Since I come from a small, very conservative Catholic town, one thing I have learned about Catholicism at Loras is that there are other people in this world who don’t agree with everything the Catholic Church teaches. In high school, we were always taught to believe, accept, practice, teach, etc. exactly what the Catholic Church said. I was incredibly turned off by this because I had a lot of disagreements with the church, and I thought in order to be considered Catholic I had to believe everything I was taught. It was not until I came to Loras, and I met some people with similar morals as myself, that I realized I do not have to believe in every little thing of the Catholic Church in order to consider myself Catholic. In addition, I took classes such as Priest, Minister, and Rabbi that actually pointed out some “holes” in the church and made me think about my religion on a more critical and analytical level, that I had been yearning to do in high school. In general, a Catholic college education bestows the religion onto all of the students while still trying to keep an open mind about their own religion, and other religions as well. These experiences have taught me a great deal about my faith and how to be a ‘cafeteria Catholic’, i.e. someone who picks and chooses what to believe and follow from the Catholic teaching.
One thing that is distinctive about a Catholic college education is that the education teaches you every side of the church, the good and the bad. But yet, at times, I feel like they tell me too ignore all of those bad things and just be Catholic anyways. But I don’t want to ignore those things and neither did Dorothy Day. To her, being Catholic was treating everybody equaling and helping the needy. This is something that the church teaches but sometimes has a hard time practicing. Dorothy Day paved her own path and set up the Catholic Worker Houses on the basis of Catholic Social Teaching. I remember when I was a freshman at a bible study group and we were talking about how being Catholic meant that the same Mass was being said all across the world to fellow Catholics. This is admirable but what about the other billions of people out there who are not Catholic? Should we not share something with them every day? Dorothy Day wanted to share something with every human and her way of doing that was by sharing the main thing that all humans have in common, food. She would share her food, house, conversations, etc. with anyone because she saw every human being has having the right to survival. I would have liked to bring this topic up during that bible study and asked, “What are you sharing with the rest of the world today?”
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Big Dave,
I finally have the pleasure to comment on your blog post. Regarding your experience at your school prior to Loras, I would say we had way different experiences. People tend to think that the fact that we are from Latin America implies that all of us are Catholic. To some degree, it is true, but really, the new generations do not care about religion. During my Eurotrip this summer, I met a girl from Chile at the hostel in Rome. She went to the Vatican to see the luxuries that the Church has. She claimed that she was atheist and that her friends in Chile are pretty much on the same page. Thus, regardless of the so claimed 99% of the Latin American catholicism, the new generations are deviating away from any religion.
I really liked your cafeteria comment! You are so clever! haha
I know we all have disagreements with the Church. Some people might ignore them, but it is our human nature to question. I hope that some day, not that far away, the Church realizes that there is a need of change in some of the policies it has. I think changes and modernizing the Church is going to be crucial to determine the number of followers.
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