Opaque Lucidity

The Turn

I am changing. It started with my accident in January, after which I reached a new low of cynicism. Mostly, I became cynical about God and the Church. They're easy targets today; just listen to any TV or radio broadcast and you will see anyone religious cast as a whacko or a child molester. The smart people, the "brights" as they call themselves, know there is no God and that religion is, as Marx proclaimed, an opiate for the masses. In the early months of this year, I was moving towards that belief as well.

Then something happened---I had a second seizure. I asked my best friend Peter, who was on the phone with me when it occurred, if I said anything unusual. I also asked Kelli and my sister-in-law Erica, who drove us to the hospital. Erica said I was like a four-year old, but I didn't say anything strange. I asked them this question because after I regained my grasp on consciousness, I remembered two things----a terrible smell and a feeling of dread so strong that I could think of nothing else for three or four days.

I have since learned that many seizure victims experience these feelings as a result of the "lightning storm" going on in our heads. But the feeling was so real, so tangible, that if you told me I had gone somewhere terrible in those few minutes I was out, I would believe you. I went back to work a week later, but the strange feeling would not leave my mind.

For the past 15 years I have had a feeling of impending danger with regard to our society. I don't know if the oncoming disaster will be economic, or a natural disaster, or a devastating war. You may think I'm crazy, but I believe my feeling of dread was a manifestation of that time to come. It was the darkest thing I have ever felt. I can still recall it and it scares me.

It was about this time I began reflecting on my relationship with the Roman Catholic Church. My disillusion truly began in my Senior year during a meeting with Father Mike Hilderbrand, the guidance "counselor" at Providence High School in Clarksville. I told Father Mike of my intention to join the Navy after high school, a move that was unusual in a school where 95% of the graduates attend college. He said (this is a direct quote) that I would not like the "Mickey Mouse antics" that go on in the Navy. You mean the antics of history's greatest force afloat, the force that acts as this nation's first line of defense? Or do you mean the antics of thousands of young men and women who swear before God to uphold the Constitution with their lives if necessary, the same Constitution which allows men like Father Mike to practice their faith without persecution? I simply told this "counselor": "This meeting is over" and walked out. I never talked to him again. That was 20 years ago. I discovered recently that Fr. Mike's brother was a career naval officer. Bitterness or jealously, perhaps? Survey says--- YES.

I have seen Father Mike many times since 1988 and each time he has purposely avoided speaking to me despite my willingness to at least be civil. This man who has lived most of his adult life in a high school has the emotional maturity of a 10 year-old girl who's angry at her best friend. If this is the best the Catholic Church can produce, I reasoned, I'm not sure I want to be a part of it. I had the same thought when the sexual abuse scandal began rocking the Church some years later. Bishops moved priests from one parish to another instead of turning them over to civil authorities. Would they hide a bank robber? This crime is much worse, yet it was covered up by men who are supposed to lead by example and protect the most innocent. Even though I still went through the motions, my heart was leaving the Church.

Very recently, I had a revelation. It was not like a jolt of energy, but rather a crescendo of reason dropped on me from somewhere else. Put simply, the sins and follies of men are NOT the Catholic Church. Father Mike and child molesting priests do not represent the standards of the church. Nor do I. The Church as an entity is a set of beliefs and traditions passed down to us in an unbroken line from Saint Peter. Those bedrock beliefs and the celebration of the Mass and other traditions are an unmovable foundation nearly two thousand years old. Everything else is built on that. Any organization led by human beings will have flaws because we are prone to temptation and sin. The Roman Catholic Church is no exception; anyone with a grasp of European history can list many sadistic, cruel and evil acts done in the name of the Church.

But here is the important truth, the one that we must rely on in dark times: THE FOUNDATION REMAINS. Catholics have been given a beautiful gift, a faith passed down from one generation to the next, built on that rock that is the fundamental beliefs of Catholicism. That is what I should be concentrating on, not the actions of fools and men with emotional problems. My mom has a saying that expresses this another way: Jesus is still on the throne.

This post may shock those of you who talk to me regularly. I will not preach to you, or lecture you, or anything like that. My study is in my heart and there are many unanswered questions for which I need answers.