A God in the House: An Exerpt
I'm perusing this book of late, A God in the House: Poets Talk about Faith. I also am perusing it not reading it because I find myself hopping around rather than reading it cover to cover (I am a cover to cover kind of reader)
Anyway I am reading this book and came across the chapter by Fanny Howe. I don't know her poetry but her description of being a Catholic felt to deeply resonant with me I wanted to share:
"This marriage [to the Catholic church] has been like any other: loving, boring at times, disappointing, occasionally joyful, in the end a matter of habit and perseverance. Unlike a human marriage, it bears no fruits and give no physical warmth. The Catholic church turns a person in to a Protestant, mentally. You find yourself constantly arguing with texts, testing them, and feeling indignation against dogma, dull vocabulary, hierarchies, moralizing, and patronizing vocabulary. You are not "spiritual' when you are Catholic You are critical. You have a strong sense of structured evil in the world and in your own compliance with that evil. Your intellectual muscles are tested again and again by Papal opinions
Faith is not the issue. Worship, as a word, is not applicable. So why not just be a Protestant? Because then you could not argue yourself to the abyss of understanding, slip over the edges, grasp onto the Gospel teachings for dear life, and hear the same words over and over and over--morning, noon, and Sunday-- in every city in the world. All Catholics are Protestants already, although not all Protestants are Catholic.
It is irrationality worked to a perfection of logic that is the greatest offering of Catholicism. It is not sensible, and inevitably it asks people to pretend that they are obedient even when they are not. This contribution to hypocritical behavior is disagreeable, but when you are arguing with a fixed position, you have to argue with yourself , too. You have to continuously re-examine your place in the social and ethical structures. Your thinking gets stronger rather than weaker. You are put on the spot and at the same time you are subtly led to the last station in life, given a shove, and pulled back at the last minute.
As it is in the liturgy, so it is in the world; Truth is as fleeting as a sunbeam, and each time you go to Mass you see the truth drop in a place it hadn't before. A word here, a phrase there, and each time a different one is as potent as the little sip of wine at the end, The truth exists, but it surrounds rather than informs people's acts, which are constructed around evasion and resistance.
You don't need to have faith to continue the habit of going to Mass. The daily mass is faster and more to the point than a drawn-out Sunday liturgy with its dull homilies and platitudinal music. Yet we are told that it is an obligation to appear on Sunday, and so soon this is a habit the habit of losing your productive laborer's mind and simply accepting what comes. And then, of course, you have made a solemn vow and you don't ever want to break another one again." (107-108)
Kaminsky, Ilya and Towler, Kathreine eds. A God in the House: Poets Talk about Faith. Tupelo Press (North Adams, Massachusetts) 2012.
Anyway I am reading this book and came across the chapter by Fanny Howe. I don't know her poetry but her description of being a Catholic felt to deeply resonant with me I wanted to share:
"This marriage [to the Catholic church] has been like any other: loving, boring at times, disappointing, occasionally joyful, in the end a matter of habit and perseverance. Unlike a human marriage, it bears no fruits and give no physical warmth. The Catholic church turns a person in to a Protestant, mentally. You find yourself constantly arguing with texts, testing them, and feeling indignation against dogma, dull vocabulary, hierarchies, moralizing, and patronizing vocabulary. You are not "spiritual' when you are Catholic You are critical. You have a strong sense of structured evil in the world and in your own compliance with that evil. Your intellectual muscles are tested again and again by Papal opinions
Faith is not the issue. Worship, as a word, is not applicable. So why not just be a Protestant? Because then you could not argue yourself to the abyss of understanding, slip over the edges, grasp onto the Gospel teachings for dear life, and hear the same words over and over and over--morning, noon, and Sunday-- in every city in the world. All Catholics are Protestants already, although not all Protestants are Catholic.
It is irrationality worked to a perfection of logic that is the greatest offering of Catholicism. It is not sensible, and inevitably it asks people to pretend that they are obedient even when they are not. This contribution to hypocritical behavior is disagreeable, but when you are arguing with a fixed position, you have to argue with yourself , too. You have to continuously re-examine your place in the social and ethical structures. Your thinking gets stronger rather than weaker. You are put on the spot and at the same time you are subtly led to the last station in life, given a shove, and pulled back at the last minute.
As it is in the liturgy, so it is in the world; Truth is as fleeting as a sunbeam, and each time you go to Mass you see the truth drop in a place it hadn't before. A word here, a phrase there, and each time a different one is as potent as the little sip of wine at the end, The truth exists, but it surrounds rather than informs people's acts, which are constructed around evasion and resistance.
You don't need to have faith to continue the habit of going to Mass. The daily mass is faster and more to the point than a drawn-out Sunday liturgy with its dull homilies and platitudinal music. Yet we are told that it is an obligation to appear on Sunday, and so soon this is a habit the habit of losing your productive laborer's mind and simply accepting what comes. And then, of course, you have made a solemn vow and you don't ever want to break another one again." (107-108)
Kaminsky, Ilya and Towler, Kathreine eds. A God in the House: Poets Talk about Faith. Tupelo Press (North Adams, Massachusetts) 2012.
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