Women and the Church

For all those women, like Karen and myself, who feel marginalized while reading the bible. Junia should provide inspiration as well as put our bible reading in historical context.

Stripped Down Baptist Same as Catholic?

I’ve been struggling between two religious worlds of late. As you all know, I go to both the Catholic and the Baptist Churches in the town where I live. I was driving home from work in silence today because since our vacation, I’ve grown accustomed to to the quiet. While in Maine we did not listen to radio or watch TV news. I caught a snippet of Dancing With the Stars on Tuesday night, but other than that, we had Mother Nature and good company to occupy us. Anyway, driving home in the silence I was pondering why I could not give up the Baptist Church to be Catholic or why I could not give up the Catholic Church and be totally Baptist. There are several reasons why I go to the Baptist Church. 1) I love to sing in the choir and Catholics, to be honest, don’t sing the same music or in quite the same way as Baptists do, at least not in our church they don’t. Choir practice on Wednesday night is usually a lot of fun and you get to sing Gospel music. 2) I love to read and study the Bible because it feeds my curiosity and academic “bent.” I can sit and “do” bible study for a couple of hours in the morning. 3) The people at the Baptist church are like my extended family. We have fun most of the time, even though there can be fights.

I go to the Catholic Church because 1) The mystery of the Eucharist draws me. 2) I prefer confession here. I feel wiped clean in Catholic confession whereas in the Baptist church, you don’t dare tell anyone else what you’ve done. You’ll never live it down (see post #2 on this blog). 3) I love the silence and the ritualistic liturgy of offering corporate worship to God. In the Baptist church I don’t get the impression that what we do is worship. I sense God in the Catholic church.

So, I pondered these things and wondered, could it be that God wanted me to give up those things I so dearly love as a Baptist to show me that I need to rely more on Him alone and not Bible Study, singing, fellowship, etc.? I’ve been reading some of the lives of the saints and they all say that God strips you of all things you are most devoted to in order to fill you more with His presence. Is that true? Will God withdraw the consolation I receive from these things in order to draw me to Himself?

It’s true that I get so caught up in Bible-ology that I forget God all together. It’s possible to put the Bible before God as some fundamentalists are known to do. You get swept up in translation controversies and find yourselves fighting over which one is TRUE when only one person was TRUTH: Jesus. It’s also true that I enjoy choir more than a lot of things and cannot see myself giving it up. But let’s suppose God wants me to give up all these things to know Him better or to have a deeper Christian life. Would I? Can I live without Bible Study or teaching Sunday school, since none of these things is offered in the Catholic Church. Can I give up choir in the Gospel tradition?

I’m not sure, but how can I know God is asking me to? I suppose it’s going to take a lot more silent drives home from work to figure it out.

Catholic Confession Nothing But a Drive-Through?

I had a disturbing conversation with a Baptist friend during Sunday school this past weekend. We were discussing sin and the baptized believer. We were talking about how Baptists believe that once a person is baptized and becomes a disciple of Christ, that person and other believers are priests before God. Baptists teach that the believer offers spiritual sacrifices rather than those given by the Israelites in the Old Testament (Romans 12:1-2). The topic came up that if we confess our sins, God will forgive us and we don’t need to sacrifice bulls, goats, and other animals as the Levites did. While we were discussing the confession of our sins to God and what that means for us a good friend of mine turned to me and said under her breath, “Well you know, the Catholics can just go to Confession on Saturday, get forgiven, and then sin again anytime they want to on Monday.” She looked at me and waited for my response. I didn’t say anything at the time, but I should have.

