Copeland's Corner: August 31, 2022
Why I have chosen to stay in the Catholic Church is between me and God.
I am a practicing Catholic. My mother converted from Baptist to Catholic when I was a child and took my sisters and me along with her. That being the case, I was a little late to the party. I was baptized at the age of four as opposed to infancy, which is the tradition, and I received my first Holy Communion at age ten instead of seven. From that point on, my family was all in.
I received a Catholic education from grade school through college. I was an altar boy and served mass from the ages of ten to fifteen. I sang in the children’s choir and rang along with the bell choir at church. I observed Holy Days of Obligation like Easter, Christmas, All Saints Day and All Souls Day, to name a few. I sacrificed meat on Fridays during Lent and went to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. Our social life was based around our classmates and our parish, so most of the people we knew were Catholic. It was almost weird to associate with someone who wasn’t. I didn’t meet a Jewish person until I was in high school, and I wasn’t introduced to a Hindu or a Muslim until I started my career in comedy in my early 20s.
Like a lot of my Catholic contemporaries, once there was no parent or institution to force me to go to mass, I drifted away from the church. And like a lot of my Catholic contemporaries, once I had children, I came back. And, like most people with a brain, I was disgusted, appalled and disappointed when the first part of a seemingly endless molestation scandal first surfaced. To learn that bishops and the hierarchy of the dioceses they led knew there were priests molesting children, who those priests were and, rather than excommunicating the offenders and involving law enforcement, simply shuffled them from parish to parish to prey on other unsuspecting innocents sickens me. While I guess I was one of the lucky ones because nothing happened to me, it also nauseates me to know that there were altar boys I served mass with who were abused by the very same priests I was serving mass with at the same time. Some of these now-grown men I served with have come forward with their stories this summer, forty and fifty years after the abuse.
The horror of these atrocities and how it was handled has led many of the people I grew up with to leave the church. They say they’ve had enough. That’s their choice and I respect and totally understand it. I, on the other hand, have chosen to stay. That is my choice. What infuriated me and prompted me to write this piece are those who, upon discovering that I remain a practicing Catholic, act as though I need to offer them some kind of explanation. That I must defend my reason to belong to the faith of my choosing. I don’t. Quite frankly, why I belong to the church I belong to is none of their damned business.
I don’t proselytize. I don’t talk about my faith and my beliefs with most people. My spirituality is something personal and private, yet when some people find out I’m Catholic, I have to listen to a diatribe about the church, a lecture on why I need to go to their nondenominational institution or why I should abandon organized religion entirely. I’m sick and tired of people, most of whom aren’t even particularly close to me, trying to force their lack of religious belief on me. It’s ridiculous. Why do so many people feel that they have the right to force their atheism or agnosticism on me especially since I don’t force my Catholicism on them?
I wasn’t born a Catholic, but I’ll die one. It’s my business. Am I a particularly devout Catholic? No. There’s plenty I disagree with in this church. I believe in reproductive rights. I believe in gay rights. I believe that women should be allowed ordination as priests. I believe anyone complicit in the abuse scandals should be in jail and that their victims should be substantially compensated.
That said, it’s still my faith. Why I stay is between me and God. Nobody has the right to force their unsolicited nonbelief on me any more than I should be pushing my faith on them. If you choose to avoid religion, it’s up to you. Just leave me out of it. It’s your choice. That doesn’t mean it has to be mine.