Why I'm becoming Catholic

So, as I mentioned in my last post, going to see Joel Osteen and experiencing his Evangelical-style church service live had a big impact on me. First, it was just inspiring to see so many positive, happy people so excited about Christianity. It was so touching to look around and feel like I was surrounded by thousands of well-meaning people who were honestly trying to make their lives better and become better people.

The other big thing was that it completely clarified for my husband and me that we are Catholic. I really enjoyed the service and plan to go back next time I'm in Houston, but it wasn't a fit for my personality. And I realized as I was dancing around with the crowd to some Christian rock song that the strong cultural disconnect I felt to Christianity when I was younger was really more a disconnect with Protestantism.

I spent most of my childhood in the buckle of the Bible Belt, all of my friends who were religious were Baptist or Methodist, and I spent my first two years of college at an extremely religious, extremely Protestant university. So I had no shortage of exposure to the Protestant Christian culture. I think one of the reasons I didn't bother investigating the truth of Christianity sooner is because when I'd go to Baptist or Methodist services with my friends I would just feel so out of place, I knew for sure that this would never be how I spent my Sundays. Not understanding that there were other ways to worship as a Christian, I just blew off the whole concept and didn't bother to question my atheist beliefs. (Common atheist mistake: basing your beliefs on what's comfortable rather than a search for objective truth).

As we drove back home from Houston last Sunday I thought about this a lot, and was able to condense my feelings into four main reasons that sermon-based worship services (e.g. Joel Osteen and most Protestant church services) don't really work for me. I list these out not as an attack or even objective criticism of these types of services, just to lay out why the route I've chosen is a good one for me. (I have other, more purely theological reasons for my decision, but that's the subject of a different post.)


1. I don't trust individuals' interpretations of the Bible (including my own)

Because I am a jerk, when I went to church services with friends I would always second-guess everything the local preacher told the congregation about how to live their lives based on his interpretation of the Bible. I would often hear a pastor quote one verse from the Bible and harp on it endlessly without putting it in any sort of context. I didn't know much about scripture but I knew enough to know that not every word of it was to be taken as a How-To manual, so I had an aversion to the constant referencing of isolated passages to back up the preachers' points.

But the big thing was that I had a hard time trusting any one person's (including my own) interpretation of the English translation of texts that were written thousands of years ago in completely different languages in cultures that could hardly be more different than that of suburban America. Even before I was aware of the Catholic church's claim of sacred tradition, I just thought it made more sense to go to that institution for advice on what the Bible means, seeing as how they've had 2,000 years to think about it and it goes back to the first church fathers and they've never gone back and forth on matters of doctrine. As Jennifer once wrote, "Two thousand years of faith, and a fine tradition of scholarly theology grounded in scripture has made the body of knowledge within Catholicism terrifyingly broad and almost unfathomably deep." That beats my interpretation of Genesis any day.

And I often think about that when I watch Osteen's service on Sunday mornings. Sometimes he'll quote a Bible verse and get to riffing about how it means that if you're nice to your bitchy coworkers you'll have a good life or something, and I always fantasize that someone will sneak up and politely tap him on the shoulder and whisper, "Umm, you're making that up."


2. It seems like God would have a brightline test for what constitutes going to church

Another thing that never quite set well with me was the wide variety in what constitutes a church service. That thought was especially present at Lakewood on Sunday. We were in a stadium, there was a lot of rock music, there were no crosses anywhere, Osteen said a few words about how to have a better life here on earth, and then we all went home. I definitely experienced something, but I kept wondering if God would count that as "going to church".

And seeing as how God has made it pretty clear that he does want people to attend church on Sundays, it seems like he'd give us a brightline test for what constitutes fulfilling that obligation. I mean, if I walk into a building with a cross on the roof and hear someone read a Bible verse and we bow our heads and say "Praise the Lord. Amen." and then turn around and leave, does that count? My gut tells me it doesn't, but it technically has all the elements of many Sunday services.

Eucharist-centered church service appealed to my checklist-loving, anal-retentive nature even before I was bought into the concept that it's the Real Presence: it's what the early church fathers did, and it's a very clear test as to whether or not what you just went to was something that God would consider a church service.


3. I suck at praying

This one is particular to Osteen's type of service, but the emphasis on "feeling the spirit" strikes me as dangerous. First of all, when a large crowd of people is really emotional about something I always feel like the situation is a bit precarious. Luckily I think Osteen and others of his ilk only have the best intentions. But if, hypothetically, he wanted to gradually work in some bad messages into his Sunday sermons it probably wouldn't be too hard to get the crowd to go along with it. When a crowd has the emotional momentum of a freight train and everyone is happy and crying and feelin' the spirit and shouting "yes!" and "amen!" to everything the speaker is saying, it's easy to get caught up in the moment and just start agreeing with everything you hear. That emotional high can be like a drug, for better and for worse.

