Growing up Catholic in the barrio

On my way out of a Latino grocery score in Kenner (I was there to pick up some special cheese for AG’s sister, CG), some middle aged gentleman shoved a newpaper-like brochure in my hand, which I only realized a few seconds and steps later was a Spanish Protestant religious tract. I went to the Salvadoran restaurant next door to order some pupusas as a surprise snack for CG, and so I began to examine the evangelical rag with only mild interest. The front was all about how the Catholic Church preaches a “doctrine of demons” since it “obligates” (?) certain people to be celibate. It also went into the whole idea of works vs. faith, circumscision vs. uncircumscision, and other bizarre ideas formulated in a unique if rather superficial way.

When I got bored with that, I began to look around the small establishment, and noticed that there were two small statues of St. Jude, along with a happy Chinese Buddha (and some other trinkets). At least St. Jude won out in the numbers game. After my pupusas were ready, I was prepared to go out there and give that guy a “piece of my mind”, but he had cleared out by the time I exited the restaurant.

Who knows?

Who knows what is going on on the other side of each hour?

How many times the sunrise was
there, behind a mountain!

How many times the brilliant cloud piling up far off
was already a golden body full of thunder!

This rose was poison.

That sword gave life.

I was thinking of a flowery meadow
at the end of a road,
and found myself in the slough.

I was thinking of the greatness of what was human,
and found myself in the divine.

-Juan Ramón Jiménez, as translated by Robert Bly

found on this site

image found on this site

Vladyka John

Found via the Byzantine, Texas blog

Because I’ve come a long way…

Well, really, I did venerate his relics in San Francisco. Several times, in fact. Fr. Anastassy once brought out his mandyas for me and some other special pilgrims to venerate some six years ago now. It’s been a long road, I guess. That is why I post this: not so much because I still believe in all of it. More because I wouldn’t want to totally renounce where I have been. To do so is childish. We are who we have been, and part of me still has affection for the guy.

One thing I have realized, however, is that my whole attitude of him being a saint like Catholic saints are saints is childish. I cannot help but think that the walls of the Catholic Church stretch up to Heaven, and indeed, to the Trinity itself. To think otherwise is dishonest. Yes, I venerated those relics once. Would I venerate them now? No. Why? Because it is not given to me to judge. Indeed, at this point in my life, I would rather venerate an image of Jesus Malverde than of John Maximovitch. Why? Because Malverde may have never existed, and if he did, he was a bad Catholic. But at least he did not fight against the Truth. Life is just full of some very hard, very ironic choices.

Comments from around the Internet

I am feeling lazy this week, so here are some comments of mine from around the Internet. They touch on themes that I am beating the war drum about right now, but some of these things might be said in mildly interesting ways, so I reproduce them here:

First, a comment of mine on Tim Enloe’s site:

I think the ironic thing about all of these posts is how any type of “convert boom” for the Catholic Church is vastly outweighed by the number of people leaving the Church by the thousands. While overly educated white suburban Evangelicals trickle in and are featured on EWTN, thousands more Latinos and even just run-of-the-mill Joe Catholics in the pew start going to the Four Square Gospel Church down the street, with “powerful preaching” and all kinds of fun activities for the kids. In a lot of ways, the “convert boom” on a cultural level is merely status symbol of being “more cultured and educated” than the rest, reading your issue of First Things after your copy of the New Yorker, and having a bunch of medieval religious art that you don’t treat like the average Catholic treats her home shrines in Guatemala or Poland. In a word, it is all OVERBLOWN. 60% of the time, I don’t even know what it means to be Catholic in 2009. Maybe we need to solve that question before we go on the warpath against Evangelicalism, and using the tools of the virtual altar call as a propaganda tool.

Seen somewhere in Louisiana…

Local literary color.

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Someone needs to tell her that that guy isn’t Jesus.

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Just another reason why accordions are cool.

Here is another (not related to Louisiana)

Editorial note

Just because I post things from non-Christian religions or from heretical or schismatic sources doesn’t mean that I think that they are salvific or true in any way. It just means that I find some roads to perdition more colorful than others.

Now feel free to go about your reading.

My Latest for Inside Catholic

And other notes

First of all, if you haven’t read my latest essay for Inside Catholic, you can do it by clicking here.

My main goal in life, at least on an intellectual level, is to cease thinking in shibboleths. I say this because in the essay above, I had to try to steer clear of them, with limited success. For example, I really did not want to use the term, “incarnational”, for reasons I have outlined before. In too many circumstances, we let the words speak us, empty words, hollow words. Perhaps it is my Nietzschean adolecence haunting me, but people like to take refuge in such phrases, uttering them and mentally walking away, as if not wanting to be contaminated by the error of their interlocutor. That is why in a lot of ways, I hesitate to write pieces like the one above. But I still think at times that I have “something to say”, and often I have to speak the “language of the herd”. Of course, I know that there are certain points where we must accept such slogans since they say best what we cannot adequately say.

On inefficient church governance and other thoughts

I have not commented on “churchy” stuff in a while, and since I know people like to comment on that kind of thing, I will write a some lines on it.

Via Fr. Chadwick’s page, I found this George Weigel essay on how Pope Benedict’s theological brilliance is being eclipsed by the foibles of the “old boy” network of the Vatican Curia. An interesting read all around. I do have to disagree with his characterization of the Lefebvrists: their problems are far from just being political, though it is hard to separate that aspect of it from their legitimate critiques, as I well know from personal experience. My real underlying thought, one that many of you can already predict, is a big “so what?” Maybe the Gospel isn’t being preached because of the old school methods of some Italian ecclesiastics. But to think having a well-oiled bureaucratic machine will lead to a better church is something that I find highly unlikely. Like Gideon on the battlefield, perhaps God is counting on our human weakness to show that only He can save the Church.

Primavera Madre

¡Madre mía, tierra,
otra vez más verde,
más plena, más bella!

(Y yo, mientras, hijo
tuyo, con más secas
hojas en las venas).

¡Madre mía, tierra,
sé tú siempre joven,
y que yo me muera!

(Y tú, mientras, madre
mía, con más frescas
hojas en las piernas).

-Juan Ramón Jiménez

Home Altar

The sacred is saturated with being.

-Mircea Eliade

The more time passes, the less certain I am of things. The good part about that is that I feel less need for that certainty now. No one is more certain than a twenty year old firebrand full of piss and vinegar. Having been one, I can assure you that this is the case. But life has a way of polishing the rough edges of your certainty and making you into a smooth, tolerant, and at times, indecisive person. There is too much complexity in life to jump into the fray of the chaotic street. Sometimes, you just want to sit on the porch and watch it go by, not knowing where it is all going, but knowing that you will survive all of this as you have survived it before. You also know that you not nearly as in-expendable, or nearly as important, as you sometimes think.