Living Catholic in a secular world

Friday, May 15th, 2015

I used to get annoyed when people would complain about the secularisation of society.

I never understood why this was a problem.

I used to attribute their lamentations to either a desire for a homogenous society or a desire for political power.

My church offers a CD of the week from Lighthouse Catholic Media. Each week it is on display in the narthex.

I have learned a lot from these cds. They have allowed me to more fully understand my faith and more fully live my faith.

But I remember one time I was listening to a woman speak, and she mentioned that once she converted fully to Catholicism, she started to feel out of place in her old circles.

She said she no longer wanted to do the things that she used to do. Her standard weekend outings were no longer as pleasurable for her.

To my secularized heart, that sounded horrible.

It sounded to me like she had rejected people just because they viewed the world from a slightly different angle.

It sounded intolerant, and judgmental, and condescending.

Vibrant faith

Clearly I had missed her point.

Now, about a year later, I find myself sitting in my living room tonight with a heavy heart.

A lot has changed in my life over the last year or two.

My family and I have found a wonderful and vibrant faith community.

We have found a place that welcomes people with open arms.
We have found a community that places an emphasis on living the faith rather than just preaching it.
We have found a place where people truly and honestly strive to serve God and His people.

And what is most remarkable is that we feel like we fit in. We don’t feel rejected. We don’t feel judged. We don’t feel unworthy.

This is good because our children go to school there, and we spend every weekend going to Mass there, and we have found most of our friends and social groups there.

We are different

But when we started at this parish, we were a lot different than we are now.

We had just decided to start attending Mass regularly again after years away.

We didn’t make this decision because of a call to holiness and communion with the Catholic Church.

We made this decision because we wanted our children to grow up in a Catholic School, and we wanted them to have the stability that comes along with regular Mass attendance.

It was for them.

We were certain our hearts would remain closed.

In other words, we were going to a Catholic Church, but we weren’t exactly Catholic.

But slowly, we found that while we weren’t seeking the Catholic Church, she had been seeking and pursuing us. And finally we let her find us.

Now we try to surround ourselves with open conversations and the honest sharing of this experience of life.

We seek out people who teach their children the same values that we want ours to grow up with.

We constantly seek more ways to allow God and faith and holiness into our lives.

In other words, we surround ourselves with people who inspire us and who help cultivate in us a desire to do more, to do better, to live more authentically in communion with God.

New view

We fail a lot. But we keep striving.

And to be completely honest, sometimes that makes me feel alone and sad and defeated.

Because I now look around the world, and I see a society that doesn’t care about the same things that I now care about.

I see a society that cares about justice but not grace.
That cares about political correctness… except when it comes to Christianity.
I see a culture that values irreverence in the name of a laugh.
And I see a culture that would much rather paint people into stereotypes than try to bridge the gaps and understand and respect the worldviews of its people.

I am not saying I am above this secular culture.

I am not saying I am holier than this culture or better than this culture.

I’m just saying that I no longer really feel like I fit in where I once did.

And if I step back and look at this, I realize that this is part of the call of Christianity – we are called to be in the world and not of the world.

We are called to be constantly looking up. We are called to something more, and in return, we will find something much deeper.

I just finished reading Angela’s Ashes.

In a way, I longed for that society — a society that while extraordinarily flawed and misguided, wasn’t afraid to speak of God and wasn’t afraid to proclaim their truth.

It seemed so different than ours. It was so different from ours.

I sometimes wonder if societies like that could exist anymore. Can a world be created that seeks out God at the expense of temporal pleasures? Can we fix the trajectory we’ve been on for decades? Can we find our way back?

I don’t know the answer. Only God knows that. And all we can do is fall to our knees and pray without ceasing.

I’m glad I found a different path.

A path that leads me to a deeper feeling of peace and connectedness. Now it would be amazing if we could bring more people on our journey. I know it would feel a whole lot less lonely.

Amanda Knapp – is an overextended but remarkably happy stay at home mother to three little girls, ages 2-6. In life before children. She writes to stay sane and to purge all of the doubts that wander through her mind. After a few years floundering in her faith, she, her husband, and her three girls have found their way back home to the Catholic Church, and she enjoys sharing how her faith plays a role in her every day life. She blogs about mothering, life, and faith on her blog, Indisposable Mama