But also, even at the less emotional types of services, I find that I'm not very good at freeform prayer. I love the Church's use of memorized prayers such as the Hail Mary and those little prayer cards for various situations. When I saw all the people holding hands and praying with the Prayer Partners last Sunday I thought of how embarrassing it would have been for them to see my weak attempt at coming up with my own prayers. ("Hello? Is this thing on? Kidding. Anyway, God, or should I say 'Lord'? Anyway, this is a prayer, in case you didn't know. But you probably did. You know, because you're all-knowing God. WHAT is she wearing? Wait, sorry, got sidetracked there. I guess now I'm going to have to pray about being judgmental during prayer. Where was I?...") I know that it's important to have a more personal relationship with Jesus and not just stick to memorized prayers, but for those of us who are spiritually incompetent and not there yet, being able to turn to time-tested rituals and verses that express what we cannot is very helpful.


4. Good Protestant preachers have too much to lose

As I watched Osteen up on stage I kept thinking of a deacon I heard on Relevant Radio last week who was a popular Evangelical preacher before he converted to Catholicism. I thought of how hard it must have been for him to make that leap since sermon-based services inherently revolve around the ego of the one preaching the sermon. I tried to picture Joel Osteen converting to Catholicism and realized that it would be virtually impossible. Even if he came to think that this is the true way God wants us to worship (I'm not saying it is or isn't, just a hypothetical), it would take an almost inhuman amount of moral strength to walk away from a situation that's so closely intertwined with his ego and his ability to feed his family. The more you have to lose, the less open you are to seeking truth wherever it may lead you and the more likely you are to want to maintain the status quo.

I like the fact that my priest has very little to lose. Granted, he's sacrificed a lot in his life to become a priest and he's well-respected in the diocese, but giving up being poor and celibate has some pretty big upsides too. And it fits well with my crotchety personality that he's required to stick to time-tested Church teachings when interpreting scripture and doling out advice from the pulpit. If I take issue with these teachings I have a dizzying amount of resources at my disposal to understand why the Church believes what they do. Plus, even if my priest were to say crazy stuff in his homilies, they're really an afterthought to the Mass anyway. People aren't there to see him.


So, this is what I thought about as we drove home on Sunday. This experience came at a good time as I've finally made some headway into getting into RCIA and am currently making plans to have my children baptized and have my marriage confirmed by the Church. After thinking about all this I feel more confident than ever that I'm finally where I need to be.

Feelin' the spirit

Sunday at Lakewood Church - Part I

We went to visit my mother-in-law in Houston over the weekend, and she insisted that we go to see her favorite preacher, Joel Osteen, preach live. I actually watch his show every Sunday morning before mass. He's really more of a motivational speaker than a preacher, and it's hard not to enjoy watching his positive, "God Lite" message. Plus, I like to keep tabs on what he says since she quotes him in just about every phone call we have and really uses his teachings to guide her life.

The only church services I've ever been to are the orthodox masses at my current parish and the occasional trips to the Dallas Baptist or Methodist churches that my childhood friends went to. They were all very quiet, sedate services. So when my mother-in-law leaned over to me in the car on the way over and touched me on the knee and said in her thick East Texas accent, "Jennifer, there are going to be some people here feelin' the spirit" I was picturing the people I see at Mass on Sundays who have a glisten of a tear in their eye as they pray before communion. Umm, wrong.

So I walked into the stadium and was stunned by the beautiful blue lighting on the roof and the gorgeous stage. The music started and it was LOUD. The atmosphere was more energetic than any rock concert I've ever been to as everyone jumped to their feet and started singing and waving their hands in the air. Then there was a quiet moment where "Prayer Partners" went around to pray with anyone who needed someone to pray with. Many people were in tears. And this was all before Joel Osteen even came on stage. My son kept looking at me and saying, "Church?" It was cute to watch his little mind try to reconcile how this is called the same thing as that place we usually go on Sundays.

Osteen's sermon of the day was about loyalty, and at one point he was talking about a nice letter his brother sent him when he was going through a tough time. The thought of the letter got him so choked up he couldn't continue, and people in the crowd started yelling well-wishes and encouragement. It was quite an emotional moment. I think I even saw my husband wipe a tear from the corner of his eye.

I'm not sure how many people were there but it was definitely in the thousands. And two characteristics of this huge crowd of people had me in awe: the first was the overwhelmingly positive vibe in the stadium. I didn't know you could get that many people together under one roof and have zero tension. The good energy was almost tangible. I actually thought that if my hardline atheist dad was there even he would have been forced to crack a smile and kind of get into it. For the first time I could understand those people you see on TV who get so "into the spirit" that they end up dancing and rolling around on floors. The excitement was like a wave that swept over you that was really hard to resist.

The second and most salient characteristic of the crowd was how seamlessly racially mixed it was. My (admittedly limited) experience, especially with Protestant churches, has been that religion is often a segregated affair. The Baptist and Methodist churches I visited in my childhood were 95% white and, honestly, I think a family of a different race might have felt uncomfortable attending services there. But the crowd at Osteen's service was like some sort of united nations; it was impossible to pick out one particular ethnic group as predominating in the crowd. During the prayer service a young black Prayer Partner walk up to the two little old white ladies in front of me and asked if he could pray with them. They all held hands and prayed, and all three were hugging and in tears by the end of it. It was really touching.

