Like I look at the title and immediately go, "but, oh no, I'm not rejecting Catholicism; goodness no." And then right away a smaller voice pops up and says, "except that I definitely am in a fundamental way."
It's as if Catholicism were a sort of playground or game field in which I observed most of my friends running around, many of them having a genuinely great time. The game gives them fun ways to interact with each other and things to talk about. The rules of the game are, in the view of many, flexible enough to allow creative interpretations to further enrich the lived experience of the game. There is even an interpretation that allows you to participate while breaking practically all the rules. At which point, such freewheeling participants might conclude, the only thing preventing someone from joining would be if they just didn't want to play with us.
The thing is, I really, really want to play. I miss my friends. I miss having a game that helped me interact with them, and with strangers too. It was so wonderful. And I feel so happy for the ones who continue to enjoy it.
But contrary to what I had hoped for a long time, I can't just wish myself back into the game. If one of these friends were to come up to me, smiling like the old days, and throw me one of those well-worn balls -- something about a turn of events being God's will, or another thing being a sign of God's love, or another about Jesus understanding me -- it would smack me in the face. I just can't emotionally catch that ball anymore, and it's a real strain to fake it. Because my trust in the Church to speak true things has evaporated and been replaced by suspicion that it's all stories intended to keep this game going, it feels just exactly like talking about fairies. I can't undo it, I can't go back, I can't speak words given to me by the Church and mean them.
I remember several months toward the end of my being Catholic where I called up devout friends as a kind of lunge toward the clear, deep, refreshing pool of conversing about Jesus. I wanted that comfort and sense of connection so bad. But every time, I felt myself smack into the bottom of a pool that was only six inches deep, betrayed over and over by instincts that promised it would be bottomless as it always had been. I might end by feeling a little connected, but only with a strong, nagging sense that I had lied to do so.
It's deeper than that though. The reality is that I'm truly split inside. There is a part of my visceral landscape that still attends to the same living person I had identified as Jesus, someone who exists inside me, represents the power driving the whole universe, and collaborates with me. I can't turn that part off, any more than I can turn off the sense of distaste described above. But speaking about it as if it was something that could be parameterized according to Church dogma still feels like lying. It feels deeply resistant to words. So really, it's as if I'm standing eagerly outside the playground, holding a ball that I want to throw but no one would know how to catch, any more than I know how to catch theirs.
But anyway, it feels good to at least try to explain it a little.
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