Walk with me through some possibly ill-formed and definitely ill-informed thoughts about what it means to profess one\u2019s faith. I had to do this when I was becoming Catholic\u2013I think this took place during Confirmation? probably that\u2019s wrong\u2013and there was a set formula which I always misremember but which was probably actually, \u201cI believe and profess all that the holy Catholic Church believes, teaches, and proclaims to be revealed by God.\u201d<\/p>\n
What (on earth) did I mean? What should I have meant?<\/p>\n
My impression is that a lot of non-Catholics are really turned off by this whole idea of the profession of faith, because it comes across to them as box-ticking. \u201cI have read and agreed to the Terms of Service, can I please have the Body and Blood of Christ now?\u201d Moreover, I think they often envision a suppression of conscience, a blank refusal to ask any more questions. I\u2019m sure that the specific metaphors I use for my own conversion, e.g. surrender or \u201csuspension of disbelief,\u201d contribute to this negative impression. Or else they may imagine a kind of Jesuitical gamesmanship, \u201cYou must be this surrendered to ride this ride\u201d; how much dissent can I get away with?<\/p>\n
None of this is really how I was thinking\u2013to the extent that I was<\/em> thinking\u2013I\u2019m pretty sure. For me the profession of faith was about trust and about my desire to enter into an ongoing relationship with God in the Catholic Church, a relationship which I hoped and feared would change me. I was indicating a willingness<\/em>: an attitude, a stance. I was affirming that I did<\/em> trust the Church to teach even when I didn\u2019t understand those teachings, and promising to be passionate in my submission and humble in my disagreement.<\/p>\n (I mean, I couldn\u2019t\u2019ve meant that I really had read and agreed to the TOS because, like, I never did the reading for RCIA. I\u2019ve still only read about 10% of the catechism. But I\u2019ve read that 10% a whole bunch of times!)<\/p>\n It\u2019s possible to (think that you) have complete, heartfelt intellectual agreement with every inch of the Church\u2019s teaching, and make your profession of faith with gusto, and still lack this essential attitude or stance of trust and surrender. I know, because I\u2019m so awesome that I was simultaneously a querulous Poster Child for the Unconvinced and also<\/em> an obnoxious, God-bothering convert. (Let\u2019s never be undergraduates again.) I came across as owning<\/em> my beliefs and my faith rather than always receiving them from Christ\u2019s hands; I treated them as my possessions, which I really wanted to press upon you, out of the goodness of my shiny little heart. The person in this state of mind can \u201ctick the box\u201d of the profession of faith just fine, without ever genuinely submitting or accepting the Church as a mother.<\/p>\n As I said above, I think I was able to muster enough genuine surrender that my profession of faith wasn\u2019t begrudging, hedging, spiritually or intellectually prideful, or rulebound. I think I did what I should have done, for freaking once: I entered into a relationship which I knew I was much too immature to understand, and I let that relationship change me. I let my doubts and disagreements be things I wrestled with and worked out within<\/em> the Church<\/a>.<\/p>\n What that attitude looks like will differ from person to person. Priests and sponsors may have to make tough judgment calls about whether they see obedience and humility in attitude (or desire for obedience and humility, which is probably more common), even when the content of a person\u2019s beliefs is still being worked out. I at least would strongly suggest that if you\u2019re not another person\u2019s priest or sponsor, you don\u2019t know if they\u2019re ready to profess the faith. You don\u2019t know where they\u2019re coming from, how far they have come, or how much they\u2019re trying to say a full-throated \u201cyes\u201d to Christ and the Church. We are all in an ongoing process of being conformed to Christ; baptism and confirmation come at some point in that process but figuring out when someone else is \u201cclose enough\u201d is not, I think, my job.<\/p>\n Practicing Christianity\u2013even when you\u2019re real bad at it, and need lots of practice\u2013changes you. Getting into the trench<\/a> changes the direction of your life. This <\/a>is a pretty intense story of how 12-Step spirituality gradually changed a woman\u2019s life, even in areas where she initially didn\u2019t want it to\u2013but she wanted to be fully<\/em> within the program, to submit herself to its guidance, and that attitude of openness and willingness took her a lot further than she\u2019d wanted. I recognize both her willingness, and her kind of catawampus and slow-release attempts to live according to the authority she trusted, from my own confirmation.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Walk with me through some possibly ill-formed and definitely ill-informed thoughts about what it means to profess one\u2019s faith. I had to do this when I was becoming Catholic\u2013I think this took place during Confirmation? probably that\u2019s wrong\u2013and there was a set formula which I always misremember but which was probably actually, \u201cI believe and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1071,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,10],"tags":[256,11,251,131,30,79,41,148],"class_list":["post-8005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mackerel-snapping","category-self-obsessed","tag-chuuuuuuuurch","tag-his-banner-over-me-was-love","tag-im-on-a-submarine-mission-for-you-baby","tag-it-is-very-dark-you-are-likely-to-be-wrestled-by-an-angel","tag-mackerel-snapping-2","tag-moral-memories-of-the-past","tag-reading-and-repentance","tag-this-is-the-only-story-i-will-ever-be-able-to-tell"],"yoast_head":"\n