Moral theology and the drive to be the best in my (Catholic) community
Unfortunately, not well-equipped with the tools of moral theology (the branch of theology that deals with complex situations, seeking to help people discover and become absolutely everything God made them for…aka the path to holiness), I started learning the rules and how to defend the Catholic Church from attacks.
This was both good and bad. It was complicated. As described in my bio, I had inklings that a lot of people around me were holding secrets or perhaps not living the perfect life it seemed. But I didn’t want to challenge that. I wanted to defend the Church and not draw attention to the things within (the parish and myself) that made public perception about the church complicated too.
I drew closer to the Traditional Latin Mass. I started to see my purer form of liturgy as better than others, even if I accepted that most people would not be willing to come over to my side. I followed the rules rigorously. I was going to discipline myself into become the best Catholic there was.
It required a lot of reading Church history, apologetics, listening to YouTube videos in Latin. You were not going to outwork me.
This desire to do things. To be that best Catholic. It was both wonderful and at the same time complicated and transactional. As we heard in the Gospel of Luke (beginning at chapter 12:49), Jesus came to bring fire on the earth, and he wished it had already been kindled. What did he mean? The perception of the Gospel is that Jesus lived in a highly religious time, where everyone went to synagogue together, and followed all the rules. Basically, seems like his job should have been pretty easy.
No. That drive to confirm and soothe one’s own desires to belong and be seen as the best among the chosen people of God totally missed the point according to Jesus. He came to show us a more transformative path. One deeply rooted in unity.
As a thought experiment, imagine you become stranded on a desert island. There are no priests, no sacraments. The only other survivor is a fellow Catholic with a significantly more “liberal” theological upbringing. In this bare reality, stripped of all of the markers of Catholicism I was holding onto. Suddenly that doesn’t matter anymore. We have to survive. And instead we start by needing to know each other’s skills. Can you build things? Can you cook? Do you have medical skills? I’m sure, the two survivors of the island would pray together and over time form their own mini-culture that builds each other up within whatever they have left within Catholicism.
Even without the ultimate sacrament of unity (the Eucharist) they are able to form a spiritual bond that forces them to see how the other fills a void. They need one another, but hopefully are able to form a Christian friendship within that. Hopefully they both learn something new about what it means to have a deep faith that lasts the test of time and crisis. This is a form of complementarity.
The path to holiness is not one that is concerned with recognition. It is about opening up, discovering, allowing oneself to be surprised, and contemplating how God is present in the Eucharist, which he leaves behind as a true presence to foster our unity.
