Reaching the Green Light and Waiting

 In recent weeks, I have been on the cusp of change - my position at my current school where I teach is  about to end, and I am waiting to hear about other opportunities.  A part of the new opportunity is also a potential move soon, and I am anticipating it.  However, the wait is what is the hard part, and let me use an illustration to explain it.

About 2 blocks from my current house is 25th Street.  When I am going to work of a morning, that entails turning onto 25th at Greenmount Avenue, at the corner of which is a Dollar General and a tiny breakfast restaurant that some passengers on the bus I used to take said had some of the best coffee in the city.  If you travel about a quarter mile east on 25th Street, you come to the intersection of Harford Road.  At that intersection is an annoyingly long traffic light that blinks green and then stays on red it seems forever.  When the road was tore up a few months back for the endless and aggravating road construction Baltimore is noted for, that made things even more a situation of hubris as I am sure myself and countless others who take that route every day were forced to be late to work or school.  I have seen annoying traffic lights many times and in many places - St. Petersburg, FL, was noted for a lot of them too.  Thinking about the hubris and impatience a lengthy traffic light causes made me think of what my own life is like right now - I feel like I am sitting for a longer-than-usual time at that Harford Road intersection, waiting for that light to change from red to green.  You know the destination is in front of you, you are en route to it, but there is a delay that seems to be eternal.  This is my life at this point, and in all honesty, that light can change anytime!  Of course, there are other factors I have to wait out as well, such as waiting on this contract to end, for an actual opportunity to call, and then comes house hunting.  This means that if I start a new position in August, I will need to prepare by packing up my stuff, finding a house, and then moving into it before my first day of work comes.  It is daunting, but all of it is contingent on one email or phone call presenting me an offer for that opportunity.  I am actually praying that happens soon, and it is a lesson in trusting God for the light to change in a timely manner.  Again, this is where I am now.

Other decisions weigh on me too, such as my spiritual life.  I have, for a number of years, felt a bit displaced by my decision to return to the Catholic Church - I can't minister anymore because I have to be celibate to be a priest, which is not in my agenda.  Also, I have felt like teaching is my vocation - and it is - but too many things restrain me from teaching the way I would love to teach. One thing in particular is this school where I teach at now.  Despite having a Catholic identity, the school itself is very left-leaning on so many things, and the school fails to live up to its own name, which is a Latin title that exalts the Kingship of Christ.  Additionally, seeing some other things going on in the greater Catholic world concerns me too.  That pervert cardinal, "Tucho" Fernandez, is a problem in that he is the one in charge of the Dicastery of Faith, yet he has essentially written soft-core porn in theological language, which in itself is disturbing.  Add to that the Pachamama scandal (which the new Pope seems to be endorsing), priest scandals in the past 20 or so years, a re-emergence of the heresy of liberation theology in the name of "immigrant ministry," and the punishment of many solid and orthodox clergy (the SSPX, Cardinal Burke, Bishop Strickland, Archbishop Vigano, Cardinal Zen, and Fr. Frank Pavone among others) while affirming openly heretical and diabolical people such as Cardinal Fernandez and James Martin, has led me to reassess once again my relationship to the Catholic Church as an institution.  It is this I want to unpack now, as there is a lot I have been processing in regard to all this recently. 

The first thing I want to state is that I am a very committed Catholic Christian - I believe in a 2000-year-old faith without compromise and everything that goes with that.  I am not someone though who is strictly Tridentine Mass, as the so called Novus Ordo Mass that most Catholic parishes celebrate is actually quite reverent if it is celebrated in the right way.  I am at the point in my life that this aspect of my faith will never change as I have held it for the better of 30 years now.  That being said however, the official Roman Catholic Church as represented by the Vatican is often not as truly Catholic as it claims to be - there are too many Sadducees in clerical garb who will do anything to compromise Catholic truth as it has been held for centuries, and I am convinced that both the current Pope, Leo XIV and his predecessor Francis, have both did much to undermine true Catholicity in faith, and that is concerning to me.  I am not sure where I am right now with the official Catholic Church as administered by the leadership in the Vatican, but I am not making any decisions to go any direction yet until I see what truly happens - it would take a "green light" of a different sort to motivate me to leave that expression of Catholicism for good.  However, if the Church continues on its current trajectory and people like Cardinal Tucho have the power they have, it will not be me leaving the Catholic faith at all - it will be them if they compromise on it.  I have been meditating on that possibility and am looking into a communion that would be the Catholic faith I myself have, and it's good to have an exit strategy in case things really deteriorate later.  I am not inclined toward the SSPX, as I am not exclusively Tridentine Mass, nor am I totally comfortable with being formally part of an Orthodox church of some sort either - as much as I love and revere the Christian East, there are some of their hierarchs that focus more on exclusivity and legalism than they do the beauty of their own traditions, and I don't want that either.  Going back to the Continuing Anglican movement has been a thought, but I will have to see what comes of that first.  And the Polish National Catholic Church - I have looked into that also, and I like what I see but am just not "feeling" that right now though.  If I would be part of a particular Communion of some sort, it would have to almost mirror my own faith journey to a degree, and would have to be something I would be 100% certain of being part of.  That has led me to revisit a few things I want to talk about now.

