Wherein I Ramble About My Dual (Catholic/Lutheran) Church Attendance

I determined today that I would upload the pictures from my digital camera onto the computer so I could finally share with you some recent “scenes” from my life—things like the azaleas in bloom, the new red leaves on my poinsettia plant, the pretty blanket I stitched for a friend, and a couple of people pics from Charlie’s birthday and the boys’ trip to the Mag Lab.

Wouldn’t you know? WordPress isn’t dealing too well with photos at the moment, and I’m going to have to wait. Oh well.

In the meantime, I shall ramble.

I confess I’ve felt like a wretched wife and mother these past several days. My house is too messy for my comfort, yet I feel sort of “frozen” when it comes to taking action and getting things whipped into shape.

I think I’m just in a slump. I have a tendency to get melancholy at times, and I was sort of hit with an attack of it on Monday. I felt it sneaking up on me right as I was sitting in my apologetics class at the Catholic church. I’d been doing well—feeling perky (though I really do not like that word!), chatted with a couple of the other ladies before class began, enjoyed the lecture—and then, with about 10 minutes left in the class, all of the sudden, I felt it—that sinking feeling. Sinking, sinking, sinking, and plop! Here I am, in the doldrums.

Upon reflection, I think I know why this may have happened.

Sunday was a difficult day at church. As most of you who read these letters with any regularity know, I attend church twice each weekend—once at the Lutheran church with my family, and once at the Catholic church on my own (and sometimes with my oldest son). Usually, this arrangement is fine with me; I’m sure the extra worship and hearing of God’s word is good for my soul (I need all the help I can get). Occasionally, though, I get grumpy about it—and never more so than when discussion in Lutheran Sunday school class turns uncomfortably anti-Catholic.

Let me backtrack a bit.

Before Christmas, I was in a Sunday school class in which we were reading and discussing a book called The Christ-Centered Life, put out as part of a series of books by a press at a Lutheran seminary. The book was rather simple and had some fine ideas in it, though the author did occasionally make a point of quoting Luther and setting him up as a paragon of Christian wisdom and virtue. Overall, though, it was the kind of book any Christian could learn from, and I enjoyed the class discussions as much as anyone else.

This semester, however, with the completion of that book, the teacher chose another book from the same series for the class to read and discuss. I gave it a thorough skimming and quickly realized I would be hard-pressed to sit in class and not speak up about some of the unfair comments made in the book about Catholic monks and nuns. (According to the author, Martin Luther thought monasteries were a waste of time because the folks within them were only concerned with their own salvation. Though that may indeed have been true for some of the religious during Luther’s time, the author said nothing to alert the reader to the state of things in today’s monasteries. Not to mention the fact that such a thing is odd to hear from someone [Luther] who wanted far more focus placed on personal salvation and much less on Church as the Body of Christ. But I digress.)

I didn’t know what to do: continue attending that class and sit quietly while people made negative comments about the Church I love? Continue attending that class and speak up, thereby causing all kinds of friction? Give up that class and attend the class my husband was attending (which had been discussing various Christian faith traditions, including Catholicism, which I’m sure was painted in a highly unfavorable light, as it generally is in Lutheran churches)? Skip Sunday school altogether and just sit in the car and read for that hour?

I was in a quandry. Though I thought it might be nice to sit as a quiet witness while the people in my class discussed Martin Luther’s “innovative” ideas about vocation, I realized I would only be doing it as a matter of pride. It would be wrong of me to not defend the Church, as well as wrong of me to sit there feeling self-righteous while saying nothing. But to speak up would have been impossible as well. Forgive me if I’m misusing it, but the word “scandal” comes to mind. I very much like the people in that class; I wouldn’t have wanted to upset any of them. With all the same things in mind, I didn’t see how I could attend my husband’s class, either.

And so I asked my very wise friend Amanda for advice. The situation was very clear to her; within seconds of asking, I had my answer. Her counsel (in a nutshell): Attend class with Brian; sit at his side. There, I would be under his protection, as he is the head of our household. There, I would be affirming him in his own faith. Remain silent. If something is mentioned in class that I disagree with, bring it up with Brian afterwards, so we can discuss it just the two of us.

This advice set me free. And for the first two Sundays I followed it, it was a piece of cake.

