Personal story/thoughts re attacks on Catholic church

Just a closing personal recollection to share with you, as I feel I’ve done more than enough blogging for today. I’d do much less but have such a sense of dread and foreboding at the dire condition of religious discourse and the misuse of the word “tolerance” in the world today. For example, Catholics are called intolerant, yet the same accusers would defend any half ass “spiritual system” that drops into a person’s dopey head. Catholics are called “intolerant” for not “allowing” women to be priests, but by the same token by that accusation the critics are basically saying that a faith cannot exist where there is a class of mediators called consecrated priests who must be male. Again, if some half ass New Age spiritual system came along where the only sermon givers could must be gay men, the critics would laud that system and not call it intolerant at all.

Whatever else the critics falsely say about the Catholic Church, they have to admit one thing. The Catholic Church doesn’t sit around writing blogs and documents and books criticizing other faiths. Shouldn’t people think long and hard what THAT means? We don’t make money with pop or “scholarly” books attacking our post Reformation brethren, Muslims, or even New Agers. We keep it focused on the Lord Jesus Christ and God.

So here is the story I want to share with you. The grandfather of one of my sponsored Native American children gave me and my husband a great privilege in the 1980’s. We were able to visit one of his tribe’s kivas, which is their underground place of worship. It was an extremely moving experience, and to this day it remains one of my fondest memories. Now, this tribe believes that their prayer life is an essential component of the survival of the world. In other words, they worry that if they ever die out, that the world will too, because they will be unable to do their native worship of God.

I have enormous respect for this, I relate to it, and I applaud their belief. You don’t find me arguing with them that they need to convert to Christianity. Far from that, I hear the Holy Spirit in his words. It is the sense of responsibility to God, not superstition that motivates this pious man and others like him. His focus is on God, and on their role in continuing to make the world a spiritually worthy place for physical life to continue. I’m not saying to run out and get insurance policies for them, ha, or now proclaim that you have learned a spiritual secret, because there’s no secret to it, as this belief is confessed in classic text books about this tribe. What I am showing you is that “spiritual envy” should not exist in anyone who truly loves God. We came together as colleagues, this medicine man and I. I don’t want to make him a Catholic, and he didn’t want to initiate me into the tribe, but he did pay me a high honor.

It is that attitude that is also behind the Catholic Mass. By that I mean that everyone benefits spiritually from each Catholic Mass celebrated, even if you don’t even know what a Catholic is. The Catholic Mass is the sacramental worship of God. We don’t run out of Mass saying that no one else’s worship is valid. The Catholic Mass is for the benefit of not only all Christians, Catholic or not, but of all people, even those who are infidel, who totally do not believe in God. I’m thrilled when I see packed parking lots at the Baptist church down the street. If people feel moved to have a “home” praise and worship service, more power to them: they are praising and worshipping God. But the Catholic Church, along with the other sacramental churches, such as Orthodox, Anglican and so on, are doing what no one else is doing. They are participating in consecrated sacramental worship of God in the spirit that instructions for consecrated worship was given to the first man, Adam, and throughout the faith history of the Israelites. Why in the world would anyone criticize the Catholic Church for continuing to have consecrated sacramental worship of God that is in the direct footsteps of the original faith as given to Abraham, Moses and their spiritual descendents? Why is there such one sided hostility toward the Catholic Church regarding the structure of their liturgy and the formation of their faith? It is spiritual jealousy and arrogance. I sleep a little better at night knowing these past two decades that I met that medicine man who feels he carries a divine contribution toward the spirituality and indeed survivability of humans, even on behalf of the 99.9 percent of the world who never even heard of their tribe or their beliefs. What kind of person resents the Catholic Church for continuing to celebrate consecrated sacramental worship of God on behalf of everyone for two thousand years, continuing the faith history that existed for even two thousand years before them?

By the fruit you will know the tree. If the fruit is to make a name for oneself, to make money for oneself, or to attempt to erode the faith of a group of people by being hostile to the Catholic Church as a sacred institution, you really have to question how rotten might be that tree, despite their using the sweet name of Jesus.