I grew up so Irish Catholic, I didn't need two-thirds of the endnotes to understand Dubliners when I read it in high school. But somehow I apparently just don't "get" Catholicism insofar as I reject it as an absurdity, albeit one which I confess is coherent and logical, as far as absurdities go.
The “everyday lives of many American Catholics are no longer particularly distinctive from the everyday lives of members of other faiths," Kim Daniels writes. “And so non-Catholics can be forgiven for reducing our faith to its positions on hot-button issues, for often that’s all that seems to distinguish us from anyone else.”
So we're no longer ethnic -- except for the Hispanics, where the Evangelicals are making inroads. But this particular pitch seems to be instead aimed at country club types. Hence, K-Lo is wondering, "Judge Smails, how can I seem to you less of a freak?" So if you are living 40 years ago as a rich Catholic, uh, heads up, this all is useful?
Lettuce prey.
KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: You start your chapter with a flashback: “We’ve all been there. The block party where your neighbor sees you putting ketchup on your hamburger and decides this is the time to ask you why Catholics won’t let women be priests.” Whatever do you say?
Nobody has "been there," ever. Ketchup-pouring block-party theological leading questions only happen hypothetically to insane people. If it happened once at any point that is batshit loony, and at any rate still never happens. "We've all been there"? Fuck you. And all your little ones were taught in hedge schools because of the Penal Laws, I suppose?
KIM DANIELS: Moments like this are great everyday opportunities to witness to one’s faith
No they aren't. Block parties are terrible places to discuss your religion.This is a thing you should shut your gob tight about at a party.
the only appropriate response is to meet people where they are and appeal to the positive intention behind their question. In this instance, your neighbor values women’s equality, a value rooted in the Christian idea of the equal dignity of all before God. You point that out, and recognize that like other social institutions, the Church has often failed to live up to this ideal. But you also point out that women have held prominent, unprecedented roles in the Church from its earliest days, through the middle ages when Catholic abbesses led large communities and presided over vast tracts of land
After that, you get your hamburger and chips and move on. Your neighbor will remember less about what you say than how you say it, and these exchanges aren’t about winning debates, but witnessing to your faith. The way you talk and the way you live will be much more convincing than any abstract argument.
So you will have correctly bullshat the question: women can't be Catholic priests because here, examine a pile of mumbo-jumbo sexist horsecrap. Can I get a witness!
There's more, but it's all equally ugly vacant. It's all about how if you're Catholic, you are Oppressed worse than actual poor Americans without health insurance because maybe some woman somewhere might be able to get birth control pills.
I defer to last century's masterful satire.
He told his hearers that he was there that evening for no terrifying, no extravagant purpose; but as a man of the world speaking to his fellow-men. He came to speak to business men and he would speak to them in a businesslike way. If he might use the metaphor, he said, he was their spiritual accountant; and he wished each and every one of his hearers to open his books, the books of his spiritual life, and see if they tallied accurately with conscience.
Jesus Christ was not a hard taskmaster. He understood our little failings, understood the weakness of our poor fallen nature, understood the temptations of this life. We might have had, we all had from time to time, our temptations: we might have, we all had, our failings. But one thing only, he said, he would ask of his hearers. And that was: to be straight and manly with God. If their accounts tallied in every point to say:
"Well, I have verified my accounts. I find all well."
But if, as might happen, there were some discrepancies, to admit the truth, to be frank and say like a man:
"Well, I have looked into my accounts. I find this wrong and this wrong. But, with God's grace, I will rectify this and this. I will set right my accounts."
Some Catholics I know personally did this thing where they shut up and went out and helped the poor, sick, and dying. And without fail, the Official Church gave them shit about it. Weird!