Why Do I Remain A Catholic?

A few months ago, Elizabeth Scalia (aka the Anchoress) challenged fellow bloggers to “tell the world why you are remaining a Catholic in an era where doing so seems not only counter-cultural, but also counter-intuitive and even, perhaps, a bit risky.”[1]  Although a little late to the game, I hereby take up her challenge.

          In the beginning of Fiddler on the Roof, Tevye philosophizes that every one of us, in our own way, is a fiddler on the roof – trying to scratch out a simple tune without breaking our necks.  The key, he tells us, is to keep our balance.  Why do I remain a Catholic?  To keep my balance.  How does Catholicism keep me balanced?  I can explain that in one word – Tradition!

If I had to define tradition in my own words, I’d say that tradition consists of significant practices and beliefs that are passed on to us by our ancestors so we can live them in the present and share them with our descendants.  Traditions are the special things in life that are so important that our ancestors saw fit to share them with us so we can appreciate them and pass them along to future generations.  I love traditions.  Whether it’s baking date nut bread for Christmas (thank you Aunt Etta) or Easter Pizza at Easter (thank you Dad and Aunt Mary), buying a Christmas ornament at each place we vacation, or singing the Topnotcher song, traditions make my past a present that I can give to my daughters for them to share with their children.  On the seesaw of life, traditions balance my present with my past and my future.

    

Catholicism is filled with traditions, so much so that the Church teaches that Apostolic Tradition (along with Sacred Scripture and the Magisterium of the Church) is one of the means by which Divine Revelation is transmitted to us.[2]  Through oral tradition, Jews and Christians passed on the stories that their ancestors understood to be divinely inspired.  After they were written down, they were later codified into what we know as the Bible, relying, in part, on Tradition as a way to determine which books should be included.  Catholic liturgies, which have been passed down to us from the earliest days of the Church, are based on the Jewish traditions of prayer and synagogue worship complete with readings from Sacred Scripture and the breaking of bread.  Catholic Tradition has been preserved and passed on to us from the time of Christ through Apostolic succession – the handing on of preaching, teaching and governance from the Apostles to their successors the bishops through the laying on of hands.[3]  It gives me a tremendous sense of continuity, history and communion to know that my ordination at the hands of Bishop Bootkoski can be traced back through Apostolic succession to Cardinals McCarrick, Cooke and Spellman, to Popes Pius XII, Benedict XV, St. Pius X and Clement XIII, and ultimately back to an Apostle.

     

So how does Catholic Tradition keep me balanced?  Here are a few examples:

-          Catholicism requires that I rely on both faith and reason – “the two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of the truth”[4] – to understand God and the wonderful world he created; 

-          Catholic worship is the same worldwide.  I’ve attended Mass on almost every continent, always knowing exactly where we were and what was coming next, no matter what language was spoken;   

-          Catholic Tradition engages all of my senses to motivate me to engage with my neighbors from every walk of life: 

We see beautiful icons and images in Church that inspire us to see the face of God in our fellow man; we hear the tolling of bells that compel us to hear the cry of the poor; we anoint ourselves with holy water and the sign of the cross so that we can touch our neighbor with the sign of peace; we taste the elements of bread and wine as we receive our Lord in Holy Communion to strengthen us for our mission to bring food to the hungry and drink to the thirsty; and we smell the fragrant aroma of incense that lifts our prayers for all who suffer in squalor and stench;[5]

-          Catholic Tradition connects me with my family, past, present and future – with my mother, my grandparents, my great grandparents and ancestors untold, all of whom knelt in the pews, prayed the prayers and received our Lord in Communion, just like I do with my daughters today and perhaps will do with my grandchildren in the future.

           The living transmission of the faith that we call Tradition is accomplished in the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of counsel, wisdom, fortitude, knowledge, piety, understanding and fear of the Lord.  Armed with these gifts and anchored in Tradition, we have all we need to live as God intended us to live – loving God, loving our neighbor and eternally loved.  Catholic Tradition has given me strength, comfort and balance, especially in tough times.  Without Catholic Tradition, I’d be “as shaky as a fiddler on the roof.”  That’s why I remain a Catholic.