Though I think Lakewood is technically nondenominational my husband told me that this is probably what you'd call an Evangelical church service. So I had my first Evangelical church experience. It gave me a lot to think about, and came at an interesting time in my spiritual life. I have more thoughts than can fit into one post (and, as usual, it's way too late for me to be up writing blog posts) so I'm going to throw together a Part II sometime later this week.

Are. You. Kidding. Me?

Click on this image to enlarge it. It must be seen to be believed.


I would find the sex-drenched ad touting "the last days of innocence" obnoxious enough if it were for some nighttime HBO show. But this is what ABC Family is showing? What on earth is on the regular ABC network if this is what passes for family entertainment?

Jessica

I was working on a post and wanted to quote Cancerbaby's astounding post about Static, which I think is one of the best summaries of what it feels like to be an atheist I've ever read. (As some of you know, her blog "Cancer, Baby" is a chronicle of her struggles with infertility and desire to start a family. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer shortly after trying to conceive her first child.)

Here is the quote from her post about static that I was looking for:

Nevertheless, I would imagine that what ultimately drove [Elliot Smith] to kill himself was that strangely simultaneous discordance and inertia, that static, that encroaches on and threatens the meaning that we, all of us, are pulling and prying from the jaws of our joy and our sadness. Beyond that possible insight, there is little left to say.

And so, despite all the sense I've tried to make of my life over the last two years -- and despite all the sense that Elliott Smith fans have tried to make of his death over the last two years -- this requiem can't and won't create meaning. Perhaps its only merit is that it was written at all. Because sometimes, there's no meaning to be made about the subject of cancer and disease, or the subject of depression and suicide, or the subject of dying young. Sometimes, the static is all that there is.

She's an amazing writer, so I spent some time surfing through her archives and came across this crushingly beautiful homage to her husband. Click through and read the whole thing. It's one of the best blog entries I've ever read.

Then I clicked to the current posts to see what's new, see if there was any news on the adoption front. I am surprised by how much it affected me to read that she died a couple weeks ago, two days before Mother's Day. The last post, written by a friend, simply states, "My phone just rang. It was cancerbaby's husband. 'I guess you know why I'm calling,' he said. She died this morning. She was thirty-three. Her name was Jessica."

Please pray for Jessica and for her husband.

The elevator pitch

Back in my career days all the sales guys I knew were always talking about their "elevator pitch," a compelling, 30-second summary of what their company sells and why you need it that they'd use in case they ever happened to rub elbows with some big potential client, say, in an elevator. Obviously it's not meant to close the deal on the spot, but to at least pique the potential client's interest and get them to want to follow up.

So my husband and I have spent a lot of time lately trying to come up with elevator pitch for Catholicism. One of the upsides of our former debaucherous and completely non-religious lifestyle is that people are shocked -- shocked -- when we tell them that we're becoming Catholic. And I think we need to have EMS standing by next time we tell someone that, yes, we mean orthodox Catholicism. (The response that we both get frequently is "What?...You're kidding, right?...What?") The surprise of us becoming serious Catholics is enough to shock people into having an open mind for a moment. They ask us why we chose this route and listen intently while we answer.

I've been in this situation three times in the past couple of months, and my husband has experienced it probably four times. It's stressful because I feel like the spotlight's on and I have just a fleeting moment to get this person to possibly open her mind to faith (all the people I've talked to happen to be agnostic/atheist and have a particular distaste for Christianity).

So far most of the people I know have no idea that I've gone this route, so I'm going to find myself in the position of being asked about my faith more and more over the next couple of years as it comes out. Before everyone gets over the shock and just starts writing us off as "that weird religious family" I'd like to make the most of this rare opportunity to explain my theological decisions to people who are actually listening.

I have a few different pitches I've used that seem to have been somewhat successful. I was going to lay them out in this post but decided I'd like to hear what other people have to say first. If you were to find yourself in a position where somebody who is not particularly religious asked you why you're Catholic (or whatever your religion is), and you only had a few sentences to summarize it, what would you say?

Divine intervention

I had a horrible morning this morning. Not horrible in the sense of anything truly bad happening to me, but just one of those days where a lot of little things went wrong and I was too tired to deal with it. The main thing was that I Didn't Get Enough Sleep™ last night for the, uhh, 597th night in a row, and it was made particularly bad by this new third trimester insomnia thing I've been experiencing where I wake up at 5:30am exhausted but unable to go back to sleep. It's a bad combination with the fact that I'm not usually able to fall asleep at night until around 11:30pm and have to get up three or four times per night to use the bathroom and/or deal with my son's night wakings.

Around 11:00am I was mentally spiraling out of control. I violated my big rule about not thinking about life problems when I'm over-tired and decided that my life is a shambles, everything is impossible and, P.S., I don't think I even believe in God again today. My 20-month-old was also a bit grouchy and after the second time he threw a tantrum and tried to slap me in the face I decided that for the safety of all involved we'd better go take a drive. Anywhere. Just around the city or whatever. At least that way my son would be happy and I could sit in air conditioning.

I ended up on the road that goes past our parish. When I realized I was going to drive right by it I thought about stopping in to try for the sixth time to accomplish the seemingly impossible task of signing up for RCIA (I've been trying since January) but decided not to. Then as I drove by I saw our priest standing in the parking lot and changed my mind. I absolutely adore him and have never had a chance to introduce myself so I did an Evel Knievel, wheels-screeching 180-degree turnaround to try to catch him.

