Top 10 reasons to stay Catholic

Tuesday, June 14th, 2011

Right now is not an easy time to stay Catholic. But is it ever easy?

I sometimes speculate that it might be simpler to be Protestant. Protestants are allowed to go church shopping, and they don’t even have to go to a service every week to fulfill their Protestant Duty to God. We Catholics, on the other hand, have to go to Mass every Sunday.

Protestants seem to exert a certain power over God, as though God is only my personal Lord and Savior if I accept him as such. Catholics have a different, deeper theology of God, beginning with the fact that God is God and we are we, no matter what we say we accept on our puny terms. God is all that we humans yearn for, because we yearn for love.

We Catholics know that we cannot understand the God for whom we yearn. We live within our limitations, even as we reach for the grace to see that God’s will be done in us. We partake of the Eucharist on faith, because it grounds us, connects us, and identifies us as pilgrims on the Catholic path.

Although Catholicism may not be the basis for a distinct ethnic group, it is definitely something in our blood. Its roots are more stubbornly embedded in us than those of more recent denominations are in their followers. For us, Church is much more than the place where we worship and tithe.

But the trend I am noticing among friends and family is a considered, slow, painful exodus from the Church of our birth. Issues, controversies, and scandals are wearing us down, and we are withdrawing.

We don’t have the stomach for defending the sometimes indefensible.

We are cutting our losses, tucking away our Rosaries, surrendering our Church to the loudest extremes.

We are not staying Catholic.

Read the list of top 10 reasons to stay Catholic