Me Skeleton Has Flesh

[Ash Wednesday]

It helps someone else, too -- me!

How amesome and inspiring, hyper.

I read something beautiful lately in the Catechism and found it really heartening, and I put in bold one sentance I found particularly beautiful.(CCC 166)

Faith is a personal act—the free response of the human person to the initiative of God who reveals himself. But faith is not an isolated act. No one can believe alone, just as no one can live alone. You have not given yourself faith as you have not given yourself life. The believer has received faith from others and should hand it on to others. Our love for Jesus and for our neighbor impels us to speak to others about our faith. Each believer is thus a link in the great chain of believers. I cannot believe without being carried by the faith of others, and by my faith I help support others in the faith.

What you have written very much illustrates this -- your bravery and the crosses you carry are an inspiration to me and others. Some days my faith seems almost absent and hanging by a thread, as events in my life has made the past 2 years some of the worst in my life -- breaking up with the man I thought I would marry, and losing my mother, among other things. I think it is important to remember when we suffer, we do not suffer alone. I remind myself of this every day and makes life easier to bear. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. They illustrate the transcendant beauty of Catholicism that constantly draws us in despite our struggles and sufferings.

Edited January 2, 2004 by Ash Wednesday

[ICTHUS]

Why am I still Catholic?

This is a question that does not get asked me by others so much as it is asked me by myself. I am a homosexual and the world tells me constantly that the Catholic Church, the very mother of my soul, hates homosexuals. There are those who say that Catholicism is all smoke and mirrors maintained by empty, dead rituals and Sacraments that were invented to subdue billions into acquiescing to the Pope’s will.

The world screams in an ever more shrill and cacophonous voice that the Church hates gays and lesbians, even Her own gay and lesbian children. I respond to the chorus by saying that the Catholic Church is an institution founded for the salvation of the human soul, She opens Her arms to all, She listens to all, She loves all; but, and I mean this quite literally, Hell will rise up from the bowels of the earth before She compromises Her understanding of Herself, of the world, and of the nature of right and wrong to make anyone feel more comfortable. She says to gays and lesbians the same thing she says to the rest of Her Children, namely that the primary goal of sexual intercourse is the creation of new human life and that in any case sex is the exclusive province of, and a right solely belonging to, a man and a woman united in sacramental marriage; I agree sometimes this fact is expressed with a harshness that seems hardly necessary, but that does not change the fact itself. The Church accepts sinners of all types without prejudice. She sees every baptized Christian as a work in progress; She takes people as they are and makes all who are willing into what they need to be. It is not part of Her mission to tell people who they should want to sleep with or to help them exchange one kind of lustful thought for another; She makes two rather simple demands of her gay sons and her lesbian daughters, the same demands She makes of her heterosexual children: 1) that they try to live moral, Christ-centered, and God-glorifying lives. 2) that when they fail to live moral, Christ-centered, and God-glorifying lives (and we all, regardless of sexual orientation, gender, and the rest of it will fail) they avail themselves of the endless mercy of God and the boundless grace available in the Sacrament of Penance.

I am still Catholic because I, like all good little gay boys, love ritual and beauty; and let us all face it now: you cannot beat Catholic Liturgy when it comes down to ritual; always the Mass is pointing to mystery, to the unknowable things that make Christianity more than a historical religion based on certain things that happened in a distant place long ago; it hides and reveals the transcendence of God all at once, it hides His transcendence in set gestures, postures, and responses only so that transcendence can be revealed to us again; take the strength of God as one short example transcendence being hidden to be revealed again in the Mass we call Him the “God of power and might”, but we are reminded earlier that He came to earth utterly helpless, completely dependent on a young peasant girl and her husband; and even more dramatically at the consecration, that holy and un-bloody participation in the sacrifice of the cross we realize that God transcended the human understanding of what is to be strong by hanging on a cross with nails going through His sacred flesh and a mocking crown of thorns atop His head. I guess I should say that I am Catholic, because being Catholic reminds me that God is boundless, majestic, transcendent, and sovereign. I think it would be much harder to realize without the drama and the symbolism of the Mass. I am challenged by my faith to move my eyes upwards towards Heaven, to lift my thoughts up towards something ethereal, the transcendent, and away from their usual points of focus— food, sex, money, clothes, and MTV (i.e. “the world, the flesh, and the Devil).

I am still Catholic because of Christ in His Sacraments. I died and rose with Christ at my baptism. I committed myself to Him and His Church when I was confirmed as an adult member of the Body of Christ. I am made as innocent as a five year-old child when I confess my sins during the Sacrament of Reconciliation; I am healed rejoined to the other members of the Body and to Jesus. My eyes have rested on Jesus Christ, I have seen Him, tasted Him, felt His power, bent my knee to Him, and begged that I might receive Him worthily in the Eucharist. What thing outside of the Church can compare to God, living and true, in His Sacraments?

I am Catholic for many reasons, but the all boil down to one beautifully merciful reason, grace; I am Catholic because grace infuses every aspect of Catholicism; from the beauty of Catholic ritual and architecture to the little prompts of actual grace received throughout the course of my daily life.

Hyper, can I quote you in an email to my cousin who dissents from the Church's teaching on homosexuality?

[hyperdulia again]

Yes Icthus. :)