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[1] Elizabeth Scalia, Dear Catholic World: Why Do You Remain A Catholic? (June 3, 2015), http://www.patheos.com/blogs/theanchoress.

[2] Catechism of the Catholic Church at 75.

[3] Catechism of the Catholic Church at 77.

[4] John Paul II, Fides et Ratio (Vatican City, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1998)

[5] Michael A. Meyer, It Just Makes Sense (August 9, 2015), www.ramblingsfromtheambo.blogspot.com.  

We Can Only Hope

I love to fish, which is pretty surprising since I never catch any fish.  By never, I mean never – the never-ever kind of never.  As a young boy, I fished off a dock at Lake Wallenpaupack with my grandfather’s fishing gear and got pretty good at landing sunnies.  In my teens, I occasionally trolled the wild waters of Verona Park Lake, where ginormous carp were the catch of almost any day.  Nowadays, I spend as much time as I can angling the icy rivers and streams that cascade down and around the Catskill Mountains and the deep-water reservoirs they feed.  They’re loaded with rainbow trout, brown trout and large and small mouth bass, or so I hear.  I’ve been fishing there for five years and haven’t caught a single fish.  It seems that somewhere between my teens and my forties, I lost my fishing finesse.  That is, until last week, when I hauled in eight – that’s right, count ‘em – eight mackerel in one day off the craggy shores of Spruce Point, Maine.  Perhaps my luck is changing.  We can only hope.

                Hope is an interesting emotion.  Google defines hope as “a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen.”  I like this definition because it emphasizes that hope consists of both expectation and desire.  When we hope, we don’t just want something to happen; we expect it to happen, too.  Hope is an optimistic wish for future happiness that’s grounded in our steadfast belief that our wish will come true.  Hope carries us through disappointments and gives us the strength to persevere until we achieve our desired goal.  If “hope” doesn’t sum up my fishing career, I don’t know what does.

                This bipartite, secular definition of hope is useful in understanding the religious sense of the word as well.  For Catholics, hope is a theological virtue – a habitual disposition to do good that’s infused in the soul by God.[1]   While we usually think of virtues as good habits that we acquire through perseverance – habits we practice to make perfect – we can’t obtain the theological virtues (faith, hope and love) on our own.  They’re given to us by God.   The theological virtues are written on our hearts by God to animate our moral lives so we can merit eternal life.[2]  So it is with hope.  “Hope is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness.”[3]  Hope opens our hearts to the expectation of eternal blessing.[4]  Through the virtue of hope, we not only desire eternal happiness with God; we expect it.

                It should be no surprise, then, that people who live in hope of eternal life generally are happier and healthier than their areligious counterparts: they’re resilient; they overcome illness and setbacks quicker; and they’re calmer and more stable when adversity strikes.  I’ve seen it with my own eyes and experienced it for myself.  It’s no wonder that the anchor is the symbol of hope.  While the seas of life rise and fall around us, hope anchors us with the sure expectation that eternally fair skies and calm seas are always around the bend.

                A few weeks back, my youngest daughter asked me why I keep fishing when I never catch any fish.  I explained to her that fishing is an exercise of hope; if I didn’t go fishing with the desire and expectation that I would catch a fish, it would be pointless.  Now she knows that if I had given up on fishing during those dry years, I wouldn’t have had the thrill of catching eight mackerel last week.  It’s the same with life.  Without hope, life would be pointless.  Tremendous kindness, generosity and love run deep.  So as we cast our lines into the murky waters of life, we should always expect and desire an abundant catch of the wonderful things this life and the next have to offer.  We can only hope.

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[1] See Catechism of the Catholic Church at 1803.

[2] Id. at 1813.

[3] Id.at 1817.

[4] Id. at 1818.

My Vocation Story

My pastor asked us to write down our vocations story to publish on the parish website.  Here's what I came up with.

June 12, 2010

               If you had asked me 15 years ago what I would be doing today, I would have told you that I would be running for President.  I became interested in politics in my early teens, and my family and friends often told me that I would make a good politician.  I never asked which characteristics of mine led them to that conclusion, and probably would rather not know.  I moved to Washington, DC for college and law school and focused my education and career on political science and public and private international law.  I had every intention of running for Congress and later for the Presidency. 