And then came this past Sunday. (And I can see this epistle is already terribly long; I thank you for hanging in with me, if you’ve read this far; and if you continue to the end, I’m sure you must deserve some sort of medal!)

This past Sunday, at the beginning of class, the teacher (I’ll call him Mr. D) informed us that one of ladies in class had something she wanted to share with us. She then informed us (in her cute, but extreme, Chicagoan accent) that she has been taking a correspondence course through one of the Lutheran seminaries and has been studying the Lutheran Book of Concord, which is a bunch of “official” writings by Luther and some of his Reformation cohorts, setting down their agreed-upon beliefs. She wanted to share with us (the reason why is beyond me) a couple of the paragraphs from that book.

The first thing she read was Martin Luther’s expression of disgust over the lack of knowledge held by the priests and other religious he met on his trip to Rome. He said they barely knew the Bible, didn’t have memorized the most basic prayers. These are failings, indeed, but hardly worthy, I think, of his remarking that they “live like pigs” rolling in their own filth. His assessment was truly nasty and certainly not compassionate in the least. One of the folks in the Sunday school class sarcastically commented afterwards, “It’s a good thing he didn’t believe in name-calling.” Ha.
Of course you might imagine that I was not sitting there calmly resting in the “protection” of my husband’s presence. And yet, I was extremely grateful that he was beside me and that I had Amanda’s wise words to buoy my spirits during these moments that felt rather like persecution. I felt sick to my stomach, I was shaking inside, and though I was not actually sweating bullets, I felt like I was.

As she read (and there was much more to it than just the “pigs” bit), I knew that all I could do—all I needed to do—was pray. And yet, I couldn’t think.

Some people mock the liturgical churches for their use of formulaic/repetitive prayers, but all I can say is that in a time when one is being sorely tested (and my situation was NOTHING AT ALL compared to what so many people endure and have endured for their faith), such prayers are a complete blessing. I closed my eyes, folded my hands, and prayed “Hail, Mary” in my head, as loud as I could. I prayed the Lord’s Prayer. I prayed what bits and pieces I know of the Divine Mercy:

For the sake of his sorrowful passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world.

Finally, after what seemed like a very long time, it was over, and Mr. D moved on to a discussion of Islam—how accurate and fair such discussion was, for his part, I can’t say. Considering he included an inaccurate anecdote about how one of the pope’s was chosen (yes, in a discussion about Islam!), I’m not sure his other information was all too reliable, either.

And so now we arrive at Monday morning, when I was sitting in my apologetics class and sinking into a blue funk. In retrospect, I think what got me was the safety of it. There, I was surrounded by women who believe as I believe. There, we had a marvelous guest speaker who told us of the beauty of the Church’s Marian doctrines—as opposed to a “guest” commentary about how rotten the clergy were in the Middle Ages.

The gloomy feeling that settled over me surely had to do with my longing for unity in my own family—a religious unity that may never happen, given my husband’s staunch, modern Lutheran points of view.

I’ve added to my own misery by setting aside Shadowheart, which I was having trouble getting into, in order to read H.W. Crocker III’s book Triumph: The Power and the Glory of the Catholic Church. This book is hugely enlightening; I’m learning heaps about history (and not just the Church’s history, either). It makes me want to read more about the past, to broaden the scope of what I’m learning in the book.

The ironic thing is that I originally bought this book years ago (before I’d decided I wanted to become Catholic), for Brian, for his birthday. He enjoys history but never read it. I won’t bother telling him he ought to read it when I’m done, because that would probably make him even less likely to read it than he already is. (I expect he thinks he already knows the history of the Catholic Church.) In the same way, I did not take that part of Amanda’s advice—I have not talked to him about what was said in Sunday school. I’m pretty sure he knows just what I thought of it, and there is not much in this world that I dislike more than arguing with my husband; so, for now, I’m keeping my thoughts to myself.

For any non-Catholics reading this, friends and strangers alike, please know that I mean no disrespect to you or your faith. Save for my infant baptism in a Catholic church, I was a Protestant my whole life, until quite recently, and I never perceived there to be much of anything special or beautiful about Catholicism. I was never anti-Catholic in any way, though I did suspect some of their doctrines were wrong. It was only when I became, solely for the sake of my husband and child (at the time we had just one), a Lutheran that I began to sincerely ask questions and my heart began to open to the possibility of embracing the Catholic faith.

Now that I have, I am home.