I ended up missing him but decided to go talk to someone about getting into RCIA while I was there. A friendly deacon was able to help me (though I'm still not signed up -- arrrrgh!) and I got back in the car to head home, my mood signficiantly improved.

Then, as I was pulling out of the parking lot, a mom with a minivan full of kids drove in past me. Then another one. I looked in my rear-view mirror to see yet another mom with a bunch of kids walking into the church. I looked at the clock and realized that mass was starting right now. I've never been to mass during the week since I didn't think there was a point since I can't take communion, but I decided that today was the day to check it out. Some more creative driving later, I was back in the parking lot and getting my confused son out of his carseat again.

I went directly to the "cry room" and, to my surprise and delight, it was half full! (For those of you reading this later, I'm writing this on a Tuesday). I counted the total people in attendannce at around 60 or 70, about 20% of that being babies and kids. After the mass I walked outside to see all the kids running around the grounds while the mothers stood around chatting and introducing themselves to one another. "Those six over there are mine," said one. "I have five myself -- so far!" said another.

I struck up a conversation with one incredibly friendly, sharp lady who was there with her five kids and we had a long talk about the Schoenstatt Collegium, which sounds like a very interesting educational model, and she also mentioned that she happens to be a doula (one of the things I haven't yet mentioned here is my apprehension about doing natural birth again and my difficulty finding a doula around here who's on the same page theologically as I am). Meeting her was, well, God-sent.

Feeling like a fish out of water wasn't making my journey into faith any easier and, as I've mentioned, is something that's been on my mind a lot lately. So seeing all these mothers and their children going to daily mass was a much-needed breath of fresh air for me -- not to mention just being in church, praying and getting a blessing from the priest. I felt like a new person as I strapped my son into the car seat to head home again.

Earlier today when things were at a low point I had started to say a prayer to ask God for help getting through the day but stopped in mid-sentence, deciding that there was nothing that could possibly turn it around. Looks like he stepped in anyway. A skeptic would write off the events that led me to mass and to this newfound community of women who I had desperately been wanting to meet as mere coincidence, but it wasn't. I can't explain it, but I know it wasn't. It was God reminding me of his presence and his grace and his generosity just when I needed it most.

Poverty of intimacy: the greatest sickness

Sorry the comments to my second to last post got heated, but I think the overall discussion was good. It cheered me up to read a note on Jennifer's site from a woman who said that after reading the comments over here and there she feels like, "God is working on my heart regarding my future fertility through you and your commentors."

Anyway, as much as I'd like to stick only to feel-good subjects that don't lend themselves to debate, the topic will probably be one of the more commonly discussed themes on this site, because it's something close to my heart.

Not the theory I posited about society's mobility and its effect on women per se, but the glaring fact that many women today (dare I say the majority?) are not happy making staying at home with their children their primary vocation. As a housewife I feel dragged down daily by the fact that I don't know a single woman who has found fulfillment in staying at home with her children (some stay home but don't like it, others just go the daycare route as soon as possible), and that pop culture just reinforces the message that being home with kids is a huge "sacrifice," holding up the bizarre notion that sitting in a cubicle under fluorescent lights all day is the path to personal fulfillment.

For all of human history mothers didn't even consider doing anything other than raising their own children, and it would appear they mostly enjoyed it. (In fact, I'm sure they did -- anyone who knows women knows it wouldn't take us 20,000 years to change something we didn't like). :) Then around 1960 they suddenly started joining the workforce in droves, turning up their nose at being housewives and even motherhood in general.

As you know, my theory about this is that it's because humans are inherently social creatures and we hate isolation. And in modern society most women are very isolated when they stay home. Take a walk down any suburban street during the day and you practically expect to see a tumbleweed roll by to make the tableau of desolation complete. (Sure, you can pack the kids in the car and go to a playgroup, but they're usually pretty lackluster since nobody really has anything in common.) I think it's the psychological pressure of not having any significant day-to-day social network that drives so many women into the workforce whether they need the money or not. (Ask 10 women who put babies in day care to go back to work for non-financial reasons what's so great about working and at least eight of them will say something about "adult conversations" right away.)

I should note, though, that I should have been more clear in my previous post when I said that it's much harder to raise kids today than it was 150 years ago. Of course it's vastly easier physically, but it's much harder mentally, because of the isolation and not having help with your children. Not that women usually had people who functioned as "babysitters" and would completely take care of the children, but they did have a bunch of trusted female relatives in and out all day, so they could at least turn their back for a moment. [In another post I'm going to write a bit more about some conversations I had that started me thinking about this, one with a 94-year-old female relative and another with a good friend who recently moved to the U.S. from a traditional community in India.]

Steve G. provided a great observation from Mother Teresa on this point: "In the developed countries there is a poverty of intimacy, a poverty of spirit, of loneliness, of lack of love. There is no greater sickness in the world today than that one."