As a Baptist, I’ve heard this many, many times before (among other things) and didn’t really have an answer for her at the time. Baptists, along with every other Protestant sect out there, are notorious for teaching that the Catholic Church is not the true Church of Christ, but an imposter. Many Baptists still believe that. But now that I think about my friend’s statement more closely, and now that I have participated in the Sacrament of Penance myself and know what is involved with the examination of conscience, I feel I can speak more about it. The woman who said this is a very smart lady but has a very misguided impression of Confession, because even as a Baptist, we do the very same thing she accuses Catholics of doing! We can confess to God on Sunday, be forgiven, and then sin right away on Monday. So what? Every sinner does it and every sinner will do it until Jesus returns. Does she mean Catholics somehow give themselves license to sin because they know they can go to confession later and be cleansed of it? Well, so what again? Baptists do that too! Somehow this woman thinks that it is a kind of easy-believism to go to a priest and get absolution, but I’m here to tell you right now that going to confession is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done as a Christian.

Let me explain. When I sin as a Baptist, I know in my head that if “we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins” (1 John 1:9). Every Baptist knows that if we ask forgiveness of God, He will forgive us right away. Some Baptists who believe in eternal security even believe that we can sin and sin and never lose our salvation. God may get mad and kill you early (I swear I’ve heard some pastors teach this concept), but by jove you won’t lose your salvation.We are free and clear and have fellowship with him, until the next time we sin and then we start over. We have this process drilled into us in Sunday school and in sermons. Well, fine. That’s comforting. But it leaves your heart still empty.

Now it’s an entirely different story when you have to have to confess to another person. Besides the theological quibbles about our confessing to a priest, let’s focus on the psychological aspects alone because when the rubber meets the road, that’s what people care about and what people will remember the most. Confession through the Sacrament of Penance has been very, very good for my soul. Why? Because it forces me to acknowledge my sins aloud and to actually hear the absolution by the priest, coming from a representative of Jesus Christ, assuring me of forgiveness. Confessing to God alone is good, and Catholics do not deny it is, but for me there is no substitute for the Sacrament of Penance. It reaches the heart not just the head.

Not only is there assurance for the soul, but the process we have to go through BEFORE we confess is both humbling and eye-opening. The examination of conscience forces us not to see sin where there is none, but to examine those areas that we need to keep an careful eye on. We are so attuned to this world that we don’t even know the harm we sometimes do unless confronted with it by those who deal much with it. Not only does it force you to truly examine your own motives, it makes me ‘fess up to those sins that I know are still haunting me and that I can’t quite forgive myself for. Talk about a literal weight lifted off my soul! Not only is Penance soul-cleansing, it acts as a better deterrent to sin than anything I’ve encountered. It’s so darn difficult that I don’t want to go through that agony every single time that I’ve committed a major sin. Better to keep the slate clean now and go frequently, than scare the wits out of you for the BIG confession.

So when this woman tells me that Catholics have it easy, that somehow confession is like a McDonald’s drive-through and that Catholics can confess on Saturday and then go and sin all they want to on Monday…….well that’s just not true. It’s no more true than Baptists confessing to God on Sunday and then thinking that since no one else knows, that sin is all the more easy to commit and confess to God the next time. Because God will forgive, after all. There is no difference. To me the Baptist way is the easy-believism in this picture.

 

Unclogging Protestantism With the Grace of the Eucharist

Yep, this heretic went to Mass on Saturday and taught Sunday school at the Baptist Church on Sunday.

Despite my feminist leanings, exhibited here yesterday, I am a very capable bible teacher and have faith that God is blessing me in this work. While I don’t take everything in the Bible literally, I can easily derive lessons about the Christian life from it. One thing Protestantism has taught me is bible reading and the intense study thereof. In fact I’m obsessed with it, hence my post of giving up the bible yesterday. I am SO obsessed with it, I can’t operate with a clear mind and spirit when filled with too many words ABOUT God and not enough OF God. I want the miracle of the Mass without thought, analysis, or grasping with the mind. This is very, very hard for Protestants to give up, this grasping all things with the mind…this need to understand.

