Catholic Sensibility

I've been troubled for some time about how narrow the gate is to be a "good" Roman Catholic. Now, I know that Jesus too advocated a narrow gate, but I'm worried that His criteria and ours might not be exactly the same.

Thus begins Susan's good comment in the annulment post today.

As it stands, one must be a celibate religious, a celibate single person, or a non-divorced and re-married person - that is, married to one's first spouse. Furthermore, one must not be using any artificial contraceptive methods. Of course being gay is totally out. A great deal of emphasis and talk is had about these (essentially sexual) categories. Very little is heard about, say, the morality of how one makes one's living, how one treats one's employees (yes, this does include the immigrant nanny), the generosity of help to the unfortunate - categories which seemed much more important to, say, the prophets than the details of marital sexual intercourse. And once they gottcha, they sort of gottcha. I'm thinking of the couple who live next door to us, formerly practicing Catholics. Both were married before: he to his childhood sweetheart (and it just didn't work out), she to a drunk who beat her and her children. They managed to shed their respective first mistakes, and to make a solid new family. But absent an annulment (which she didn't have the patience or the stomach for) they're permanently Out of The Tribe.

This is a good point. While the great teaching figures of the Bible certainly had sexual morality on their minds from time to time, I think it's fair to say the Church stresses this point more often. In their defense, it might also be that Western Society is more sexed than it was three, two-and-a-half, or even two millennia ago. And there's no denying that the interconnection of sex and family issues is vital for the maintenance of society, not to mention its future. But who's more obsessed: the Church or society? Maybe each is the product of the other to a small degree. Now personally I'm a Good Girl here, even as to the contraceptive issue (and I've got the kids to prove it!) but it still makes me uneasy to think about what a minority I'm in, and about how most of my status is due to good luck rather than to virtue. So when my marvelous lesbian friends, my next door neighbors, or just people who aren't in an economic position to roll the reproductive dice over and over are shown the door... I sort of feel like walking out myself. The higher-ups are said to want a smaller church, and it's on its way. Small Church, getting smaller.

I'm not sure I'd attribute the "Small Church Getting Smaller" movement (SCGS) to just the higher-ups. I think there are lazy-trending monastic wannabes who've forgotten the Christian tradition of heading for the hills when one discerns the world is going to hell on the express train. If I were to meet up with a SCGS person, I'd share my atlas with them and suggest the Canadian Northwest, for some remote Appalachian valley. Not only is it rude to presume to clear the decks on the Barque, but it's downright untraditional. Heterodox, if you will.

At their core, some Catholics are just fussed over the messiness of the Church. One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic, (and some would now add Orthodox) okay. But also diverse, sinful, cluttered, and not always clear in preaching or example. Am I making any sense to anyone here?

Oh yeah.

But I get around it with my usual dose of progressive temperament. The Church is not about higher-ups. We are the Church: cliche, but true.

I suspect that if the people who felt their were getting a foot pressed into their behind decided to pitch their tent anyway, it might accelerate the monastic discernment of the SCGS folks. And that would be doing all of us a favor, especially them.

The narrow gate is applied variously to the rich and the self-satisfied, but not the sexual sinners, even though Jesus had ample opportunity to do so. Jesus condemns most sternly those who abuse power in the name of God. Jesus urges faith like that of a child. Some seem to have interpreted this as a license for childish words and acts. An error, obviously. But the narrow gate is a spiritual reality. We shouldn't take it too lightly, no matter what side of the Tribal enclosure we think we're on.

Does that make any sense?