But anyway, I'm happy to be wrong. The mobility/isolation idea could be way off and that's fine. But it doesn't change the fact that I look around at the world and feel like I'm one of a dying breed because I find children to be an astounding blessing and hope to have many of them and I genuinely enjoy taking care of them and my husband. If I lived in a previous era I would not feel like an outcast for those opinions, and that's not a utopian fantasy, it's a fact.

I would love to see all those of us who care about fostering a culture of life in our society put our heads together and think about why it is that so few women are happy to make their primary vocation raising their children. Is it social isolation? Is it economics? Greed? Maybe contraception?

I am blessed to have so many intelligent, thoughtful, well-spoken commentors on this blog so I'd love to hear your thoughts. I understand if you're all commented-out from the last few posts and nobody wants to have this discussion here and now. But I encourage you to think about it as I believe resolving this issue is a cornerstone to building a culture of life in America.

Clarification

I want to clarify that the points I made in my last post were not meant to be an argument for not having big families. I just think that a lot more women would choose that option if we honestly addressed the fact that it's more difficult without a support system. Once the issue is out on the table it can begin to be addressed. Right now most women I know feel like they're having a much more difficult time raising kids than they should and have no idea why. They just blame themselves and get despondent and start thinking about going back to work. I felt that way for a while (except for the going back to work part), but once I realized what the problem was I got positive and proactive about it and got a good support system in place, and it made all the difference in the world. I just wanted to share that with other women in case it helps.

I agree wholeheartedly with Jennifer that openness to life is of dire importance demographically as well as morally (my dad is living in a Muslim country right now and every time he sends me email stories of life and culture there I think, "Oh, man, we're screwed.") My thinking is that we should try to figure out why women (even most Catholic women) are so opposed to having big families these days, address the issues openly, and come up with solutions.

My take is not, "It's hard to be solely responsible for young children without help so therefore you should try not to have too many young children around at once." The way I see it is, "Children are a blessing, new life is always a blessing. If you don't feel that way it may be because you're having a hard time being solely responsible for young children without help, so let's sit down and try to figure out how you can hook up a support system."

But while I enjoy brainstorming about the challenges of modern life with a big family (especially since I've never seen a big family in action so, personally, I'll need all the tips I can get), it's not worth it if I'm taking part in perpetuating the idea that having a lot of children is "just too hard". We must keep the big picture in mind. As usual, Jennifer says it best:

Life is fragile. Life is transitory. And it is sacred. You do not control it--the Lord does. The womb, throughout scripture, is referenced as the conduit for grace, the most likely interface between God and the world. All of his prophets and saints have been sent through the womb. Even to women, I imagine that sometimes, felt less than up to the task and perhaps even a little tired--he saw fit to send his only son through the womb of a humble and willing woman, terrified and weak, with no protection accept the good grace of a working man named Joseph who, could have understandably and morally acceptably broke their engagement with her quietly. He did not.

Is it acceptable to use our knowledge of the human body to respect the conduit through which God interfaces with the world? Yes. Is it understandable? Absolutely. Is it ideal?---no it is not. We accept that we are all not made in the image of Joseph and Mary and that we struggle and fear and find very real limits to our capacity to give of ourselves. We cannot fault others for being human and having limits. Hey, sometimes the thought of another 9 months of physical discomfort and the responsibility of that life is just too much to handle and no one should blame a person for knowing their limits and acknowledging them frankly.

But don't look at limits and call them virtues.

What makes it so hard

Thank you all for the great comments to my posts on contraception (here and here and here). I appreciate everyone's honesty. This is especially relevant for me right now since I'm about to face family planning decisions for the first time in my life after my second baby gets here in July.

A lot of issues regarding contraception, NFP and large families have been brought up (for those of you who haven't been keeping up with the discussion I encourage you to scan through the comments -- great stuff). But the one that's most interesting to me is the issue of the difficulty of raising children.

There's a huge, HUGE problem in the world right now that is wreaking havoc on societies (particularly America) that isn't given the credit it's due: the breakdown of communities due to the mobilization of society. The 180-degree change in day to day life that's happened since post-WWII advances in communication, economics and technology have made it commonplace for families to bounce around from place to place, often making moves of thousands of miles or more.

A book or two could be written about all the devastating effects it's had on people, but let's think for a moment just about how it affects women:

Pretty much all of our ancestors who lived before 60 years ago lived in the same geographically small communities their whole lives, as did their immediate and extended families. Your next door neighbor was your sister, your parents lived down the street, and cousins, nieces and nephews were constantly in and out of your house. Even your neighbors who weren't relatives were people you'd known your whole life.

As a woman, having daily help was a given. Younger sisters, nieces and other mothers were constantly around. All throughout the day you had little breaks where you could take your eyes off the kids for a minute since there were trusted relatives or friends around to watch them.

Contrast that to today:

We mothers have no breaks. I liken being a stay-at-home mother today to being an air traffic control operator who works 12 hours a day, seven days a week, while being on call all night. You have NO mental break. Ten minutes to grab a quick shower? Not with a toddler in the house. Just take him into the bathroom with you? Fine, but be prepared to spend 15 minutes cleaning up after a wet toilet paper party. Having a bad day and need five minutes to collect yourself over a cup of coffee? Out of the question. And for those of us whose children don't sleep well, don't forget to throw chronic, often debilitating exhaustion into the mix. The theory of sleeping when the baby sleeps is nice, but nap time is your only time to pay bills, return phone calls and emails and have a moment to yourself.