Alan Watts, one of my favorite writers and a brilliant expositor of the religious motive, remarks on the inclination of Protestants to focus too much on printed matter. Watts equates Protestantism with the early Humanism movement in its “adolescent spirit of revolt against nature and supernature, the soil and the Church” (Behold the Spirit, 41). Medieval man, Watts continues, is finally “awakening to the power of his own reason….man became fascinated by his own mind and form” (ibid). Watts goes on to outline why Protestantism is the direct result of city-dwelling and humanism and how the disconnect from nature, symbols, and the cycle of seasons engendered by farm life gives way to the rise of the middle class businessman who

“lies, cheats, and robs, and thus the man of business forms the habit of trusting but little. He has to be ‘shown.’ He must ‘have it in writing.’ And the new merchant class wanted its religion in writing; it wanted to form its own judgment on Holy Writ, for the mysteries of priests were not to be trusted. The Bible, the law book, not the Host, became the centre of Protestant worship” (ibid, 43).

The Mass, Watts continues, makes the middle class businessman (the creator of Protestantism) uncomfortable because the celebration of the Mass is not dependent on his will and consciousness but upon GOD’S will and consciousness. Man wants the control, wrests it from God’s hands, and feels safe to “receive the Body of Christ by the power of his own mind, by so-called “faith,” rather than by an external miracle which his senses could not verify” (43).

This jibes perfectly with my experience with Protestantism and Catholicism. Protestantism is adolescent rebellion against Mother Church. It embodies the idea that that which has gone before does not know best. Since then, Watts explains, the Protestant church has spent decades trying to convince itself it has done the right thing by focusing not on worship but on “sermons…Bible readings…and fulsome and oratorical prayers, which are for edification of the people rather than the glory of God” (44). Watts is rights when he says Protestants have substituted edification for worship, discipline for union with God.

This is exactly what I’ve been trying to say and do but can’t quite articulate. I’m tired of trying to convince myself through bible reading. I’m tired of trying to worship in a service focused on “telling” and not on “offering.” I do need both to survive, but have become saturated with words to the point of inaction. At this point, I’m don’t want to merely receive input, but I want to offer back. Protestantism is like a clogged drain where words from sermons, the internet, the bible, and from readings and devotions swirl into the believers brain until there are so many nothing gets through and your life becomes clogged. I get fed with words at the Baptist Church, but expel them with an influx of grace with the Eucharist in the Catholic Church.

Do I sound like I’m “going” Catholic? Well, I’ve been Catholic since 1988, but until now, I hadn’t realized, or it hasn’t sunk in, what it all means for me as a Christian. I’m in process, thank God.

Journaling to Happiness

I’ve kept a diary/journal for over 30 years. I’ve written in three-ring notebooks, spiral notebooks, special journals, locked diaries, you name it I’ve written in it. It’s a habit that’s very hard to break, but why would I want to break it? It’s been a source of comfort and release for as long as I can remember. I never remembered a time when I made a conscious decision to write everything down. I just started doing it. I think I was 12 or 13 when I wrote in my first official diary. It was small and had a yellow hard back cover with a gold lock and key. I loved it! I put thoughts about crushes on boys and the shitty life I had at home. Perhaps I’m somewhat sane because of my journal keeping. But is it a journal or a diary?

Those who study diaries and journals explain the difference as, “A diary is a personal daily record containing experiences, events, observations and/or reflections. A person who does this kind of writing is often called a diarist. A journal is also a personal record kept on a regular basis. Although diaries and journals are periodic records, many people don’t make daily entries.” So a diary is a daily record and a journal isn’t? I think that’s what they’re saying. Anyway, there’s nothing nicer than cracking open the pages of a fresh new journal or closing the back cover of a book full of your own handwriting. Everyone should journal and thanks to the internet and blogging, many people are leaving records of their thoughts for future generations. Although you often wonder whether someday there might be a sudden apocalypse and all the electronic blogging will be lost and then where would we be?

