Revisiting and Reflecting

 It has been a time of retrospection for me recently, especially when faced with some personal challenges I have been dealing with recently.   However, often when one goes through times of adversity, it leads to personal reflection, and that is what this is all about today.

One of the projects I worked on this week so far was setting up my home shrine again, and that too was a reflective opportunity for me. Since about the middle of 2011, I have had most of the accessories to my home shrine packed away first in boxes and then later in a small steamer trunk I bought some years back. The trunk was obscured for many years under a table in my bedroom, on which I had a huge amount of storage bins stacked up.  I recently reorganized all that, and on the weekend after a very good homily at our parish, I felt inspired to dig out the shrine and set it up again.  So, yesterday I pulled everything out, and repurposed that table in there as a new shrine base, and I was able to set everything back up in a corner of my bedroom.  Upon getting it all set up, a different atmosphere came into the house that I hadn't felt in some time, and it was frankly inspiring.  At some point, I will post a picture of what my "resurrected" shrine looks like, but I just wanted to talk about a few things today which more or less relate to that. 

Last week, I talked about some commonalities I had with the new Republican VP candidate, J.D. Vance. Vance essentially by his story challenged me to revisit many things in my own life, and one of those is how I was able to reconcile some of my West Virginia upbringing with my Catholic faith.  This is still a complex question, but it is one that does inspire some thought for sure.  The thing about conversion that many people don't understand - be they the radical Protestant Fundamentalist types or the stauncher trads in our own church - is that conversion does not necessarily mean that you ditch everything that is uniquely you.  For this, I turn back to Dr. Crosby's discussion of incommunicability versus universality.  In this discussion, as is found in his book The Selfhood of the Human Person (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1996), Crosby distinguishes between what he calls incommunicable traits of a person versus that communicable (universal) traits a person shares with others.  This also goes back to the Archer discussion on CNCs and how they contribute to the story.  Incommunicability and universality do not have to be in conflict either - they are both needed.  While all of us identify with some group - ethnic identity, religious traditions, political leanings, social organizations, etc. - we are still individuals in that is how God created us.  God did not make human beings to be either clones of himself or copies of each other - we are all imbued with our own attributes that make us distinctive, and over time those attributes are shaped further by our experiences.  What this means is that how God created us is hardwired into our being as individuals, and not every individual will be going through the exact same experience.  We each, in the words of Kenneth Archer, have our own "story," and our "story" is also a chapter in the collective "story" of whatever groups we identify with.  Our chapter has its distinctives, but it is also part of the entire "story" too.  And, that leads me to faith and background on a personal level. 

The importance of conversion to Christ is one thing and one thing only - it is reconciliation with him overcoming the concupiscent nature we all inherited from our common ancestors, Adam and Eve, from the Fall chronicled in Genesis 3.  Because God created us in his image, he does love us, and he desires us to be one with him for eternity.  Yet, he also gifted us with free will, so we can either accept or reject what he offers us in the form of the Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is indeed God the Son.  I want to touch on something very briefly that I think I have discussed in more detail before, but it bears repeating - forgiveness must be accepted as well as given.  This is a bit of a radical take, but you need to consider this for a moment.  One day, someone gives you a gift - the gift only means something if you, as the recipient, accepts it. If you do not accept the gift for some reason, you do so because you willed not to, and the consequence is that any benefit that gift could have given you is also ineffective until you do accept it.  We look at forgiveness also as a gift - it is there for us whenever we want to accept it, but in order to reap its benefits it must be accepted.  This is true both regarding the salvation of our souls as well as how we relate to each other.  This is forgiveness is also an attitude and not necessarily an action - if someone really hurt or offended you, we of course should always be ready to offer forgiveness to them, but in their mind they may not think they did anything wrong, and thus forgiveness to them is a rejected gift.  Until it is accepted, the recipient of forgiveness will not reap the benefits of it, but the one offering forgiveness can forgive them in spirit without an action necessarily - to act on that without a person being receptive to receiving it is a waste of time, so you give them to God and let him deal with them at that point and they are not on your hands any longer because you did your part.  Then, when they do express regret and come to you asking your forgiveness, you will be able to give it to them because in your heart you already have forgiven them.  That is really how it works.  Now, as the giver of forgiveness, you may struggle too - you may actually despise the person who offends you, and thus you need to ask for God's help to heal you and give you that attitude of forgiveness.  And, that can take time.  So, how does that rabbit trail relate to personal faith and individual attributes?  That is where I am going to direct the discussion now. 

