decided to talk with our director afterwards.

I explained to him how I’ve struggled with my recent decision, how I still wasn’t connecting, how I didn’t know if I could really be Catholic.  We talked for a few moments, but the thing that hit me in talking with him was that he didn’t feel the need to fix me, or try to figure out what the problem was, and he wasn’t unnerved by my newfound doubts.  Catholics aren’t unsettled by struggle.  I have a feeling that this is a thing I’m going to have to learn over and over again in order to rid myself of my Protestant mindset:  embrace the struggle.

What I think is one of the greatest strengths of Protestants over Catholics is that they’re never satisfied.  They want MORE of Jesus, they want MORE outpouring of the Holy Spirit, they want to reach MORE souls – Protestants are spiritually ambitious, whereas Catholics are a lot more laid-back.  This laid-back spirituality has unnerved me and left me frustrated in joining the Church.  How could people NOT want to experience more of the Holy Spirit, and miracles, and people coming to Jesus?  How could Catholics be so passive?  And yet, this strength of Protestants is also their weakness, because when “more” isn’t happening, Protestants tend to interpret that there’s something wrong, there’s somewhere where they’re missing God.  If one is truly walking with the Lord, then there should be nearly constant growth in one’s life, and that person should be hearing from God each day.  If not, then prayer and fasting and a thorough purging of sin and all distractions must take place.  At least, that’s been my experience.

So here I am, a fresh-pressed Catholic with still an ambitious Protestant mindset, getting extremely discouraged and depressed that perhaps I took a wrong turn in my faith because I got peanut butter bread instead of a blissful honeymoon moment with Christ.  Embrace the struggle?  What does that even MEAN?!

I’ll tell you what it means.  It means a whole heck of a lotta peace.  It means one foot in front of the other towards a lifetime  of holiness over a daily marathon in pursuit of either signs and wonders…or severe disappointment.  It means “letting grace have its perfect work so that you may be perfect and complete, not lacking in any good thing.”  It means not trying to coerce God into constantly having to speak and move and offer little gifts, and learning to enjoy the comfort that can be in the silence.  Lord, I never want to become a passive Catholic!….but maybe I can learn to be a less needy and demanding one?  Maybe I can learn to embrace the struggle.  I mean, a dog always struggles with peanut butter bread, but have you ever seen one turn it down because it’s too difficult?  I didn’t think so.

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Chapter 10 – Habeo Papa

It’s not surprising that after the floating Lady episode, my internal turbulence has settled into a nice coasting.  I went to my first confession, and while it didn’t feel life-altering, it certainly wasn’t soul-crushing.  I still don’t know our priest very well, but he’s a relaxed and gracious person who made the confession experience pretty easy, and I’m really glad to have it off my chest the time that I stole my friend’s Barbie’s shoe when I was six.

The next Mass we attend, they play one of my favorite hymns (well, it has different words, but the melody is at least familiar, and it’s my favorite melody), and I’m compelled to actually lift my hands during worship.  Nothing too exciting – like I said, a nice coasting.

Then, one day, in spite of having a bunch of kids in my house that needed tending to, I find myself glued to the television after Lukus has just texted me that white smoke has been released from the Vatican, and there’s finally a Latin phrase that I’m familiar with: “Habemus Papam! We have a pope!”  I’ve known very little about Pope Benedict.  Everyone’s loved him, but personally, I just couldn’t find that connection with him.  Even when I was a complete NON-Catholic, I, like many other non-Catholics, still loved Pope John Paul II.  When he died, I felt compelled to seek out a Catholic book store to buy a candle and light it for him – even though Lukus thought I was weird, and I had no idea why Catholics lit candles for dead people.  It just seemed the thing to do.  And during this process, while I trusted that Benedict was a great pope, I just didn’t have the same natural affection for him that I did for John Paul.  I was kind of excited that we would be getting someone new upon our entrance into the Church.

I know the pope thing is a difficult one for Protestants to get over – I was the same way.  I viewed him as someone living like a king, giving orders that the faithful had to obey without ever criticizing.  But I’ve since learned that’s not the case.  The thing is, Catholics understand that the Holy Spirit can still operate through imperfect people, and while the pope is supposed to be a righteous man, the trust is still in God to protect His Church through flawed vessels.  And the pope can be wrong on a lot of things – which I never knew Catholics believed – but it’s when he’s speaking on dogma and doctrine that Catholics believe he’s speaking with the authority of the Holy Spirit.  I’ve also known a lot of Protestants who think that Catholics worship the pope – which maybe some do, but they’d be in error to do so.  The things is, Catholics believe in giving honor to whom honor is due, like children honoring their parents, or honoring the elderly – and the pope is considered an elder and a spiritual father.  And yet, so many Protestants are more willing to honor government leaders that they don’t like or don’t agree with because “it’s the office they respect” before they’re willing to honor spiritual leaders.  That seems a little flip-flopped to me.  It also doesn’t seem fitting that there would be authority structures set up in every other area of life – the family, business, judicially – and yet there be no authority in the Church.  Rejection of proper authority in Jesus’ Church has left us splintered and crippled.

So after much thought and consideration, I came to understand the role of the pope, and I was excited to experience the process of getting a new pope at the very beginning of our journey.  So I watched the t.v. with great anticipation.  I had no idea who Cardinal Bergoglio was when he emerged out onto the balcony.  Upon first impression, he was really underwhelming.  He wasn’t smiling, he didn’t offer up any deep words of wisdom, and his prayer was very simple.  But that underwhelmed feeling quickly gave way to immense joy and excitement as I began to research and hear what kind of man this was.  I was already beginning to feel like he was this wonderful, warm, generous grandpa, full of fun stories, and always available.  I began to think, “How wonderful and blessed we are that we Catholics get to have an earthly father who loves us and looks after us and shows us what our heavenly Father is like toward us!”

We live in a world of broken families, a fatherless generation, a generation that doesn’t understand what honoring your parents even means.  Our earthly fathers have failed us in so many ways, leaving a blank or ugly canvas of what God looks like to us.  But just like God gave the Israelites Moses, then Joshua, then Samuel, to be fathers to a nation in their time, God has given us this earthly father to point back to Himself.  The pope isn’t divine, he’s not perfect, I don’t have to blindly agree with everything he says or does.  But when our personal experience has destroyed the concept of what a father means, we have this loving, patient, forgiving, wise man who can be that spiritual foster-father, showing us what God is truly like.

I already love this pope.  I know I will never meet him, that he doesn’t know my name, but it’s not necessary.  What I learned from those seminarians in Rome, and what it taught me about the saints applies to the pope as well.  We are a family, and space and time don’t matter.  Even knowing each other personally doesn’t matter.  Our spirits know one another through THE Spirit.  The pope knows me.  He doesn’t know my name, but his spirit knows my spirit because we are one in the Spirit of God.  And like all good fathers and grandfathers should do, he inspires me to pursue God, to pursue holiness, to pursue generosity, and love.  Habeo Papa – I have a pope.

Pope Francis was inaugurated on St. Joseph’s feast day – which is exactly four years to the day that we met those seminarians in Rome.  God’s providence is astounding, and I can’t think of a better time to become Catholic.

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Chapter 9 – The Theology of Fun

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.

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