I was born and raised Catholic. Uber Catholic, really. I was baptized at a month old, and remember being dragged to Sunday mass en español with my mom. I went to Catholic school throughout my education (even a Jesuit university!) and when I lived in Ecuador for a few years I belonged to a Catholic Youth Movement. Today, however, I don’t really go to church; I guess I am what you call a “lapsed” Catholic.
G.K. Chesterton once said “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting, it has been found hard and not tried.” That’s pretty smug coming from a former Catholic male who has moved on to another church for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the arrogance of the Church hierarchy and it’s idiotically pedantic approach to the laity which, at least in my area, is at least as educated and obviously more sophisticated than the priesthood.
Having said that, I don’t believe that the Church should change. Catholicism is what it is for better or worse. At the same time, there comes a time when your beliefs become so inconsistent with the Church’s teachings that you can no longer seriously call yourself a Catholic. Birth control is something on which most Catholics, American Catholics at least, ignore the Church’s teachings. Abortion is another thing entirely. Once you have voluntarily (ignoring for this purpose cases of rape, incest and the life of the mother, which most of us would acknowledge are a tiny percentage of unwanted pregnancies) engaged in behavior that you know can result in pregnancy, you’ve already made your choice. To assert that no one should be able to tell you what to do with your body after you’ve already chosen to engage in behavior that results in pregnancy is an odd use of the word choice. If you exercise “choice” before you have sex, you are empowered. If you claim that your choice occurred only after you’ve become pregnant, your turning yourself into a victim of pregnancy. Once you’ve brought a human life into existence by voluntary behavior, your “choice” affects at least one other person who has no choice whatsoever. Moreover, from a male perspective it’s a one sided choice. You get to choose whether or not to terminate the pregnancy but if you choose not to, your male partner has no choice. He pays child support for the next 18 years.
At the end of the day, you can do whatever you choose to do. But there comes a point when that means that you are no longer a Catholic.
The issue of choice is not the main one for me because there’s Jesus’ teachings, and then there’s Catholicism: two very separate philosophies. Jesus loved women. The Church doesn’t. It’s an outmoded, paternalistic organization. Then, there’s the separation of Church and State, and the tax exempt status granted to religious institutions. The Church has no business telling Catholics to Vote Catholic if they want to keep their tax-exempt status.
Thank you fro your comment Sandra. Yes, i too think Jesus’ teachings and the Church’s are not one and the same! We sometimes forget that even Jesus went against the teachings of his religion, Judaism, he was a pretty outspoken guy and called out the scribes a few times! We also forget that women appear more in the Bible than what the Sunday readings in Church have us believe, there were women in the New Testament, other than Mary and Mary Magdalene! (examples: Phoebe, Lydia, Priscilla) I wish more of these stories were known!