A Dream In Pieces

When I was a young boy, I told my Buddhist grandmother that I was Catholic before I had attended my first Mass and, if my memory serves me right, before I had ever stepped foot into a Catholic church.  There was a Catholic church near my house but nobody in the family ever went, not my parents who still are not particularly religious even though their hearts are in the right place, not my siblings who were not religious, except for my one sister who was supposedly Catholic.  Even she did not attend Mass regularly, but it was she whom I asked to take me to my first Mass [1] for I was too young to go alone.  I remember going there a second time with her, but after that I lost the desire to go again.  That, however, did not stop me from thinking that I was "Catholic," and certainly did not distance me from God.

Without any clue as to what Catholicism meant, I had to make it up.  What I made up was what I loved about Catholicism and the Catholic church.  In my mind, it was a beautiful place filled with kind people I could trust, and they would love me without question, and the priests who lived there were all holy, in the flesh in place of God--they were that perfect.  It was a place I felt I belonged.  It was a place I would have loved to spend my time.  I would be comforted there.  I would be safe.

The walls of my made-up church disappeared over time, as did the kind church goers who loved me unconditionally and the holy priests who lived there.  All that was left was God, in a wide open space undefined by boundaries, Who was unconfined by time.  This was a God who knew me but Whom I did not know well, though well enough to know that God would always be there when I called.  For a boy who was a loner but needed a constant companion, and wanted someone reliable to rely on always and wished often for miracles, God was it.

God would be my companion until I learned about Christ, God incarnate, then Christ became my companion.  Sometimes I still mix up the two of Them, but because They are One and the same, I suppose that is alright.

For those who have read some of my recent posts know that I am struggling to bring reality into my imaginary Catholicism, to find a real Catholic church with a real confessor, thinking that by doing so, I would be more like a real Catholic than an imagined one, be reconciled to the Catholic church despite all its imperfections, be happy with it and have happiness that is associated with the very people who are the kind church goers who judge not and love plenty.

However, when I saw a bunch of bishops and archbishops on EWTN, televising the 132nd annual convention of the Knights of Columbus [2], a multi-billion entity [3], I can only wonder what holiness drew them to Florida that is worth their time away from the lonely, the lost, the sick, the poor in their communities, and the money they had to spend on traveling and accommodations.  I suppose if a Catholic fraternity that has no more than $194 in assets compared to the $19.4 billion Knights of Columbus has [4] had called a convention in a public park that all these same religious who had attended the Knight's convention would politely decline the poor fraternity's gathering due to schedule conflicts.  Images such as this ruin my idealistic image of Catholicism and the Catholic church, shattering into pieces my boyhood dream.



[1] Mass was totally foreign to me.  With my sister pointing from time to time to the missalette where I ought to be looking at, I was largely oblivious to what was happening.  I was short and could not see what was going on up front for we were sitting near the back of the church.  My first mass, the one I remember attending, felt like an eternity.  I found it to be long and boring.  In the middle of it, I had to try my best not to fidget, especially when I had to keep standing.  When the time came for Holy Communion, I was looking forward to receiving it but my sister said I could not because I was not Catholic.  I never did receive Holy Communion until after I was baptized.
[2] http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/2110156
[3] See table under the subtitle "Insurance program" at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_of_Columbus and the corresponding footnote 50: "Annual Report of the Supreme Knight" (pdf). Knights of Columbus. August 6, 2013. Retrieved 2013-10-16.
[4] Ibid.