Your personal faith is your response to the supernatural grace God gives you, and what is incommunicable to you plays an important part in that process.  This is where I get back to my story.  I grew up in West Virginia, and my Appalachian culture defines a lot of my faith.  But, I was not born and raised Catholic either, as many of you know.  Especially as a young adult first in the Baptist faith I was baptized into, and later into the Pentecostal tradition which I grew up around and returned to in my early 20s, there are many things about who I am that perhaps a "cradle Catholic" would not understand.  I grew up in a small rural area, and I also grew up in poverty - that shapes a lot of my experience.  And there are things about my former religious traditions that I liked and have (I feel anyway) successfully incorporated into my personal faith.  For those who would be either Fundamentalists or very staunch Trads, I have this to say - I am no less Catholic and Christian because of my experiences, and perhaps I am more faithfully Catholic and Christian because of them.  You do not know what I have had to struggle with, what my personal experiences were, and how my personal faith impacts me, so this is one of those rare occasions where the verse in Matthew 7:1-3 - judge not lest you be judged - actually applies correctly.  It also points to verses such as Romans 12:4-5, which was one of the first Bible verses I memorized years ago - many members in one body, but all members having distinct functions that benefit the whole.  That is the Church described to a tee.  We as Christians - and particularly as Catholic Christians - need to get over ourselves sometimes.  It is the height of pride to claim that because someone is different than you, you are better than them - the Bible does not teach that, and Magisterial teaching of the Church refutes that type of pride, which ironically is often clad in the language of "humility."  It is OK to appreciate your own "story" of faith, as it is uniquely yours.  What is not OK is a prideful and judgmental spirit that denies that same self-appreciation to others.  So, what does the Church actually say about this?  Let's go to the Catechism of the Catholic Church and look at it for ourselves. 

One very important aspect of our personal faith as it relates to Magisterial teaching is simple - we should encourage those individual attributes that do not contradict the faith, and we should utilize them in the expression of our personal faith.  One of the beauties of authentic Catholicism is the diversity within it - this is not in any way synonymous with the secular idea of "diversity," because often that is not its true application.  Rather, the Church uses the cultures of those who are part of it to enrich the spiritual lives and faith of its members.  We see the first principle of this in CCC 2105, which affirms based also on Pope Paul VI's 1965 Apostolicam Actuositatem (Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity) that evangelization is "to infuse the Christian spirit into the mentality and mores, laws, and structures of the communities in which (they) live."  Taking that in context with the Deposit of Faith, what this means is that what is compatible in a culture or society with the faith can be preserved, while imperfections can be made perfect by the gift of supernatural grace.  This applies to individuals, communities, and to every ethnicity on the planet.  It is relational in the truest sense.  It is also a reflection of the dignity of the human person while at the same time reaffirmation of the traditional faith of the Church.   Having Appalachian heritage myself, there are many things that I brought into my own pilgrimage to the Church which may have made me a better Catholic as a result, and I do not regret that.  Also, the various aspects of my own faith journey have brought me to the place I am now.  So, if you are a convert, how does that work?  Let me illustrate that.

As I accepted Christ in a Baptist church at the age of 16, that was formative for me.  In the Baptist church I was baptized into, I learned much about the importance of personal Bible study and the value of prayer.  These are invaluable gifts my mentor and pastor who baptized me, Rev. Olen Phillips, and the pastor I got a good background in Christian service from, Rev. Frank Brubaker, endowed me with. I am eternally grateful to both of them today.

When I began to embrace my Pentecostal roots beginning in 1989, two other things were given to me.  The first was an appreciation of the supernatural - God was not meant to be viewed as an abstraction, but moved among us in very special ways.  I experienced divine healing, and also received supernatural guidance from some who exercised certain charisms they received as part of their infilling of the Holy Spirit.  Although I have refined my convictions on those somewhat over the years, they were important.  Also, the Pentecostal experience I had gave me a true enthusiasm for my faith, and it helped integrate my faith more into my everyday life - that was an important step toward my acceptance of the sacramental life of the Church.  Many mountain Pentecostals in my home region of Appalachia I found out have what is essentially a rudimentary sacramental understanding of their faith - it would be only natural for me to embrace the entire Church and her teaching later.

