Laurence McTaggart - Being Catholic Today

Element

an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain in 2000 by Fount

Copyright © 2000 Laurence McTaggart

Laurence McTaggart asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

Scripture quotations are taken from the Jerusalem Bible , © 1966 Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd and Doubleday

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Source ISBN: 9780007121793

Ebook Edition © DECEMBER 2012 ISBN: 9780007404452

Version: 2016-02-25

for Dick and Marie-Thérèse Mardon with thanks and love

Cover Page

Title Page

Copyright

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION Being Catholic

PART 1 LAYING THE FOUNDATION

Chapter 1 RIGHT WAY DOWN

Chapter 2 WORD MADE FLESH

Chapter 3 WILL GOD PUNISH YOU?

Chapter 4 A BETTER IDEA

Chapter 5 THICKER THAN WATER

PART 2 THE LIFE WE LIVE

Chapter 6 GET REAL

Chapter 7 THE MISSING LINK

Chapter 8 HOW TO BE BAD AT PRAYER

Chapter 9 SHADOW BOXING

Chapter 10 EYE OF THE NEEDLE

PART 3 THE CHURCH AND US

Chapter 11 MEETING CHRIST

Chapter 12 HOW TO DISAGREE WITH THE POPE

Chapter 13 WALKING CALMLY

Chapter 14 LOST FOR EVER?

Chapter 15 OUT OF COMMUNION

Chapter 16 OTHER SHEEP

Chapter 17 INTERCOMMUNION

PART 4 ISSUES FOR TODAY

Chapter 18 THE BETTER PART

Chapter 19 WORTH A MASS?

Chapter 20 LIVING IN SIN

Chapter 21 SUICIDE

Chapter 22 BLUE PIGS

Chapter 23 ON THE SHELF

AFTERWORD Being Catholic Today

About the Publisher

Do not be afraid.

Isaiah 41:14

You may think this is a book, but it’s more a conversation. I’m not attempting to settle any of the problems of being a Catholic today, nor will I give any definitive account of what it means to be Catholic. Maybe those would be good things to do, but they are beyond any one person to achieve on his or her own. So, instead, I offer you one half of a conversation for you to react to as you wish. Parts you may like, and parts you may think are rubbish. Parts may even offend, in which case I ask your pardon as that was not my intention.

You may also think of things I have not talked about which matter to you very much. Treat, if you will, what follows as one Catholic trying to say what his faith is in today’s world. It is part of the human condition to be confused and challenged, by faith and by the life we lead. We also yearn for sense and for vision. To find it, we have to share with each other, without too much fear. In what follows, I am trying to share what sense I have made of life so far. Indeed, the Church is made up of a lot of very different people united by one hope, of finding God and staying with him. Let us enjoy each other’s company for a while, and then part, if not in agreement on everything, then at least having found a new friend with whom to talk.

Conversations often ramble, so feel free to move around and skip bits that don’t appeal to you. But a key point that I want to make is that the many problems we face in the Catholic Church have to be understood not just in the context of the faith, but as part of the faith. The problems are what it is to be Catholic today, part of a human community that needs the redemption of God, and that tries to celebrate it in our lives as best we can. So the first few chapters are about faith and the Catholic faith, and I hope they illuminate the later ones.

Just a word of thanks to some of the people who have encouraged me with this book: my father Andrew, Fr. Bede Leach, Madeleine Judd, Andrew and Nicola Higgins, Fr. Dominic Milroy, Mark Detre, Fr. Patrick Barry, Ed Walton, Anna Reid and Fr. Roger Barralet, to name just a few. None of us stands alone before God, and I am blessed in the people I have with me, and most of all in my mother, Violet, who has gone before to encourage.

The mistakes are all mine, of course. We all make mistakes, and that is what the Church is for: a place where we can go wrong in safety and in good company, sure of forgiveness.

They have found pardon in the wilderness.

Jeremiah 21:2

Everything seemed to be going well. The train was on time, and I had a table to myself to spread out sandwiches and books. In fact, the carriage was almost empty, and mobile phones went off less than twice a minute. So why, I wondered, did he sit next to me?

‘Which parish are you from, Father?’

‘I’m a monk, actually.’

Of course he turns out to be a Catholic, so what else can we talk about?

He wants to know about his children, two sons. One is something in the City, the other is on a long-haired traverse of the Antipodes. He is not sure which is more of a disappointment. They don’t go to Mass, you see. He did everything God could have asked of him, and even paid for an independent Catholic education. Finally, he told them that they were in danger of losing their souls unless they submitted to the tedium of weekly Sunday Mass. He was surprised to find this did not move them. ‘Now, Father,’ he asked, ‘are they not doomed to hell?’

I found that rather an odd question from a parent, and not at all easy to answer. He interpreted, rightly, that my silence was temporizing. I was obviously about to say that things are not that simple: typical, liberal wool-gathering. What would you have said that might have satisfied him? I’ll tell you later what I said (see chapter 14), and you can decide if you would do any better. But for now, I would just like to log two issues for the future. First, people can say the oddest things from the best of motives. After all, the man was worried about his children. Second, nothing that matters in life and religion is ever simple.

Maybe both those ideas are totally obvious. But you try living by them. In practice, we ask questions in fear or doubt, and answer with anxiety or aggression. There is a thought too that religious matters should be fairly easy to understand. ‘Why can’t those bigoted people just read what Jesus has to say about the hypocrisy of the Pharisees?’ Or, ‘Why can’t those people for whom anything goes just keep the rules that God has given in the Church?’ The answer to both questions is that we are all people , and people are like that. If you are a person too, then read on, because we shall see that this is exactly the problem that God has faced in and through Jesus: how to redeem us without destroying what he has made us to be.

But first, the doomed journey continued. At Edinburgh station I escaped, and stood watching the departure board in a recuperative daydream. I had forgotten the bruising encounter, forgotten that I was in a clerical shirt, forgotten everything except that I was halfway home for a week’s holiday.