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<\/a>I am amazed how quickly this blog spreads and comments make their way back to me. My first post was just eighteen days ago. In fact, I began writing \u201cWhy I Am Catholic\u201d mostly for my wife and daughters\u2014to share with them my joy in being Catholic\u2014and they continue to receive each of my posts automatically by e-mail. But others have been touched. It must be the work of the Holy Spirit. Or as my pal Ferde put it when I e-mailed him my astonishment, \u201cWebstah, have you ever heard of GOD?!\u201d <\/span> <\/p>\n
<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI LOVE this blog that I have discovered,\u201d a woman wrote. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThank you for reminding me of one of the reasons that I remain a Catholic,\u201d wrote another, who read my post on Kristin Lavransdatter. <\/i><\/span><\/p>\n <\/i><\/span><\/p>\n Most touching for me was the fellow convert, a man, who wrote, \u201cI just want to say that I really appreciate your posts and look forward to reading in the future. I was confirmed a few years ago and your posts really resonate with me, and it\u2019s just really pleasing to see someone so open and honest about their faith. Words often get in the way of faith, but yours are adding to mine.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Someone alerted me to a blog that had mentioned \u201cWhy I Am Catholic.\u201d The blog is The Anchoress of First Things. <\/i>I\u2019m so new to this blogging business that I don\u2019t know how to create a direct link in that sentence yet (promise I\u2019ll learn) but you\u2019ll find an Anchoress link under \u201cBlogs & Sites I Read.\u201d It\u2019s worth regular reading. Gotta love this lady: she\u2019s writing at 4 or 5 in the morning, God\u2019s hour.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n I Googled The Anchoress and read her comment: \u201cAdded to my blogroll,\u201d she wrote 9\/2\/09 at 2:13 p.m. (she also writes in the afternoon and evening), \u201ca terrific blog written from a very faithful but center-mildlyleft position, \u2018Why I Am a Catholic\u2019 . . . \u201d <\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Now, I\u2019m never going to look a gift \u201cterrific\u201d in the mouth and I appreciate the insight \u201cvery faithful,\u201d though it was arrived at with very little data. My priest and confessor might be a better judge of that. But \u201ccenter-mildlylefty\u201d?! First Things First: I do not dispute this description. Not my point at all. What is remarkable to me is how quickly I earned that political label. Have we Catholics become that<\/i> political?<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n First, how did she arrive at this designation? I\u2019m almost as new to Catholicism as I am to blogging, but I imagine there are clues in every sentence I write. Just one example: Having America<\/i> magazine alphabetically first in my list of \u201cBlogs & Sites I Read\u201d (and therefore a notch ahead of The Anchoress) is an immediate red flag. I have been a Catholic long enough to have heard the joke\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n What are the three things God does not know? (1) How many orders of Franciscans there are. (2) How much money the Dominicans have. (3) What the heck the Jesuits are doing.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n This is obviously a conservative\u2019s joke. I know by now that, to some, Franciscan means \u201cwhatever,\u201d and Jesuit means \u201cliberal,\u201d and America <\/i>is a Jesuit magazine. A very good and balanced magazine, I think, and yes, its editor, Fr. Jim Martin, gave me a shout-out in his blog because I gave his book a shout-out in mine, so there. But what makes America <\/i>\u201cliberal\u201d? I don\u2019t have the discernment to say exactly. I imagine that while upholding the sanctity of life, America<\/i> desists from throwing Molotov cocktails into pro-choice picket lines. And the Jesuits are smart, free thinkers\u2014kind of like William F. Buckley, who was never accused of liberalism and who was, if you\u2019ve been reading, a subject of one of my posts. And they are all spiritual sons of St. Ignatius, and I defy anyone to label him \u201cliberal.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n But let me not stray. Amid my wife\u2019s initial astonishment when I first told her that I was converting to Catholicism, the next sentence out of my mouth was: \u201cI am not becoming a Catholic in order to get into political arguments with anyone. I am becoming a Catholic in order to pray and attend mass and receive the Eucharist and honor my God and thereby, I hope, improve the life of my neighbor.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n In recent days, we have witnessed a brouhaha over Cardinal Se\u00e1n O\u2019Malley\u2019s presiding \u201cin choir\u201d at the Kennedy funeral. Please\u2014please read his blog post about this. (Again, no link here but there\u2019s another one to your right under \u201cBlogs & Sites I Read.\u201d) Like our pope\u2014my pope\u2014Cardinal Se\u00e1n is committed to dialogue with those who disagree with the Church\u2019s position on the sanctity of life. Prayer still works, and compassion. Most other tactics\u2014and tactics are often all that differentiates Catholic \u201cliberals\u201d and \u201cconservatives,\u201d who agree on the sanctity of life or otherwise are not Catholics\u2014are the down-and-dirty tactics of political life.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n I think my wife, Katie, put it as well as I can, when we discussed this issue in detail. It seems to me, she said, that the Catholic Church risks becoming a wing of the Republican Party. Exactly. We saw that last election, when FOCA was the focus of vitriol against Obama, and we see it again now that a whole \u201cwing\u201d of the Church (see how political we are?) is aligned against the president\u2019s health care initiatives. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n If each of us is first and foremost a political being, with a political label immediately affixed to our foreheads the moment a word is out of our mouths, what\u2019s the point in being Catholic? Let\u2019s just all be Republicans, or whatever may be the conservative label of the month.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n I have never been a political being, and in this post I am sure there is a large dose of naivet\u00e9. I do not dispute this. I am, however, a Catholic, and this is another reason why: Though it is completely illogical and completely apolitical, I look at the world and see all of its terrors (abortion, wars, genocide, racism, crushing poverty, AIDS), and I pray for it daily. Will my prayers help? I believe so, as St. Thomas believed so, and that makes me a Catholic. <\/span><\/p>\n
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That captured best what I am attempting here: an honest, non-doctrinaire testimony to the joy I have discovered in being a Catholic. I cannot imagine my life now without the Church.
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