In many ways I prefer paper and pen when putting thoughts down for posterity. And I’m not even doing it consciously for posterity. I write because my brain is so full at the end of the day or beginning of the next one that I have to spill it out on paper or I can’t sleep at night. Journaling comes in handy right before bedtime when your thoughts are swirling with images and ideas about the events of the day or even about fights you’d had and words you wished you had said or wanted to take back. Somehow getting it out on paper is like a high colonic for the brain. 🙂

I recommend diary or journal keeping not only to have a record of your life for your children, but to promote personal happiness and well-being. Andy over at The Domain for Truth gives more excellent spiritual reasons for blogging or journaling on the Web. I know that journaling has kept me sane all these years and that all those diaries kept in a box on my shelf will someday explain my psychology to someone else after I die. All these blogs will give someone a glimpse into what made me tick. It’ll probably be the only valuable thing I’ll have to leave for my family. Next to Catholic penance and confession, writing your thoughts down daily is the best psychological tool you can use on yourelf.

Silence, Blessed Silence

Saturday evening I attended Mass with my daughter at our local Catholic church and Sunday morning I attended my usual Baptist church, also local. What a contrast! On Saturday evening, we walk in and I dip my hands in the cold, cold holy water font at the back of the church. We walk to the pew, genuflect toward the tabernacle and sit. It becomes an automatic response to find the kneeler and begin to pray or at least keep silence before the Mass. On my right, high above the alter on pedestals coming out of the wall are statues of St. Joseph and St. Anthony (I’m still not sure which St. Anthony) holding the baby Jesus. On the left of the altar, high up still more is the Blessed Virgin Mary (blond) on one pedestal and Jesus on another, revealing His Sacred Heart. The colors are vivid and surreal. Both Jesus and Mary’s arms are outstretched. In front of both sides of the alter are electric and real votive candles to light for prayer. The church is old fashioned, not one of the newer constructions coming out of Vatican II that look more like Protestant churches than Catholic. This church has wooden pews, padded kneelers, no alcoves for other saints, but an elaborate altar and simple tabernacle containing the Host. The colors of the walls are a muted peachy, beige color. Gold stenciled images of the Holy Spirit in the shape of a dove and the Eucharistic chalice are imprinted on either side of the tabernacle and at other spots higher up. The stations of the cross are down each side of the pews high up on the walls of the church. I really love this church. The smell of wax and long ago incense still hangs in the air. The floor is simple vinyl and creaks alittle. We kneel and there is complete silence as everyone focuses their thoughts heavenward or often in more mundane realms of thought. Yet there is the silence. A bell chimes and all rise as the priest enters to begin Mass.

Contrast that with arriving at a Baptist Church. The walls are knotty pine, the carpet a royal blue. People are calling across aisles, greeting each other, cooing over newborns, laughter rings off the walls. People are reading bulletins, swapping weekly stories, organizing music for the choir, etc. Some are sitting quietly but are approached quickly by others they haven’t seen all week. There is no time to quiet one’s soul or to pray. There is no altar, only a table with a bible and some flowers at the front of the church. This subs as a communion table once a month. At the back of the choir and pulpit area is the baptistry with a scene painted in the background, meant to resemble Galilee. Then, before you know it, the pianist begins playing the intro. People are still talking. The pastor goes up to the pulpit and begins the service by saying, “Good morning and welcome to First Baptist Church,” or something to that effect. Then we begin with a hymn and we’re off….

These two pictures give us, in a nutshell the difference between Peter and Paul; the Jerusalem, traditional church vs. the missionary, free church; the established vs. the fluid. I am convinced that Protestants heed Paul’s words far more than Jesus’ words. I am convinced that Protestants today are so Pauline in nature that they cannot take Jesus’ words literally if it contradicts Paul. Take the Eucharist. Jesus said, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you (John 6:53).” No ifs, ands, or buts about it. Paul, however, mimics the Last Supper where Jesus is explaining his death to his disciples (1 Corinthians 11). He talks about the meal as part of the community in which all eat or drink a literal meal like the disciples did that night. The literal language of Jesus and the meaning is lost. Paul, here, is interpreting what Jesus meant. Both Catholics and Protestants seem to have legitimate interpretations. But, to me, what Jesus has said takes precedence.

