Pax Out

I used to be a Catholic. Not even just as a kid, when you're just doing what your parents are making you do, showing up to Mass, getting the whole spiritual Electric Slide choreography along to the rhythm of the liturgy down (stand kneel sit, stand kneel sit, step-ball-change, step-ball-change...) and sticking with it through the teenage years when you suspect it's mostly bullshit, but you can't quite give it up yet because a) you lack the fully realized self-awareness to push with both arms away from the warm embrace of the hedge bet against the eternal life of the immortal soul vs. the less elegant whispered-fart dissipation promised by non-belief in death and b) it seems too soon to give up given all you've heard about what Catholic girls are willing to do. These are things that will cause a man to linger, even into fully-realized adult human-hood.

But eventually, the tipping point of doubt is out there, waiting. Given enough education, too much training in critical thinking and a couple of fairly public instances of Your Church favoring the rights and protection of child rapists over the rule of law and, oh yes, actual children and well, what was once at best a tepid enthusiasm finally bleeds into the atmosphere until your core is absolutely frozen against the institution, even as an idea. And a little time passes and the promised spiritual hypothermia in the sunless void beyond the Vatican walls never really comes and you find other things to feed the Inner You, like literature and music and NCAA basketball and Girl Scout cookies. None of these things offer the promise of immortality of consciousness, but I'm not worried about how any of them eyeball my three young sons either.

Plus one day you realize Catholic girls only do that freaky shit with non-Catholic guys anyway, so there is, in absolute terms now, nothing in it for you anymore.

Most cultural Catholics, while squirming at the actual voicing of the finer points of the catechism condemning contraception and gays, will talk with some lament about the rhythm and beauty of the ritual and the community it creates, the magic of the word and stagecraft of it, calling back the ancient past in which it was first constructed. You know, after Vatican II in '65 when they rewrote all that crap and fucked around with the blocking. But '60s nostalgia died with Woodstock '94. So what's left?

I think the problem with the church goes all the way back to the root, a certain creaky rot in the fundament, upon which all of Western Christianity is ultimately built, namely the internal contradictions. This sumptuous, most gilded of lilies that is the papal compound, broadcasting conquest and acquisition in solid gold, marble pillars and artwork of such inconceivable value, grown out a body of spiritual thought ostensibly built on the slender shoulders of the guy who said give up all your shit and pretend not to be grossed out by lepers.

We'll have to judge Joseph "Benedict XVI" Ratzinger on his own merits, though. There are rumors of him being gay or whatever, but I've already written with some compassion and just a soupçon of schadenfreude about the closeted religious. I'm willing to set that aside and consider his base message of generosity, simplicity and humility. You know, the one he delivered right before he fucked off in a helicopter.

Says a lot, I think. But we've seen that move already.