Monday, 21 March 2005 08:01 pm
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deckardcanineCecille, my soon-to-be godmother (not that I expect to need one, but it's a Catholic thing), gave me a newsletter article in response to my shameful story of offending Rain and Orv. It's "Being Right Does Not Make Right," written by Jeff Childers, a convert just a couple years older than myself, so I was eager to pay attention.
In the first paragraph, Childers lists different sorts of ways that people get drawn into Catholicism and says, "No path is better than another." I found this hard to believe -- surely following the arguments for it is a better reason than loving the artistic heritage? But whether or not all paths are equal, it has become clear that the intellectual path is not superior.
Childers recounts how he had been a teenage preacher for a sect simply named the Church of Christ, in which a major task was to counter Catholicism. His conversion did not come about from hearing or reading Catholics per se, as mine has. Instead, a Protestant book backfired when it advised him to study the early Church fathers: his independent study of the Hebrew Bible unhappily found evidence for the RCC and against his own church. The next year, he was received into full communion with the RCC.
But Childers did not write the essay specifically to promote one faith above all. (One may consider it a weakness that he takes six long paragraphs before coming to the point touched upon in the title.) His church experience had taught him to seek the truth like the legal system reputedly does: "just the facts." Despite the deep love for Jesus held by such Christians, they rather shaft their emotions so as not to skew judgment in approaching the gospel. Boy, did that sound familiar to me.
The result? He remained the guy people went to with questions on the faith, but "[i]t would have made more sense to me to be devoted to the Sacred Brain.... The great danger of a head-centered Christianity, especially when it is not properly balanced with a truly heart-centered life of prayer and love, is that it is a constant occasion for pride.... Just as Moses had erred grievously when he took credit for discovering the rock with life-giving water, so too did I err in taking credit for discovering the rock on whom Christ built his Church." Without ever moving into heresy -- indeed, still hoping to become a priest -- Childers gradually withdrew from prayer, then mass attendance, then reconciliation. His restlessly empty-feeling soul sought comfort in various sins rather than what he intellectually believed he should love, rather like the demons whom the Bible reports to acknowledge right and wrong yet practice wrong. It took a major personal disaster (given little space and detail in this article) to snap him to his senses.
It could be that all of you readers already knew the lesson, maybe even thought it obvious. I did too, on one level. But this kind of account helps remind me not to underplay the areas in which my character is substantially deficient. My heart had already been palpably receding; I'm so glad Cecille showed me the article before I got worse.
Just think: I read it on Palm Sunday. When we had been singing, "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?", I would go on to think, "My God, my God, why have I been abandoning you?"
In the first paragraph, Childers lists different sorts of ways that people get drawn into Catholicism and says, "No path is better than another." I found this hard to believe -- surely following the arguments for it is a better reason than loving the artistic heritage? But whether or not all paths are equal, it has become clear that the intellectual path is not superior.
Childers recounts how he had been a teenage preacher for a sect simply named the Church of Christ, in which a major task was to counter Catholicism. His conversion did not come about from hearing or reading Catholics per se, as mine has. Instead, a Protestant book backfired when it advised him to study the early Church fathers: his independent study of the Hebrew Bible unhappily found evidence for the RCC and against his own church. The next year, he was received into full communion with the RCC.
But Childers did not write the essay specifically to promote one faith above all. (One may consider it a weakness that he takes six long paragraphs before coming to the point touched upon in the title.) His church experience had taught him to seek the truth like the legal system reputedly does: "just the facts." Despite the deep love for Jesus held by such Christians, they rather shaft their emotions so as not to skew judgment in approaching the gospel. Boy, did that sound familiar to me.
The result? He remained the guy people went to with questions on the faith, but "[i]t would have made more sense to me to be devoted to the Sacred Brain.... The great danger of a head-centered Christianity, especially when it is not properly balanced with a truly heart-centered life of prayer and love, is that it is a constant occasion for pride.... Just as Moses had erred grievously when he took credit for discovering the rock with life-giving water, so too did I err in taking credit for discovering the rock on whom Christ built his Church." Without ever moving into heresy -- indeed, still hoping to become a priest -- Childers gradually withdrew from prayer, then mass attendance, then reconciliation. His restlessly empty-feeling soul sought comfort in various sins rather than what he intellectually believed he should love, rather like the demons whom the Bible reports to acknowledge right and wrong yet practice wrong. It took a major personal disaster (given little space and detail in this article) to snap him to his senses.
It could be that all of you readers already knew the lesson, maybe even thought it obvious. I did too, on one level. But this kind of account helps remind me not to underplay the areas in which my character is substantially deficient. My heart had already been palpably receding; I'm so glad Cecille showed me the article before I got worse.
Just think: I read it on Palm Sunday. When we had been singing, "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?", I would go on to think, "My God, my God, why have I been abandoning you?"
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Did you think this section was this the raison d'etre of the article?
Did the time of his "withdrawal" happen after his conversion to Catholicism?
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