Journey to Orthodoxy, Part 1

Raised Roman Catholic---Sort Of

As a disclaimer, unless I explicitly say otherwise, “Catholic” means “Roman Catholic” in this post.

I was born in 1967, which means that I was among the first generation of Catholics to be raised in a purely post-Vatican II church.  While I was baptized according to “old rite”, the revised Mass began to be used in 1970, and as such it is the only Mass that I knew.  I spent 12 years in Catholic schools, and though my parents gave me a good foundation, they relied heavily on those schools to provide the bulk of my religious education.  What they didn’t know, and what I certainly didn’t realize at the time, was that this was a fundamental flaw.  You see, the post-Vatican II Catholic church in the early 1970’s had lost its identity.  In trying so hard to find itself, it lost essentially everything that made it Catholic.  Everything was subject to question, and the result, as seen today in such oxymoronically-named organizations as “Catholics for choice”, was relativism and chaos.  The religion classes I took in grade school and high school were what I like to call “Catholic psychology” classes.  The classes were focused on what we felt and thought, and devoid of any theology, let alone Catholic theology.  So, parents who thought their children were being given the same kind of foundational religious instruction they received growing up, albeit in a different way, were in for a rude awakening.  Lots of people are trying to figure out why there is a shortage of Catholic priests in our country and why so many of the children raised in the 70’s and 80’s have left the Catholic church.  To me, it is the natural consequence of the misguided reforms of Vatican II, and the lack of direction provided afterward.

Several true stories make the point.

Story #1: The Beatles were Catholic

One of the results of the changes made to the Mass was the introduction of the guitar Mass, or “folk group” Mass.  Guitars were not used in the Tridentine Mass, of course, but the new Mass is nowhere close to the Tridentine Mass.  However, the Catholic churches in this country took the implementation of the new Mass as an invitation to make the changes they wanted to make, rather than the changes actually mentioned in the documents of Vatican II, and among the changes was the inclusion of modern music in the Mass.  I remember the large brown folders with lyrics sheets to the songs that the folk group played during Mass.  Among other songs that were included were “Dust in the Wind”, “Turn, Turn, Turn”, and “Let It Be”.  Yes, that “Let It Be”, the song by the Beatles.  Apparently, the song was actually about the Mother of God, and not marijuana.  Of course, at the time I just sang along; we all did.  But looking back I have trouble believing that the priest didn’t put an end to this nonsense, and I wonder if the priest had lost his way along with the rest of the church, or didn’t have the moral fortitude to tell the folk group to change their choice of songs, or simply didn’t care enough to say anything.  Regardless of the reason, it’s easy to see why a child raised in this atmosphere might come away with slightly less than a truly Catholic education.

Story #2: The Catholic Bar Mitzvah

Ask a Catholic confirmed after around 1975 the following question: “What is the sacramental part of Confirmation?”  An overwhelming majority of the responses will be something along the lines of “It’s me deciding that I want to be a Catholic.”  Just to be clear, the sacramental part of Confirmation is receiving the gifts of the Holy Spirit.  The reason most of the confirmed Catholic will not know this is simple: they were not taught it.  I was confirmed in 1981, and the focus of our confirmation classes was how we were about to become adult Catholics, how we were going to stand up in front of the bishop and in front of the people present in church on our confirmation day and proclaim to the world that we wanted to be Catholic.  It was a Catholic rite of passage, from childhood to adulthood…the Catholic equivalent of a Bar Mitzvah.  The gifts of the Holy Spirit got very little attention…one or two classes out of the entire year if I remember correctly.  I used to delight in telling recently confirmed Roman Catholics that my Byzantine Catholic children were confirmed immediately following their infant baptism.  Their follow-up question was always the same: “How did they stand up for themselves and say they want to be Catholic?”  Sad, isn’t it?  When even the sacraments are no longer being taught correctly, you know things are in trouble. 

Story #3: We’re in a Catholic High School…right?

As if the lack of Catholic education at my grade school wasn’t vacuous enough, it was followed by the following classes at my Catholic high school:

Freshman year: introduction to world religions (1/2 a year)

This consisted of studying the other major religions of the world, and lightly the other denominations of Christianity (well, the other denominations with one glaring omission: Orthodoxy).  If this were a comparative course (here’s what they believe, here’s how it differs from Catholicism), I might be able to understand why this course existed.  It wasn’t.  It was all about the beliefs of the other faiths, and how they were just as valid as Catholicism. 

Sophomore year: sacraments (1/2 a year) and morality (1/2 a year)

The sacraments course was easy.  Stuff we already knew, including that confirmation was a Catholic Bar Mitzvah.  Baptism washed away original sin.  Receiving Communion was reserved for people who were of age and understood what the Eucharist is (like a second-grader understands this…really?).  Confession was going to tell the priest what you did wrong and receive your penance (i.e., your punishment…is it any wonder that so few Catholics receive this sacrament with any sort of regularity?).  On and on it goes.  Nothing new, and no corrections made to the mistakes from grade school, which is really sad, since this class was taught by a priest.

Morality was an introduction to psychology course.  We learned about Maslow, and Jung, and Freud, among others.  This was morality?  Freud?  Really?  No, this was psychology, with a Catholic twist thrown in every once in a while.  And it was relativism…a natural follow-up to the freshman year course.

Junior year: New Testament

The only scripture course I ever had in 12 years of Catholic education.  The focus was on Acts and the Epistles of Paul, and the emphasis was historical.  Here is where the apostles went.  Here is what they did.  This is Paul; he went places, too.  That’s it.  The only thing that made it religious was the fact that the people we were studying were the Apostles, Paul, and his companions.  Empty, lacking in spirituality, and boring.

Senior year: Family Life

We learned about marriage, sex, and family life by reading Leo Buscaglia.  Not by learning what the Catholic Church had to say on the matter, not why the Catholic Church said what it said, not even by discussing the topics with any sort of seriousness…by reading Leo Buscaglia.  Oh, and we read the book Charley, too.  Don’t ask me how this tied in to the course…I honestly don’t remember.

Is it any wonder that so many of us who went through 12 years of Catholic education aren’t Catholic today?  Even better is the following fact: the first step away from Roman Catholicism was the direct result of one of the courses --- one of the regular classes --- that my wife took at the same Catholic high school.  I’ll pick up on that next time.

now that I have time...

OK, so the Ph.D. is finally finished and I'm officially a mathematician.  Considering this has taken ten years of my life to complete, a few friends have light-heartedly asked what I plan to do for an encore.  This is the answer.  For a few years now I have had the urge to write the story of my journey and the journey of my family to Orthodox Christianity.  In a way, it is to get it out of my system...to lay out the honest reasons for the conversion, many of which would surprise those who, upon becoming disenchanted with their current church, go looking for another that is more in line with their personal taste.  However, it is also intended as a bit of research for me.  I want to be able to answer any question anyone has of me concerning Orthodoxy.  I know that my goal is unattainable even if I were to spend the rest of my life trying to achieve it, but aiming that high will allow me to get as close as I can.  So, over the next months I hope (God willing) to put together a series of posts that serve as my "spiritual autobiography."  If you find it informational or entertaining, fine.  If you find that it inspires you to assess your own spiritual foundations and beliefs, even better.  And if you find that it drives you to look at Orthodoxy for the answers to the questions you've been asking, that would be the best outcome of all.