I mentioned that my road to becoming Catholic was a path with a lot of turns in it - I was a former Pentecostal, and I became attracted to liturgy and sacramental understandings of the Christian experience some time ago.  I along with thousands of others were part of what was called the Convergence Movement, and at a later point I want to do an article here specifically on that.  The idea of "convergence" meant that over the centuries there were three streams of Christian expression - the Evangelical, the Charismatic, and the Liturgical (or Catholic).  With the Protestant Reformation and the Enlightenment, something happened that isolated all of these from each other, and the result was a mess of incomplete Christian traditions emphasizing one of these over the others.  You had groups like the Baptists for instance that had a high view of Scripture and personal conversion to Christ, but they lacked something in the process.  The Pentecostals rediscovered the importance of the supernatural and the work of the Holy Spirit, but they too lacked - often, their belief systems would devolve into personality cults built up around pastors and evangelists, and you had to "feel" everything in order to be "spiritually alive."  That constant high standard caused problems of a different sort.  The Liturgical stream though had the worship - it was an ancient worship connected deeply to tradition, but at times many people who participated in it just "went through the motions," and thus they had something they knew was real but never fully appreciated it.  The three streams then became three competing faiths in a matter of speaking, with each trying to discredit the other without realizing that they actually were all supposed to compliment each other - that is where Convergence Christianity came into the picture, as many of us who were early proponents of it understood that there was something missing and the pieces needed to be put together in order to get a complete picture of what true Christian faith was.  While this has been an evolutionary process (not in a Darwinian sense, but rather a growth through trial-and-error), it also has congealed into a form of Catholic Christianity that I can securely lay claim to as it follows my basic convictions.  If I were to explain this, it would be like this:

1. Evangelical - this means my faith has a high view of Scripture as God-authored Revelation, and that what it says is true, especially regarding origins - this is why I also embrace both Biblical Young-Earth Creationism as a theological position and Intelligent Design as a scientific position.  It also sees the importance of Biblical morality, personal faith, and the salvation of souls as a mission of the Church.

2. Charismatic - this means my faith is supernatural in focus.  I believe in the power of the Holy Spirit working even today in ways such as healing, exercise of spiritual gifts, and the overlooked importance of important things such as our dreams. 

3. Liturgical - this is my worship.  It is grounded, rich in symbolism, and also rooted in a tradition.  The order, reverence, and dignity of liturgy brings the invisible to life, and it also is a way to live out the Gospel.  Jesus then is made real through sacramental grace.  

There are a couple of things about this which must be clarified - being a charismatic and a traditionalist does not to entail two conflicting and exclusive concepts.  It does not mean that CCM and "blended worship" have to be substituted for the rich musical tradition of the liturgical form either.  Some Convergence proponents try to insert contemporary "praise choruses" into a liturgical setting, but it doesn't fit because there is a time and place for the "praise time," and it is not during the Mass.  This is why I am not opposed to bringing things such as revivals and crusades into a Convergent Church environment, but for that I don't look to Hillsong, but rather to older forms of crusades such as those of the late Kathryn Kuhlman.  There is a reason Kathryn appealed to so many charismatic Catholics, and that is because she saw herself as being a vessel of the Holy Spirit and not doing anything that would offend him.  So, despite her identity with the Pentecostal movement, Kathryn Kuhlman's form of extra-liturgical evangelism meetings would fit comfortably into a Convergent Catholic setting.  The Mass and other liturgical forms should be kept with Christ at the center, but there are other forms of meetings that can be incorporated that encourage the supernatural move of the Holy Spirit too.  I would differ to a degree with other Convergence Movement people on this, but I think the evolution of the Church the way we are desiring it would be integral to understanding the times and places for different forms of devotion.  Remember too, the earliest movement that was considered a forerunner of the Azuza Street meetings that sparked Pentecostalism was a liturgical movement itself - the Catholic Apostolic Church of the 1830s.  The modern Convergence Movement would benefit a lot from studying the old CAC and its writings and liturgical heritage, as in reality the CAC was actually the original Convergence Church.  Even some of the oldest Pentecostal groups - the Portland-based Apostolic Faith Church comes to mind - reflected a reverence that many modern Pentecostals and Charismatics lack.  The AFC still has ordered services with full orchestras and pipe organs, and it is fully Pentecostal as well.  Same with another movement that presaged the Convergence Movement by a decade called the International Communion of Charismatic Churches.  While one ICCC pioneer, Bishop Earl Paulk, lost his credibility over scandal, he and many of his colleagues created a new type of "high-church Pentecostalism" which surprisingly also attracted many African-Americans too.  The biggest church in the US of this movement, Evangel Cathedral in Upper Marlboro, MD (which is about 30 miles from where I am sitting now) was founded by Bishop John Meares and still today continues that legacy as well.  In the many years of observing all this, I have always had a unique version of the Church that saw the benefits of all the aforementioned, and I often tried to implement it with little success and much opposition when I was a Pentecostal, and somewhat tabled when I eventually became Catholic.  But, lately those feelings have been stirring again and I am starting to wonder if I missed something somewhere?  Let me recap a little summary of my personal journey to show you what I mean.

A lot of this is hard to articulate in words, because I have never fully sorted out a lot of it myself.  There are times I was more attuned to it and wanted to explore things with it, but then the demands of daily life sort of made me table it as I have so many things.  I think one of the reasons I am so spiritually discontented lately is due to the fact that there is a lot I feel is missing from my own religious life, and I am starting to look back into some things to recover some of that enthusiasm I used to have.  This means the distinct possibility of maybe looking into a smaller - but fully Catholic - group that I can develop in and really be that person I should be.  I miss a lot of that stuff, and it does weigh on me.  This particular red light has been a long red light, and I need a way to make that light green so I can start to fulfill what it is I should be.  Hopefully as I explore this more I can get there, but the major thing now is discernment - where do I go, and what do I do?  A lot of that is waiting to see what directions Leo takes the Catholic Church - a lot will be determined then as to where I live out my Catholic faith, and the remote possibility is that the official Roman Catholic Church may not be the place.  I will be prayerfully exploring that further in days to come I am sure. 

Thank you for allowing me to share.   Many of you will relate to this green light analogy, as many of you are there.  The key is the wait - if you can survive that, it will make it all worth it in the end.  See you next time.