I’m not sure what this all means for my faith, but the contrast was startling this weekend. There was no feeling of worship in the Baptist church like I had in the Catholic Church, yet no one preaches and studies like a Baptist. I pray for clarity.

 

Religious Fence Sitting

I am a fence sitter when it comes to religion. For some reason, ever since I became a Christian, I’ve been fascinated with all varieties of gods, goddesses, deities, etc. My family comes from a long line of Baptist preachers on my mother’s side, so I come by the Christian faith naturally, however it hasn’t just been Christianity that fascinates me. When I had my “Damascus Experience” on the way to work one day, I found Christ directly. No one preached to me the gospel or made me recite a “sinner’s prayer.” I tried to clean up my life and realized that I couldn’t do it and didn’t have to because God loved me through Jesus just as I was.

From there I began a 23 year long journey. I began in fundamentalist christianity and by various roads and doctrines, traveled through Lutheranism, Catholicism, Greek Orthodoxy, Paganism, Wicca, and finally back to Christianity-light. By that I mean, Christian faith without institutional loyalty. I settled in the (American) Baptist faith mainly because of fellowship. BUT…I find myself drawn to the Roman Catholic Church and its culture. Along the way I learned to appreciate other religions. I LOVE Hindu art; the rich colors, the imagination of it. But there are so many gods and goddesses, you kind of get overwhelmed. Each of them have a specific ritual too and that gets confusing.

I ventured into paganism and discovered the goddess while at college. I even incorporated goddess lore in my Master’s thesis, which compared the aspects of the female hero in 3 novels. I am particularly drawn to Gaia images. But wicca and nature religions also seem to worship the creature rather than the creator.

During my brief foray into Greek Orthodoxy I became spiritually intoxicated with icons (ikons). There is nothing like a Greek icon if you’ve never seen them before. They are incorporated within Orthodox worship resulting in a spiritual atmosphere that is unrivaled in holiness. The incense, the chanting, I love it.

Yet, the Orthodox’ feud with the Roman Catholic church is troublesome because it’s clearly a battle of cultures and nothing more (unless you count the filioque argument). The Roman bishop claimed supremacy over Christendom while the Orthodox bishop said, “I don’t think so!” (My paraphrase) and the battle was on. Roman Catholic icons hold appeal as well but are not fraught with strict creative guidelines as the orthodox icons are. Anyway, I love Italian art and architecture.

I also love the Sacrament of Confession and the Eucharist. I must say that I have the least problem with these two things. Confession is a great way to cleanse the conscience and the Eucharist is simply a gift. I have the most difficulty with Purgatory (don’t believe in it) and infant baptism (although I’m starting to see SOME basis for the practice). I feel an affinity for the saints since my journey through paganism opened my eyes to spirits all around us a lot more than my protestant brethren and “sistren ?” 🙂 allow or accept. But I digress.

I found myself back in Baptistland specifically because I find Roman Catholicism incredibly lonely. I’m a social person and love to be part of a group. The Greek Orthodox church was a whole Protestant group who converted en masse to the Orthodox church, so they were pretty social, but we moved to another state and that fellowship was short lived. So when we came to where we live now, the closest I came to good fellowship was the Baptist church. I don’t like their bibliolatry or their iconoclastic ways, but they study and discuss and that feeds my academic mind (even if it is only out of one book). Our Catholic church has no social life at all. No programs, no scripture study, no groups, etc. Online communities simply cannot offer the same kind of contact. So….I go to the Baptist church, teach Sunday school, sing in the choir, and hang out. Then I go to the Catholic church for Eucharist and Penance. If I could just incorporate both into one church……