If Susan Pevensie from the Chronicles of Narnia<\/em> were a real person (or if I were a fictional one), we\u2019d probably have ended up together, at least for a while. I can see us now: zipping through London on my Lambretta, gobbling leapers and thrashing rockers to a soundtrack by the Who,<\/a> until Profumo got hold of her number.<\/p>\n For those who don\u2019t know their Narnia books, Susan is the only character in C.S. Lewis\u2019 seven-volume Christian allegory who backslides. In the last section of the final volume, we\u2019re told she\u2019s disavowed her childhood adventures in a parallel universe governed by a Christlike lion and surrendered herself to the adult pleasures of our own corrupt world. Lewis names \u201clipstick, nylons and invitations\u201d as Su\u2019s new diversions, and I\u2019ve always read them as code words, an uptight Irish Protestant\u2019s way of calling the grown-up Susan a roundheels.<\/p>\n For the past few weeks, I\u2019ve given myself leave to pull a Susan. Lipstick, nylons and invitations (however you want to read them) have been pretty thin on the ground, as usual. But I did decide consciously to back off the whole religion thing for a while, to re-enter the World as what frat boys call a G.D.I \u2014 a God-Damned Independent \u2014 and what Pew researchers call a \u201cnone,\u201d just to see how I liked it.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t bad. It wasn\u2019t great, either. What really surprised me, in truth, was just how little change I experienced. In both places, I saw roughly equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans, divided by roughly equal degrees of animosity. In both places, I saw lots of Latinos. Running from Fr. Z, I ran into Bill O\u2019Reilly. Basically, the experiment was a wash.<\/p>\n I take is as proof that I never quite climbed aboard the Catholic bus, never went totally metanoid, a fact I put down in large part to a basic temperamental flaw: I\u2019m religious, not spiritual. It\u2019s not that I disbelieve in God, or rule out the possibility of His becoming incarnate through a virgin or hiding Himself beneath the accidents of appearance in the consecrated Host. It\u2019s just that most of the time I can\u2019t bring myself to care \u2014 not really. My imagination just won\u2019t stretch that far. Heaven? Hell? Already seen \u2019em \u2014 they\u2019re both in Scottsdale.<\/p>\n There are probably more people like me than would care to admit it. Even Jesus saw a need to jolly his audiences along with signs and parables. Ever since, the Church has thrown out its own cultural and sensual hooks, but none of them ever really caught me. Liturgy always seemed suspiciously fruity on one hand and suspiciously militaristic on the other, somewhat on the order Monty Python\u2019s sketch, \u201cClose-Order Swanning About.\u201d<\/a> I\u2019ve never been a joiner; not even if Opus Dei created a new category of member, the super-duper numerary, who never had to do anything but answer group e-mails, would I be tempted to sign on.<\/p>\n All that being so, you\u2019d think I\u2019d have wanted to extend my hiatus, to serve Mammon a little longer. In fact, I was open to the idea \u2014 it crossed my mind I could sell one of those \u201cWhy I Left the Catholic Church\u201d essays to Salon and join their staff as a religion writer. Neither Mary Elizabeth Williams nor Joan Walsh, though both are cradle Catholics, would know a motu proprio <\/em>from a Motrin. <\/p>\n Instead, by the middle of last week, I sensed something tugging me back into the fold. The Holy Spirit? Not impossible, but if so, He was playing to my peculiar tastes, leading my inside with a trail of Max-friendly things. Here\u2019s what some of them were.<\/p>\n A chance to see history in the making<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019m not sure the Catholic Church has ever lived through a really dull moment. But, at least by American standards, the period we\u2019re in currently is looking like taurine for the soul. To review the highlights, we\u2019ve had to come to terms with a sex-abuse crisis of global proportions while struggling to stay relevant in a depressed economy; to buck the government on the contraception mandate while deciding what to make of the nuns on the bus. Oh, and Christians worldwide are being hunted for sport.<\/p>\n This endless string of challenges is bound to bring out the worst in some people, but it\u2019ll bring out the best in others. Catholics are re-visting all the big questions \u2014 how should the Church engage with society? How should it participate in the political process? George Weigel urges priests to fight<\/a> what he calls the gay insurgency by refusing to act as witnesses in civil marriages. Eric Pavlat recommends that \u201cfaithful Catholics\u201d form bourgeois intentional communities<\/a> by fleeing to the same suburbs together. Like the ideas or not, they\u2019re outside the box \u2014 or at least battering at the edges.<\/p>\n Now hiring dilettantes!<\/strong><\/p>\n Last week in Baltimore, Catholic bishops and Catholic bloggers gathered at a conference with the imaginative title of \u201cBishops\u2019 and Bloggers\u2019 Conference.\u201d Exactly what they talked about I don\u2019t know \u2014 my invitation must have gotten lost in the mail. But it seems like pretty solid evidence that the folks on top are starting to take e-communication seriously as a medium for evangelization and dialogue. That must mean they\u2019re starting to take those of us who\u2019ve mastered the medium just as seriously.<\/p>\n Historically, by granting and witholding nihil obstats<\/em>, the Catholic Church has done its best to guard the company brand. Typically, and maybe wisely, it\u2019s given accredited wonks a monopoly on communication. In many Catholic leaders\u2019 ideal world, a schmuck like me, who dropped out of a master\u2019s program that didn\u2019t even require him to submit a thesis, would be yoked to a plough and barred from trafficking in the printed word. But thanks to social media, the whole deal\u2019s breaking wide open. Last summer, Patheos\u2019 own Joanne McPortland picked a fight with Fr. Jim Martin,<\/a> the brightest star in the Catholic media firmament, a man who stands within permanent handshaking distance of the great Colbert. She lived to tell the tale, a cat who roared. <\/p>\n I think there\u2019s work for me here. If I\u2019m good for anything, it\u2019s speaking for people who were shaped by post-Woodstock America without finding it too horrible a place. It\u2019s a perspective many Catholics \u2014 perma-grump Michael Sean Winters<\/a> being only one \u2014 are a little too quick to reject out of hand. As for me, I rather like having an entire world religion as a potential captive audience. I\u2019m sure it\u2019ll backfire \u2014 if I ever get to meet Cardinal Dolan, he\u2019ll probably boom out something like, \u201cGreat to see you, Marc! Never miss Bad Catholic!\u201d But in that case, I\u2019ll just tell him how much I loved that book he wrote with Ed Koch<\/a> and move along.<\/p>\n