Bleatings from the Sheep

Catholicism, Part One...My Perspective

I was really trying to convince myself to not blog about this. But dang it, I can’t help myself…

My gut reaction to what Prof Leeper was saying on Thursday about Catholicism is actually quite similar to what my reaction is to it now that I’ve had a significant enough amount of time to think about it. What, you ask, was my reaction exactly? Pure and incandescent joy.

First of all, I, unlike Prof Leeper, am indeed a Catholic. Well...half Catholic, at least. I know, that doesn’t make much sense, does it? Essentially it means that I was raised Catholic the earlier half of my life, strayed away from the Roman Catholic church, but then came back to it recently. I am by no means “hard core” Catholic, but generally it’s where I feel most comfortable. I’ve made my Sacraments--sadly, I haven’t been through Confirmation--but I never really prayed to the Saints or to Mary, and there are a lot of other little traditions that I never got wrapped up into, and that I’m honestly only vaguely familiar with. And in all honesty, I’ve wondered about whether or not I should call myself Catholic, because I always end up feeling like I’m too Catholic to be Protestant, but too Protestant to be Catholic. It gets rather confusing, honestly. My parents raised me as Christian, and I was always a Christian before I was a Catholic. The confusion comes in when it’s time to put a clearer label on things and prance off to church. But no matter what I define myself as in the end, I think that there will always be a place in my heart for Catholicism.

I had originally planned on giving you a full history of my Catholic background, including what brought me back to the Catholic Church recently and the (few) conclusions I’ve drawn about my faith and about Catholicism as a result. But that’ll take too long, and besides, that might get a bit too personal for Blogger. If you’re really curious about any of that, ask me; more than likely I’ll be willing to oblige and give you an answer. I do speak. Honest. Maybe not very well and not very often, but I do speak...

Anywho. So instead of revealing the entire depths of my soul to the Blogger community, I’ll just write about the newest revelation I had as a result of what Prof Leeper said and the images we saw in class Thursday. I’ve been finding certain aspects of my personality in conflict with other aspects. The “artistic” side of me tends to run up against a lot of walls, and sometimes I wonder how it fits in at all with the rest of me. But then when we saw those images in class on Thursday, I felt that side spark up, and it hit me: I had found my connection. Catholicism brings a lot of things with it...all the images, all the mystery, and all the depth involved in every action...the awe that all of those things inspire in me is often that same driving force that allows me, even demands of me, to be creative. Turns out that the connection I thought didn’t exist simply existed where I didn’t think to look! This is a pretty fortunate place for it to be, actually, because I can tie my Catholic roots into other aspects of my personality as well. And while I still have a long way to go in figuring certain things out, I think that this is a definite ray of hope.

posted by Caitlynn @ 12:52 AM