Crazy Catholic Question #21: Life to the Full

Why is “community building” stressed so much in our faith?  I think my spiritual life is a very intimate, private thing between me and God.

One morning a few years back on my way to work, I was on the service drive of I-75 because there was a mess of construction and traffic on the expressway.  I was passing through a very over developed area; there wasn’t a park or even a significant bunch of trees around within miles – it was all strip malls and asphalt.

While painfully creeping in traffic I noticed out of my passenger window , standing elegantly, not even 20 feet from the street, next to an over-filled dumpster in the parking lot of a convenience store was this beautiful deer, breathing in the fumes from all the traffic and eating the little tuffs of dusty grass that were struggling to break through the cracks in the concrete.

The vision of this deer arrested me.  I did a little double-take because it was so out of place.  I thought to myself, ‘I bet that deer doesn’t have long to live before she runs into traffic or simply gets sick from the limited, dirty food and stress she is enduring due to living in such an urban area.’  The deer was surviving, but not living the life for which she was created.  She was not living the optimal life of a deer.  Not living as God intended.

So it is I think sometimes with us.  We are not living optimally as human beings.  We are surviving but not living as we were designed to live.  And, like that deer, we are relatively unaware of how deprived we really are;  we don’t really see how our choices and culture sometimes rob us of the rich life that God has intended for each of us.

In the book Bowling Alone, author Robert Putnam states that social bonds are by far the most powerful predictor of life satisfaction and a surprising predictor of personal health.  If you both smoke and belong to no groups, it’s a close call as to which is the riskier behavior!  He goes on to note the fact that there are more bowlers today, but fewer bowling leagues, because everybody is bowling alone. 

Putnam asserts that we are paying a heavy price for the loss of what he calls “social capital” which is the life-giving product of communal activity and sharing.  Clinically measured depression has increased ten-fold in our country over the past 50 years, and although the origins of this epidemic are not yet clear, the prime candidate is social isolation.  The loss of social capital is reflected in higher crime rates, a weakened democracy, lower educational performance, more teen pregnancies and incidents of suicide.  We live so alone today.  We have taken individualism to such an extreme, we hardly know how to define ourselves as parts of something larger any more.  So, perhaps Jesus understood our nature better than we do, knew our tendency to isolate in the face of (inevitable) conflict and therefore established as our central ritual gathering in his name each week for a meal…for reconciliation…for mutual support.  Maybe he knew that the greatest remedy for our suffering is togetherness; in other words, gathering to “BE church.”

We Catholics define “sin” as anything that distances us from God’s love and mercy and separates us from one another.  In a word, sin is alienation.  God does not indiscriminately declare ‘this and that’ as a sin in an effort to limit our freedom, to exercise control over us or test our fidelity.    Rather sin is simply what is bad for US.   Like any good parent, God wishes for us to have life to the full.  But, maybe our fierce individualism, even in our spiritual lives, is simply not good for us.  It is not the life for which we were designed.   A possibility to consider…

Crazy Catholic Question #20: Intinction

Why do Catholics drink from the chalice instead of dipping the host in the wine or using individual cups, especially this time of year when colds and flu seem to be everywhere?

Intinction (dipping the bread into the wine) IS actually practiced at some Catholic parishes, coincidently enough at the parish I worked and worshipped at for the past 16 years just before coming to CTR!   So, though I’m not a learned liturgist like Fr. Joe, if experience counts, this question is right in my wheelhouse.

Like any public meeting place, there is a very real possibility of encountering germs at church, especially during flu season, so drinking from the shared cup understandably seems a risky choice.  But studies show that intinction actually increases the risk of spreading germs.  The minute we hold the wafer in our hand it becomes full of germs, and then if we dip it - the wine becomes contaminated too.   

Hands are a much more likely source of contagion than the mouth especially among children and, trust me, lots of little germy fingertips make it into the wine in the practice of intinction!  So, it may seem counter-intuitive, but the research is pretty clear; intinction is far less sanitary then drinking directly from a common cup.

What concerned me most though about the practice of intinction is how it made visitors and new people feel, especially younger Catholics.  A remarkable number of the college students who visited our parish told me they felt like outsiders because they were confused about what to do at communion time.  And a surprising number of them also were aware and quite scandalized that this practice was not in line with our own Catholic rubrics found in the General Instruction of the Roman Missal which says, "When Communion is distributed under both species by intinction, the host is not placed in the hands of the communicants nor may the communicant receive the host and dip it into the chalice."  (really, of all the things to know?)

I’m not a big “rules and regs enforcer” kind of gal, but since so much of our Catholic identity (again, especially for younger Catholics these days…not in the 60’s…and maybe not in the future…but certainly at this time) is connected to our sacraments and rituals, making choices that stick to the norm and foster connectedness and unity by minimizing the confusion that can come from everyone “doing his or her own thing” seems to make sense and support the deeper meaning of our shared Eucharist.  The hope of all our rubrics and rites is that they may help promote a profound and valuable sense of unity.

As St. Paul says when talking about eating meat sacrificed to idols (which was apparently the hot topic “rubric” type question in the city of Corinth of his day) “Everything is lawful for me!  But not everything is beneficial. I have the right to do anything, but not everything is constructive. No one should seek their own good, but the good of others.”  Even though there is nothing inherently immoral in eating meat sacrificed to idols (or practicing intinction in our case) if it scandalizes or alienates even a few members of our community, Paul says it’s just not worth it.  

Almost all Roman Catholic liturgists today discourage Communion by intinction. The health risks increase with dipping into the cup, some people become confused and feel like outsiders when we stray from our set rubrics, and the sign value and adherence to scripture in intinction is not as full as drinking from the cup (and completely lost with individual cups).  