Years of involvement as a Continuing Churchman in the Anglican tradition taught me more intimately about liturgical worship - I learned then that faith was integral to symbolism and tangible actions, and that also led me to a more Catholic understanding of the Sacraments later.  It was also as an Anglican that I developed my Marian devotions as well as thinking sacramentally.  Added to this at around the same time was a fuller realization of what the Christian East imparted to me - there is a lot of rich spiritual inspiration I got from that as well.

Finally, when I was received into the Church officially in 2000, I had seen how all of this built upon the other aspects of my spiritual journey.  However, that was not as easy as it looks - my early Catholic journey was not as well grounded, and it was only while working on my graduate degree at Franciscan University of Steubenville that everything sort of coalesced and I began to have several "aha!" moments.  And, it also tied up some loose ends regarding some long-held convictions I had that I knew were right but seemed as if many Catholic writers disputed - as it turned out, many of those things were actually very Catholic, and not only did I retain my convictions but they were given a new dimension by a better understanding of what the Church actually taught. Let me discuss that briefly.

As a young person who was raised in a fairly conservative Christian tradition, there were two things I was imbued with even before my own acceptance of Christ that really integrated into my personal faith.  The first of these was a love and appreciation for the Jewish people.  I myself have Jewish forebears going back many generations, and this was an area that was close to my heart.  But, I was also raised to be a very strong dispensational premillennialist, and it took some time to sort all that out, especially when I heard some very anti-Zionist things coming from Catholic figures across the spectrum.  As it turns out, only Christian Zionism is what the Church opposes - the Church has never denied the special role of the Jewish people in salvation history, and thanks in part to two individuals - the late Fr. Elias Friedman, who founded the Association of Hebrew Catholics, and the late Orthodox theologian Lev Gillet, who in his book Communion in the Messiah (Cambridge: James Clarke and Co., 1942) notes in a section called "Christianity and the Earthly Problems of Israel" that encompasses a 12-page discussion on what Zionism is and how Christians respond to it that Jews have a strong connection to their traditional homeland, and essentially allowing them to return to it would be also an asset to Christians - he wrote this in 1942, approximately 8 years before Israel was established as a modern state.  Fr. Friedman expands on this in his book Jewish Identity by noting that God's ultimate purpose in allowing the modern state of Israel to exist is to aid in their future conversion, which is affirmed as an integral part of both Orthodox and Catholic eschatology.  It is a new way of looking at this question, and not only does it not conflict with my earlier sentiments, but it helps to refine them.  I have dealt with this in detail in the past, and may revisit it again, but it is an area where the Church did not compel me to throw out my previous sentiments, but rather refine them in light of actual Magisterial teaching on the topic.  This means the establishment of the modern state of Israel, as well as new genetic evidence regarding many "Arabs" in the region which suggests that many of that community may actually be ethnically Hebrew too, is part of God's redemptive plan.  While the debates still fly and it is OK to criticize some policies of Israel (I do actually), the bottom line is that anti-semitism is ultimately also anti-Catholic. I will explore more of that later.  

The second area I had some reconciliation on was regarding Biblical creation.  Many Catholic teachers have embraced the heresy (and it is what it is!) of "theistic evolution," and for many years that was a problem (this was due in part to the heterodox teachings of one Fr. Pierre Tielhard de Chardin, a renegade Jesuit who embraced this garbage and may have even had some occultic influences in his thinking).  However, thanks in part to individuals such as Dr. Hugh Owen of the Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation, I was also able to continue to affirm the Biblical Creationism of my personal convictions as being completely a Catholic view.  As a matter of fact, Owen and other Catholic Creationists (and there are more than many think) gave me the inspiration for my own in-depth study of Genesis, which I was able to teach some years back to an Anglican parish I was part of then.  In part now, I am probably a more committed Creationist as a Catholic than I ever was as a Protestant, and that says much too.

These two areas - the role of the Jewish people and Biblical Creation - are two very important areas in which I had long-held convictions prior to being received into the Church, and I still hold them today.  They comprise an integral part of my own pilgrimage of faith, and the Church has only enhanced them by giving them a richer dimension.  There are many other things as well, but these two areas immediately come to mind. 

I have rambled on quite a bit here today, and I doubt if I even got to the complete thought I originally had.  But, hopefully I can encourage somebody with this, as I am sure others - especially new Catholic converts - have struggled with similar things.  Becoming Catholic never throws away your distinctive identity of personhood - rather, it refines and enhances it in such a way that it makes one a more faithful Catholic if one is open to that development.  On that note, thank you for allowing me to share, and I hope and pray the best for each of you until next time.