                My political aspirations began to unravel with two realizations.  As a new father, I realized that it would be unfair to subject a child to the indiscriminate mudslinging so often associated with politics.  With little consternation, I decided to postpone my political career until our children were grown.  The second realization was much more challenging.  A few years later, I realized that I really was not cut out to be a politician.  I am not very thick-skinned; I never have been.  I take all criticism to heart, and often brood over it for a long time.  Simply put, I was not tough enough for a political career.  I was confronted by my own limitations, and it devastated me.  Around the same time, we decided to move to New Jersey to be closer to family, so I was physically removed from the environment that was feeding my political aspirations.  I felt a calling to public service, and no longer had a plan to fulfill that calling.  I felt useless. 

                 We moved to Clinton Township in 2002 and become parishioners at Immaculate Conception Church.  ICC was the first parish I belonged to that was assigned a deacon, so it was my first opportunity to see a deacon (Deacon Bill Bauer) in action on a regular basis.  As I became more familiar with the role of the deacon, I began to think that the personal characteristics that led me to politics might also serve well in the diaconate:  I love learning; I love ritual; I love teaching; I love being with people; and, I will admit, I love talking.  I read every book I could find on the diaconate and began talking with priests, deacons and my spiritual director about the possibility of becoming a deacon.  I had considered the priesthood as a child and later in college, so my interest in the diaconate did not surprise me, but it definitely surprised my wife, my parents, my brother and sisters and my friends.  Once I explained why I thought I was called to the diaconate (especially the love of talking), they all accepted my calling as I heard it and were very supportive. 

                There was no one moment when I knew for sure that I would be a deacon (until the Bishop laid his hands on my head at ordination), but there were several confirming moments along the way – moments of clarity and reassurance.  One such moment happened on Good Friday.  As the clergy prostrated themselves before the altar at the beginning of the liturgy, I had a profound sense that I belonged there with them.  A second confirming moment happened when I overheard my wife explaining to someone on the phone why I would be a good deacon.  It was clear to me then that Jessica really understood and that I had her support.  A third confirming moment happened when I was really struggling with whether I would enter diaconate formation.  I was walking alone on the driveway of the Church near the cemetery, questioning what to do.  I turned toward the cemetery and said aloud, “What will people say about me when I’m buried here.”  Without a moment’s hesitation, the answer came to me:  “They will say that he baptized us, he married us and he buried us.” 

                If you had told me 15 years ago that I would be a deacon today, I would have asked you what a deacon was.  I thank God for leading me to the diaconate and for my family and friends who have supported me in this ministry.  My portrait may never hang in the White House, but I am perfectly happy to be remembered simply as a husband and father and as the deacon who “baptized us, married us and buried us.”

It Just Makes Sense

          In the early 1950s, Dr. Donald Hebb, a professor of psychology at Montreal’s McGill University, studied the effects of sensory deprivation on the human condition.  With a $10,000 grant in hand, Dr. Hebb offered male graduate students $20 a day to live in small, bare chambers containing little more than a bed.  They wore tubes on their arms and gloves on their hands to limit their sense of touch; a U-shaped pillow covered their ears to block out sound.  Dr. Hebb planned to observe his subjects for six weeks.  None lasted more than a few days.[1]  It turns out that our senses play an important role in our physical and mental well-being.  So it just makes sense that our senses play a critical role in our spiritual well-being as well.  Today’s readings prove it. 

          Did you notice that today’s readings invoke each of the five senses?  In our first reading, Elijah is revived from the brink of death by the touch of an angel who gives him food for his journey to Mount Horeb to meet God.  Our psalm invites us to “taste and see the goodness of the Lord” and ensures us that the lowly will hear him and be glad.  In his letter to the Ephesians, Saint Paul encourages us to be like Christ, a fragrant aroma pleasing to God.  And in our Gospel passage, Jesus teaches us that he himself, his very flesh that we can see and hear and touch and smell and taste, is the bread for the life of the world.  The invocation of the senses in Scripture calls to mind “the powerful immediacy of experiencing God’s beneficence.”[2]  God’s goodness is visible, audible, tangible, tasteable and olfactible (I had to look that one up – smellable just didn’t sound right).