Fr. Joe commented though, “If Jesus had been a 20th century American we certainly would not have had the common cup!

Crazy Catholic Question #19: Failure

I pray and pray for strength and determination, but have failed at every one of my New Year’s resolutions so far…whyyyyyyy?

We live in a culture that idolizes success, holds up the “winners” in life and scorns the “losers.”   We have become skillful self-promoters dangerously adept at selling ourselves, even to the point of deceiving ourselves sometimes.  We define ourselves by our accomplishments; our ability to deliver, our perfect performance.  We have bought into the myth, sometimes unconsciously, that “success saves.” 

One of my favorite books of all time is Maria Boulding’s Gateway to Hope: An Exploration of Failure. In it, she extols the odd, counter-cultural truth that God doesn’t love us despite of our faults and failures, but rather in and through them we are being emptied, being broke open and brought into deeper intimacy with God and one another. God works in and through our failure to bring about the kingdom! Our faults force us to shed our self-sufficiency and masks of perfection and accept redemption, knowing that we have not earned it by our accomplishments. Our weakness cultivates a deeper vulnerability, compassion and acceptance towards others – the very hallmarks of a follower of Jesus. In the spiritual life, our failures are often much more valuable than our successes. Consider Jesus. He was most successful at the very moment that he experienced his deepest failure and suffering. This is the paradox that we Christians know in our bones. It is the very mystery of God that we are invited to live out…

There is something very sacred to be found in our brokenness.   Accomplishments, failures, successes, embarrassments - no matter; we are but instruments.  A story….
A water bearer in India had two large pots, each hung on one end of the pole he carried across the back of his neck. One of the pots had a crack in it, and while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water at the end of the long walk from the stream, the cracked pot arrived only half full.

The perfect pot was proud of its accomplishment and saw itself as succeeding for purpose for which it was made. But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its imperfection and miserable that it was able to accomplish only half of what it had been made to do. After two years of what it perceived as bitter failure, it spoke to the water bearer one day by the stream. “I am ashamed of myself and I want to apologize to you. For the past two years, I have been able to deliver only half my load because of this crack in my side.  Because of my flaws you have to work without getting the full value of your efforts.”

The water bearer said, “As we return to the master’s house, I want you to notice the beautiful flowers along the path.”  As they went up the hill, the old cracked pot noticed the beautiful wildflowers on the side of the path. The pot felt cheered, but at the end of the trail, again apologized for its failure.  The bearer said to the pot, “Did you notice that there were flowers only on your side of your path, but not on the other pot’s side?  That’s because I knew about your flaw and took advantage of it. I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back from the stream, you’ve watered them for me. For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate my master’s table. If you were not just the way you are, he would not have such beauty to grace his house.

Crazy Catholic Question #18: Mary

I have a friend who attends a “non-denominational” Christian Church who says that Catholics worship and pray to Mary and that this practice is in serious violation of the first commandment.  Is this true?

No other Christian tradition holds Mary in a more central role than we Roman Catholics do.  We not only have the most theological doctrines and teachings that relate to Mary, but we also have the lion’s share of festivals, prayers, and devotional practices…much more than any other denomination.  For us, devotion to the Blessed Mother is intrinsic to Christian worship.

But something that may surprise many of our Protestant brothers and sisters, and maybe even some cradle Catholics, is that although we honor and venerate Mary, we do not worship her.   We revere Mary as the Mother of Jesus, the “Theotokos,” or “God-bearer” since Mary served as the entrance way of the divine into our world, but we do not consider her another “God.”   We do not “pray TO” Mary but rather we ask Mary to pray WITH us.  We petition Mary to “pray for us” just as we would ask any other friend to pray for us.  

Catholic teaching makes clear that Mary is not considered divine and our prayers are not answered by her; they are answered by God.   However, our shared experience over the centuries has firmly established her to be a powerful ally and intercessor for our prayers.  I’m reminded of this every time someone asks my Dad to pray for a really serious and dire request and he says “Welp, looks like it’s time to bring out the Big Guns!” and he pulls out his rosary from his pocket Clint Eastwood style (what a ham).

I didn’t have a strong Marian devotion growing up.   I just didn’t “get it” and my lack of connection with Mary really made me feel like a fraudulent Catholic!  I once asked my Dad, “What’s wrong with me?  Why do I have so little interest in Mary?” and he wisely said “Daughter, you are thinking too much - God will give you snow tires when you are in the snow!”   

The “deep snow” came to me just after I had my first child and was struggling with some grim post-partum darkness and was feeling seriously unprepared for the job.   Mary’s companionship at this critical time in my life reminds me of the story of the famous theologian Edward Shillebeeckz who joined the Domincans at a very young age.  During his youthful first fervor he would get up every day at 2AM to pray with his community.  During this lovely, monastic rising in the wee hours, apart from the noise and busyness of the world, he felt incredibly close to God. 

In his enthusiasm he wrote to his father “How wonderful it feels to be praising God when all the world around me is asleep and I and my fellow seminarians are giving glory to God!”  His father wrote back that he was glad that his son appreciated his new monastic life, but he should remember that when he was an infant (for he was one of 13 children) his parents too were often up at 2AM and yes, they too were giving glory to God, although they weren’t quite singing the psalms.  The father went on to say “It is in the everydayness of life that we uncover God, even if we do not realize it at the time.”

Like us, Mary lived in this “everydayness of life” with all its joys and sorrows and as a revered member of our communion of saints she continues to journey with us in a special way and prays for us when we call for help, like any good parent does. 

Mother Teresa said "If you ever feel distressed during your day — call upon our Lady — just say this simple prayer: 'Mary, Mother of Jesus, please be a mother to me now.' I must admit — this prayer has never failed me."