To not even be able to turn your back long enough to brush your teeth, to not have a moment to yourself after hours and hours of being around a toddler who's going through a "testing limits" phase, all while functioning on much less sleep than your body requires, is an incredibly stressful way to live. Throw in the needs of a new baby on top of that and it becomes borderline impossible. God designed us to live in close-knit communities and family groups; the modern situation of being on your own personal desert island, by yourself in a house all day where you are the sole person available to provide for your children's safety, nutrition and entertainment, is totally unnatural. It tests the limits of psychological endurance.

On a personal note, I had this theory before I had children and have only found it to be more and more true the longer I am a mother. In fact, when my son was six months old I convinced my mother to sell her house (in a different city) and move to my town so that we could move in with her (I also wanted to save money since we were starting a business, but the main motivation was getting a support system in place for myself). Since my mom does have a job I used the money we save from living here to have a babysitter come a few hours a week to give me time to pay bills, plan dinner menus, go to midwife appointments, etc.

Sound luxurious? It is compared to the lives of most mothers today, yet it's really just the historically "normal" way to live. And I have to say, the difference is night and day. It's like a different life. I still find being a mother difficult, but it's more of a healthy challenge than the "I think I would DIE if I had another child right now!" type of feeling I used to have when I was by myself all day, every day.

To drag poor 'ol Steve G. into this and use the example he gave: If his wife lived in a traditional setting with sisters nearby and a bunch of little nieces and cousins in and out of the house all the time, arguing over who gets to hold the baby next and playing with his sons, I doubt she'd be "terrified" by the prospect of another baby right now. Yes, it would be something to try to avoid, but it wouldn't feel like the end of the world if it did accidentally happen as it (rightfully so) probably would now.

I think this is part of the disconnect between people who are not/not yet parents and those who are. I can see how it seems like, "C'mon, it can't be THAT hard to have kids, it's what God designed us to do and what people have been doing for tens of thousands of years." Or why so many mothers get depressed about their situation, feeling like "Why is it that women all throughout human history have been able to do this and be happy but somehow *I* can't?! What's wrong with me?"

The missing link here is that women have, up until very recently, never had to do it alone. And that makes all the difference in the world.

And I think this situation makes the case for NFP and openness to big families an uphill battle. Today's mother of six is taking on a much, much greater challenge than the mother of six who lived 150 years ago. I'm not exactly sure what the solution is, but I think that addressing this issue is key to having a society that's open to new life.

Playgroup story

[It is not my intention to turn this into the "all contraception, all the time" blog, but the subject keeps coming up over and over again in my life whether I want it to or not, so I feel very drawn to talk about it right now. For those of you who couldn't care less about the subject, check back in a week or so, maybe I'll have gotten it out of my system by then. :)]

So I went to the neighborhood playgroup this morning. There were four other women there, two of the women are Catholic, and all of them are fairly religious, going to church pretty much every Sunday. Somehow the topic of church came up and we chatted about that for a while, all of them indicating that they take their faith pretty seriously.

Then we changed the subject to people who had had babies recently, and one of the women mentioned that a lady in our neighborhood is pregnant with number seven (I must meet her!). All of the mothers reacted as if she'd said the lady is a convicted felon. "Well, I hope that'll be the last one," said one of the mothers. They all asked if she'd indicated that this would be her last child and expressed stern disapproval that she had not. "Well, we're going to have one more [for a total of two] and that's it!" said another mother to unanimous nods of approval.

The playgroup hostess (one of the Catholics) chimed in that she knows someone who just told her she's pregnant with number five. "And she didn't say anything about being done after this one!" she reported. "Can you believe that?" asked another. Everyone shook their heads gravely.

One of the depressing things about the situations is that these are really nice women. They're actually not catty, judgmental people, I guess this issue just touched a nerve. Or, really, I think they probably looked at it like they were stating a simple fact ("it's crazy and somewhat irresponsible not to limit the size of your family") rather than passing judgment based on personal opinion.

It was also somewhat troubling to think that in a few years, if I stay on the theological path I'm on, that might be me being whispered about at playgroups (though I don't care all that much about that).

I think the saddest thing was just the vibe in the room. The phrase "culture of death" randomly popped into my mind as I was listening to them talk. It just felt so...weird, and uncomfortable, to watch these mothers play with their toddlers as they wrinkled their faces in disgust at the notion of having lots of children in their lives. And I couldn't help but thinking, Man, you guys must have some really spectacular plans laid out for the rest of your life that make you so excited about not having any more kids. Because, personally, I don't have any opportunities out there that would be worth the tradeoff of drastically limiting the size of my family. Of course it'll be hard and I don't look forward to kissing our current lifestyle goodbye but, hey, kids are pretty cool too.

But I just hung back from the conversation and busied myself with fixing my son's sippy cup. I thought about how much I wish I knew anyone around here who was open to having a big family. I don't even see big families at my church, which is known for being one of the most orthodox around. Last time I went to Mass I think I only saw two other pregnant women.