          Scripture is filled with passages that invoke the senses because God communicates with us through every means possible.  The five senses serve as “the chief inlets of the Soul,”[3] gateways through which we connect physical realities with spiritual realities.  The senses offer us physical, mental and spiritual stimulation that help us experience the fullness of our humanity.  Through the senses we delight in God’s creation.  The senses help us discern God’s loving presence in our lives and in the world around us.  Our senses are the portals through which we receive the good things that God offers us.  They help us make sense of the interplay between the human and the divine so we can be in a loving relationship with our God.

          It should be no surprise, then, that Catholicism is a religion of the senses, the smells and the bells, if you will.  Just think about it, as Christians we believe that the world was created through God’s Word and that . . . [t]his same Word that holds the Father and Creation in communion has become flesh, visible, audible, and tangible in Jesus.”[4]  We believe in the One who gave sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, who touched the leper, fed the multitudes and washed the smelly feet of his followers.  Catholicism involves all five senses because Jesus’ life and ministry involved all five senses.  We see beautiful icons and images in Church that inspire us to see the face of God in our fellow man; we hear the tolling of bells that compels us to hear the cry of the poor; we anoint ourselves with holy water and the sign of the cross so that we can touch our neighbor with the sign of peace; we taste the elements of bread and wine as we receive our Lord in Holy Communion to strengthen us for our mission to bring food to the hungry and drink to the thirsty; we smell the fragrant aroma of incense that lifts our prayers for all who suffer in squalor and stench.  Ours is a living, breathing, active faith that involves our bodies, our minds, our souls and all five senses. 

          It just makes sense that we should rely on our senses to find God’s loving presence in our lives.  God is present in every sight, sound, touch, taste and smell around us.  We see God’s grandeur in the gnarly mountain tops capped with snow.  We hear God’s voice in the persistent hum of cicadas on a hot August day.  We touch God’s face as we caress the time-honored hands of our parents and grandparents.  We taste God’s goodness in a favorite meal prepared just for us by a loved one.  We smell God’s enigmatic Spirit in the briny mist of the Jersey shore. 

Our humanity breaks down when we deny the reality of God’s presence in every aspect of our lives.  That’s why some of the wealthiest, most famous and accomplished people in our society are so miserable.  They have every physical stimulus available to them, but they suffer from spiritual deprivation because they refuse to taste and see and hear and touch and smell God’s loving presence in their lives.  When we tune our senses to God, we find him, and we live as God intended us to live – knowing, sensing with every fiber of our being that we are fully alive and fully loved in communion with God forever.

          After just a few days of isolation from nearly all sensory stimulation, Dr. Hebb’s volunteers couldn’t think clearly about anything for any length of time.  They showed signs of cognitive impairment and “experienced extreme restlessness, childish emotional responses and vivid hallucinations.”[5]  After just a few days of sensory deprivation, Dr. Hebb’s subjects were mentally and emotionally broken.  Well, it doesn’t take a $10,000 grant to figure out that the same happens with our souls.  When we deprive ourselves of God’s presence in our lives, we become restless, dissatisfied, hopeless, selfish, and we lose perspective on right and wrong.  We become spiritually broken.  To be mentally, physically and spiritually healthy, we need to feed our minds, our bodies and our souls.  We need to taste and see and hear and touch and smell all of the good things God offers us.  It just makes sense.

Readings:  1 Kings 19: 4-8; Psalm 34; Ephesians 4: 30-5: 2; John 6: 41-51

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[1] Michael Mechanic, “What Extreme Isolation Does to Your Mind,” Mother Jones (October 18, 2012) at 1-2, http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/10/donald-o-hebb-effects-extreme-isolation.

[2] Robert Alter, The Book of Psalms (New York, W.W. Norton & Company, 2007) at 118.

[3] William Blake, “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” (1790).

[4] John Shea, Eating With the Bridegroom:  The Spiritual Wisdom of the Gospels for Christian Preachers and Teachers, Mark Year B (Collegeville, Liturgical Press, 2005) at 203.

[5] Mechanic at 3.