I guess the title of this post deserves a bit of explanation. As a deacon, one of the things that I have never understood is the a la carte’ approach that seems to sometimes be applied to our faith. This doesn’t just happen with laity, I have seen this with clergy as well, which to me is even more disturbing. If you profess to be a Catholic, whether they are socially in vogue or not, there are certain things that you are called to believe and uphold. To approach any faith requires a degree of humility that I see as quickly diminishing in our society because people misinterpret it as weakness. It is in fact, the opposite of weakness, it means being strong enough to step outside ourselves enough to allow our faith to be guided by God and His Church. This is not always comfortable for us. In some cases we seem to be ready to embrace social whims and public opinion more readily than the teachings of the church we profess to be a part of. I will give an example, as a matter of fact, I will start this with what is perhaps the biggest bombshell of an example that currently divides our Catholic beliefs from secular society, many other denominations of Christianity, and many other religions. That is of course the issue of life. If you are a Catholic, you believe that life is sacred, and that is begins at conception, and ends with natural death – period. There is no other valid interpretation. If you do not accept this core teaching, to be blunt, you need to think about what you really believe, and whether you perhaps need to pursue some spiritual tuning. The same is true of the belief that the Holy Eucharist is the actual body and blood of Christ, that the one trinitarian God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that Mary is the mother of God and is worthy of veneration, that God created our universe and all mankind, etc. I’m not going to do the exhaustive list of Catholic core beliefs, but you get the idea. Even if you have questions about some of these beliefs, and in some cases struggle with them, that is ok. BTW – contrary to modern opinion, struggle is not always a bad thing, it means your paying attention and that your using the intellect God gave you to actually think about things. If you never struggle with your faith, quite frankly your probably not doing it right. So how does all this apply to the Catholic Church’s views? In short, it means being willing to examine what you believe, and if there are areas where you are not in alignment with Church on it’s core teachings, to pursue those through study, or failing to find resolution with that, by discussing it with your priest to try to come to an understanding. I can say in all honesty, that when I have taken the time to pursue an area where I find myself questioning Catholic teaching, I have yet to be disappointed in the research that has already taken place on the part of the Church to develop its doctrine. The idea here is to work at these areas, not going through life picking and choosing what you believe, and treating it as your personal version of Catholicism. There is only one set of teachings, if we are going to call ourselves Catholics, we need to be both familiar with, and at peace with them.
The Deacons Bench 