Hopefully, as I get more involved in the church, I'll discover that I am not the only person within a 100 mile radius who feels this way. :)

More on contraception

Since I know next to nothing about the Catechism I think of the subject in terms of a few defining moments that started to make me think that maybe the Church was onto something with their teaching that contraception is evil. I can't throw down like Steve G., Jennifer, Arwen and all the others can when it comes to the Cathecism (I'm doing well to even know that the Church says it's wrong). But I am an avid observer of people and spend a lot of time thinking about our society, what's wrong with it and what causes the problems we face today. And more and more I can see that a lot of the absurd ideas our culture holds so dear can be traced back to the widespread acceptance of contraception.

Below are three little vignettes from personal experience that come to mind when I think of the subject. These are just thoughts off the top of my head and not very well thought out (I'm pretty tied up in the Land of the Terrible 2's over here), but I wanted to share since it's how I think of the issue.


1 - A while back I was having a debate with a good friend of mine (who is gay) about gay marriage. I was trying to make what I thought was an astoundingly obvious point that two dudes getting married is not the same thing as a man and a woman getting married. Our argument kept coming back to what you think is the primary purpose of marriage and sex. When I suggested that the union between a man and a woman was special because it involves the creation of life he (and most of our other friends who were there that evening) was almost confused by the comment. Based on the widespread use of contraception among heterosexuals, he just took it for granted that the primary purpose of sex is for pleasure, like getting a massage or something; therefore the main purpose of marriage is just to lock in monogamy while you're enjoying that sexual pleasure with your partner. So, he wanted to know, what's so different about a gay couple wanting that?

There were more details to our debate that I'll leave out since the gay marriage issue is not the main point of this post, but as my husband and I drove home that night I realized that his points had touched a nerve. It was back before I was even considering joining the Catholic Church, but it really got me thinking about what the purpose of marriage is if having children is seen as optional, something to be controlled and worked in if/when you feel like it.


2 - Back in my college days, at the height of my atheism, I was pro-choice and hung out with a very liberal, pro-choice crowd. But there was an interesting, usually unspoken dynamic between us pro-choice gals when it came to the level of our approval of abortions (though we would have *never* admitted this). For example: when one of our friends had an abortion because she simply didn't use protection, we all frowned on that. We didn't exactly see abortion as killing a baby, but we also thought it was something to be avoided, and we all leveled all the blame for the unpleasant situation squarely on her shoulders. We weren't all that supportive of her decision to abort and even among us liberals she faced a fair amount of pressure to consider keeping the child.

Then, a year later, another acquaintance got pregnant when she was on the pill because her doctor didn't tell her that the antibiotics she was taking rendered the pill ineffective. In this case we were all offering to be first in line to take her to the clinic. Because SHE shouldn't have the bear the responsibility for this situation because it wasn't her fault: it was the pharmaceutical company's fault, her doctor's fault. If there were some way to magically make her doctor carry the pregnancy and bring the child to term I think we would have been fine with that because, after all, it was his fault, not hers.

When I think back to my pro-choice days I often imagine what my opinions would have been like if contraception was not widely used/available. I know it doesn't make a lot of logical sense, but I would have been much more uncomfortable with the idea of abortion. The culture I grew up in taught that sex is primarily for pleasure (thanks to contraception), and you shouldn't have to be burdened with any unpleasant side effects that go along with that. And, in particular, if you were using contraception and it failed, you DEFINITELY have the right to an abortion since it's not your "fault." The blood is not on your hands in that case. [Let me reiterate that these are not at all my current opinions, just flashing back to my clueless days.]


3 - Remember when Sex and the City was the big show? There was a group of girls at my work who really got into that mentality and that lifestyle. I went out with them for happy hour one time and they were constantly talking about who they were going to "score" with that night, which random dude from the bar they were going to take home. On Monday mornings at the office they would often sit around the break room and talk about what hot sex they had with men whose names they couldn't remember. Even at the time I thought it was so strange, sad and terrible for society to have a generation of women acting this way. They tried so hard to act empowered as they recounted their tales of anonymous sex, but their insecurity and feelings of worthlessness were written all over their faces.

I don't care what the pro-NFP people say about how effective it is, there's no way you'd have that sort of behavior deemed "cool" in a society without artificial contraception. Try to imagine Carrie Bradshaw and her friends being held up as hip and glamorous in a world without contraception.


I have no idea about the specifics of the Cathecism or about the scriptural basis for the Church's teachings. But I find that, as with many other things they teach that I once thought crazy, they work. If applied honestly and correctly, they make the world a better place. And when people blow off age-old teachings like this crazy things start to happen, rippling through societies with effects more insidious than anyone could have guessed.


OK, I'm up waaay too late. I'm going to be a blob tomorrow. You guys need to stop writing such though-provoking stuff! Can't I get some "shut up you suck" trolls over here to give me a mental break? :)

Contraception

One of the more shocking aspects of my journey into Catholicism is that I pretty quickly came to agree with the Church's stance on contraception. Considering that I did not plan to have children at all just five or six years ago, that's a big change of heart.

