means No-Place. There is no utopia. But there is a difference between ordinary tragedy and special catastrophe.
Imagine for a moment, if your internal moral police force will allow it, all the problems the US would NOT have if it were not a multi-racial country.
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2 comments:
It has been a little over a year since I left the Catholic Church. I still remember how I described it to you: like putting out into the open sea. But now family circumstances have brought me rushing back: my uncle, a priest and good man, whom I may have mentioned on here once or twice, has been battling cancer for a decade. Yesterday, the doctors determined that the cancer is now terminal, and he has only a couple months to live. That he has lived so long, considering how rampant the cancer was initially, is miraculous in of itself.
He was the pastor of three parishes in this time. He served with distinction and honor, rooting out corruption and instituting reform, toiling to restore some of the grandeur and majesty of the old Church. He was always met with resistance, but he always turned the parish to his side when his work was done.
It is a tidal wave of grief and frustration that has brought me back to the Church, back to the only words and rituals, such as they are, that I know to say this. If not for my sake, than for his. I have not been a boat putting out to sea; I have been a satellite in a decaying orbit.
Yes, I have my beefs with the leadership of the Church on a lot of issues. But my uncle's example has taught me something valuable: in a parish, pastors and parish leaders go. Furniture and decorations change. There is one constant in all this change: the Body and Blood. The constant point about which all else revolves, and the immutable piece of the puzzle that remains.
It is for this- for Him- that I return, after a year of trying to run and flee, running first from His house and then from Him entirely. In some ways, I think my attempt to embrace the faith of my pagan ancestors' strengthens my conviction in the realities of the mysteries of Catholicism- the saints, the angels, God Himself: all have taken on a reality and vibrance that I do not remember.
Yes, I know that I may never be fully accepted back into the Church. Yes, the Church may be an unwitting enemy of the West. Yet somehow I bear hope. Somehow, I trust that all will work itself out. The people and the music and the words and the trappings change: the tabernacle remains inviolable. That is what I have returned for. I need nothing else.
-Sean
I am sorry that you are losing your uncle, Sean.
As for your relation to the Church, it is an individual matter. I can only say from my own experience that it's not something easily or quickly settled out, either way.
I wish you well, of course.
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