Note: Edited slightly April 10, 2007, to remove personal details. I think it’s interesting to see what was going on in my mind a year ago! This was originally posted on my old blog, and was addressed to my friends, who were justifiably skeptical about this new stage of my life. I am happy and blessed in their friendship; they have stuck by me, and I love them dearly.
So how about I make a list of all the possible objections that I could have to becoming Catholic. Y’all can tell me if I’ve left any out.
1. The teachings on sexuality with regard to marriage/pre-marital sex/masturbation/etc.
2. The teachings re. homosexuality.
3. The abortion issue.
4. The lack of ordination of women.
5. The history of patriarchy.
6. scary conservative Catholics who get together with scary evangelicals & call for John Kerry to be excommunicated for promoting abortion.
7. I’ve been brainwashed by my university.
8. the issue of needing to be obedient to the Magisterium [pope & his folks] (hell, just the word ‘Magisterium’ itself).
9. obedience in general (as opposed to freedom).
10. America is corrupting my morals.
11. I just want a nice community of folks & am therefore selling out in order to ‘belong.’
12. I’m making it all up because it fits together nicely & philosophically.
13. I’m deluded by beauty.
14. What about other religions? less offensive ones?
15. Believing weird stuff about life after death.
16. believing that Jesus was resurrected.
17. Believing that Mary was free of original sin.
18. Having to believe in original sin, period.
19. Legacy of crusades, inquisition, burning witches, etc.
20. anti-feminist.
Let me know if you have any others. Brainstorm! Fun times!
Basically, I’m on some sort of path. I don’t know where it leads. Even if I were to start taking Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults classes, it would still be at least a year or two before I was even baptized. So there’s no need for me to rush anything. And I trust you all, and thus am genuinely interested & open to anything you could have to say.