The first time I visited our parish I saw a little flyer posted in the parish hall that showed two different plants as symbols of the pro-life and pro-choice worldviews. The former was blossoming and alive, the latter was wilting and dying. [UPDATE: Here's a PDF of the flyer.] The illustrations linked the use of contraception to all sorts of evils in the world, not just the obvious ones like euthanasia and abortion. When I first saw it I thought it was interesting but also quite a stretch. My thought was that the Church was taking their hangup about contraception way too far and exaggerating to try to scare people into agreeing with them.

But in the past few months of researching and thinking about it I came to see that, whaddayaknow, the 2,000-year-old Catholic Church had more insight into the issue than I did. Case in point was simply thinking about my married life with vs. without artificial contraception. I quickly saw how radically differently I'd live my life depending on which route I choose:

Using contraception puts me in the mentality of what's convenient for me, what the limit of kids is that I can have and meet my financial goals and remain firmly implanted in my middle-class lifestyle. It makes it easy to prioritize my personal desires over that of my children since I feel in control of when I'll be "free," when my youngest child goes to school. Whereas forgoing contraception puts me in a totally different mindset. I rearrange my life and goals based on being a mother and meeting my children's needs since I'm not sure when we'll be "done"; talk and planning for the things I'll do that are all about me once my all kids are in school takes a back seat since I have no idea when that will happen. And, most important, it forces me not to make material things/lifestyle a priority in my life. I'll have to rearrange my finances based on the number of children I have, not vice versa.

And I can also see how these differing mentalities ripple through society as well. Mark Steyn explains it better than I could (though he's specifically talking about abortion here I think a similar case can be made for the widespread use of contraception):

One consequence of abortion is that, in designating new life a matter of "choice," it made it easier to make judgments about which lives are worth it and which aren't...But it's foolish to think you can raise entire populations to make self-interested judgments about who lives and who doesn't and expect them to remain confined to three trimesters. The "right to choose" is now being extended beyond the womb: the step from convenience conception to convenience euthanasia is a short one, and the step from convenience euthanasia to compulsory euthanasia shorter still.

All that said, choosing to forego the use of contraception is tough. Not just physically and financially, but socially I feel like a fish out of water. In my entire social network I only know one other person who is open to having a big family and uses NFP over artificial contraception. Even the few Catholics I know who seem to take their faith pretty seriously and go to Mass every Sunday have all made nonchalant comments that indicate they plan to use contraception to limit the size of their families.

Being brand new to the Church, I can't quite get a read on where the average Catholic is on this. I live in a really liberal city so I can't tell if that's what's going on or if the average American Catholic just doesn't take the issue all that seriously anymore. Not that it affects whether or not that's the route I'll choose with my family, but I'm just curious to get a pulse on where other Catholics stand.

What do you guys think about all this? Is the use of contraception *that* bad? Do most Catholics seem to be OK with limiting the size of their families these days?

[I hope it's clear that I'm not passing judgment at all on people, Catholic or not, who use contraception. I'm just think it's an interesting issue and am trying to get a read on where other Catholics stand.]

Question: Conquering death

OK, as I said in my recent post, I've been making an effort to clarify what exactly is still so confusing to me about Christian doctrine. In the process of doing this I realized that I'm coming to understand quite a bit of it. But there's one big sticking point that's completely baffling to me, yet is the cornerstone of Christian belief: the fact that they say Christ "conquered death".

I was reading Mark Shea's excellent Making Sense Out of Scripture over my vacation (I highly recommend it for others new to Christianity) and in it he was talking about how Christ's death for our sins undid the process of death and decay that Adam and Eve began with the Fall. Pope John Paul II talked about the same thing in his letter on suffering, and it's clear that understanding this concept is key to understanding God's role in suffering (as well as many other things).

So I need to wrap my mind around this concept, but I'm confused. Here are my questions:

1. Didn't the Jews believe in some sort of afterlife before Jesus came? What did/do the Jews believe happens after you die?

2. Other people were raised from the dead before Jesus (right?). I think I heard something about it in the Old Testament, and Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. So it would seem that death had already been conquered. What makes Jesus' resurrection from the dead mean that death has officially been conquered while the others did not? (I do understand that the significance of his death and what it accomplished is completely different from the others', but I'm just not sure how the resurrection is necessary/fits in to all that).

3. I've read a lot about how Jesus' resurrection means that those who believe in him will be resurrected in body as well as spirit. Some things I've read make it seem like this is the main thing the resurrection accomplished. Why is this important? It seems like heaven is so great that being there as a spirit or being there with some sort of physical body would be great either way. Also, (I hate to be so stupidly literal here, but I have to ask...) if we are resurrected with physical bodies does it mean that we're meant to have eternal life here on earth?

OK, enough cluelessness for one post. Thanks in advance for all comments.

We're back

As you can see from the picture, my uncle's beach house has an amazing view, so it was a great place to spend a week. Flying went OK...though not OK enough that I'll ever fly again with a toddler. And my son actually slept very well in his Pack N Play -- the first night he interrupted me in the middle of the bedtime story and asked to go it it! That moment made all the sleep training worth it.

Whew! It's good to be home. Now I need a vacation from the vacation.