So your a Quaker now? Yes. Yes, I am.

 

It's not that I owe you an explanation or anything, but I am offering it here I suppose.

So it's not that I am not Catholic anymore. 

It's that I cannot practice Catholicism anymore. 

There are so many pieces and layers to this journey that I am not sure where to start or where this post will end exactly, 

though I am certain it will not contain anything that feels like wholeness. 

If you know anything about my practice of Catholicism is has always been fraught. 

 I don't remember NOT being frustrated that women could not be ordained.

 I have always felt labelled inferior because of my biology and identity as a woman in the largess of the Church.

I have also always known some deep call to ministry. 

 Perhaps from my baptism or something else, I have always wanted to be a minister.

And so my journey has always been angsty.  

I've been angry, I've been reconstructionist, 

I've tried working in the system- discerning religious life, 

getting the right degrees, pondering the academic life, etc. 

I have pursued the self righteous approach or the distaining others approach...

But the Roman Catholic Church- as it is now- is suffocating me.

I have done subversive work in the presence of hostile Catholic Church leadership.  

I am proud of the ministry I have done in colleges and high schools. 

I am a really good minister.

But I don't want to keep doing ministry under the table.

But let me tell you a secret, a secret that you already know and you might not be admitting to yourself. God is not Catholic.

Or perhaps, God is not JUST a Catholic.

We found a really good church here in Indianapolis one that saw church as a threshold to encountering God not as a fortress to be a protected.  

The preaching was okay and the community was lovely, diverse, honest, and beautiful.  

Yet, I would leave in rage filled tears almost weekly. 

 It was awful. 

Something about being in a functional parish that SHOULD have been consoling actually made it worse.

I mean, it is one thing to not be a minister when most of the ministers you encounter are dysfunctional jerks. 

It's another when it's collaborative and beautiful and yet there are still walls of inferiority.  

or when you have space to absorb the abuses all around.

So I could barely go to mass.

And then this church welcomed a new priest.

 A priest who believes the Catholic church is the fortress made to protect God. 

 He has built a fortress of piety around himself and the church and I haven't been back.

And it's not just this one parish church.

It is so many of them.

And sure there are functional ones, and thriving ones- one or two per city.

And there are lots of nice priests who are giving terrible homilies.

But there are so few bishops who are good leaders.

And---NONE of them are women.

And I cannot do it.

I don't' want to sit in church anymore and seeth with rage.

I don't want to cry on the way home because the priest (again!) didn't preach about the gospel.

I don't want to watch a deacon, who has a good heart, and no skills lead a service I  could do better again.  

----

When I was in college there was a priest that I loved.

He knew the church was broken.

In fact, he had gotten kicked out of his previous ministry sight for admitting that he was gay.

He used to preside at mass and leave deep pools of silence for us to swim accross.

He would let us rest in them, floating there suspended between things.

I loved it.

Silence, since then, has been my best prayer.

And so when we moved to Indianapolis I started praying more.

And doing so by sitting in silence, for LOOONG periods of time.

It has been, again a deep and lovely pool.

During Covid- when Churches switched to zoom I started going to churches of all sorts.

And started going to Quaker services.

Which is how I found myself here.

I am a Quaker.

I am a Catholic.

Just like I am a Doll

and I am an O'Mahoney.

I am not a former Catholic, or an ex Catholic.

I am a Catholic who cannot go to mass or participate in the Church in it's dysfunctional mess.

But I have been enriched and impoverished by the Catholic church. It is part of who I am culturally, spiritually and religiously.

and also

I am a Quaker who wants to explore silence.

And God.

And equality, integrity, peace and simplicity.

And in fact, in my silence I have already been exploring those things.

Now I have found community to do those things.

----

The best- the BEST of the Catholic tradition taught me how to be Quaker.

Catholic wisdom teach me silence.

Catholic saints teach me simplicity.

Catholic service and justice teach me peace and equality.

But I am now in a new home.

or a new place in this giant pool of Christianity.

---

So this is why- and how I am pastoring at Valley Mills Friends Meeting.

I'm sure there are all sorts of questions from you non-Friends readers.

"What does ordination look?" "What is it?" "Huh" "Say more about.."

But that, ya'll is for another day.