Practicing Catholicism

Sorry I’ve been MIA lately, kids.  I got hit with a pretty considerable Holiday Hangover, both mentally and economically.  You’d think that would mean I’m spending more time at home in front of my computer, but I’ve also discovered online video games (thanks to my roommate) and have been wasting many hours killing zombies and blowing up spaceships.

I got interviewed for The Catholic Spirit (the official newspaper for the Archdiocese of St. Paul/Mpls) a while back, to get a perspective on the show I’m currently performing, Altar Boyz.  It was pretty straight forward, nothing different from what I would expect from a Catholic newspaper.  But now that all the Holiday-related shenanigans are over, I’ve had some time to step back and think about it, well, one question in particular.

“I would like to know if you are still a practicing Catholic?”

Before we go any further, Alex Trebek would like to remind you to phrase your question in the form of a question, but I digress.  While I was looking at online responses to the reviews of our show, I came across a blog written by a woman who apparently is a very traditional Catholic.  She decided that based on the reviews, she wanted to publicly denounce the show, and the theater for producing it.  She insinuated that there are disgruntled “former Catholics” in the theater world who are hell-bent on taking down the Church brick by brick.

So am I still a practicing Catholic?

Well, if you’re asking, do I still go to church? The quick answer is no.  But does that mean that after attending a parochial grade school, Catholic high school, and a Catholic college, that I don’t practice Catholicism?  This is one of those things that, in my opinion, is one of the reasons people of my generation (and the generations to follow) are growing more and more disillusioned with the idea of organized religion.  Could I be a promiscuous, drug-dealing, serial killer that drop-kicks baby harp seals just for the fun of it, and still make it to weekly mass–just so I could go around saying that I’m a practicing Catholic?  When I was a little kid, some non-Catholic friends told me that Catholics can do whatever they want as long as they go to confession.  I don’t believe that’s true.

Nor do I believe that going to church is what makes someone a person of faith.

A professor of mine in college, a monk, once said that there is more diversity within the Catholic church than there is between Catholics and other denominations.  I don’t know why that stuck with me, but I do know that when I think about what Catholics are said to believe, I disagree with a lot of things.  When a friend of mine was getting confirmed, she told me that she was having second thoughts about her confirmation because there is so much she disagrees with.  I told her that the only way to change something is to engage it.  Walking away from the Church doesn’t help it change.  It needs to change from within.

According to the Dictionary program on my computer, catholic is an adjective that means “including a wide variety of things, all-embracing.”  The Thesaurus lists Universal, Diverse, Broad, Comprehensive, Liberal, All-encompassing and All-inclusive as it’s synonyms.

So am I still a practicing catholic?  Of course.  I practice open-mindedness,  I honor pluralism and diversity.  I just wish that other Catholics realized that that’s the foundation of our faith.