What I Liked and Didn’t about Being Catholic

Those of you who have been reading my blogs for a while know that I have had quite a religious pilgrimage. Born into a secular Jewish family, I originally received religious instruction from our African American housekeeper, Florine. She was a devout Methodist who attended weekly services at a local church in our New York City suburb of Great Neck. She would sing or hum hymns, tell me about Jesus, and invite me to listen with her to the George Beverley Shea Bible Hour on the radio. We’re talking here about the early 1940s. When I was in 7th grade—we were now living in the New York City suburb of Scarsdale—I spent a year in a Reform Jewish congregation and [sic!] Sunday School in nearby White Plains...

My parents, neither of whom had much respect for or interest in religion, rarely accompanied me to services. At age 12 I was sent to the American Baptist-affiliated boarding School, Peddie, in central New Jersey. At the traditional age of 13, I was bar mitzvah at Grandma Ida’s Orthodox temple in New York City. Since I was fully unprepared, my dad, under pressure from his mother, had bribed the rabbi to do the job for me. The all-male members of the morning minion looked up at me reading a few prayer transliterations as if they were seeing the downfall of Judaism in secular America. A voice in my head said, “We don’t care what religion you follow. Just remember never ever to make a mockery of religion.” So at Peddie I got into Protestant Christianity from the hymns at the daily chapel services and required Sunday church visits. I was very un-Christianly proud of being first in my required class on the Christian religion. Later as a Yale undergraduate I attended the ultra-high-Episcopal Christ Church but left after a few years because of the parish’s political conservatism. Then, in Yale graduate school I spent a year or so in a Conservative Jewish youth group, Atid (The Future), but by this point Judaism was a bridge too far for me. In 1963 I married my German girl friend from my year abroad in Heidelberg and eventually joined her in the Lutheran church, baptized as I was with my older daughter, Marianna, in 1967. Finally, in 2004, now living in Honolulu, I felt moved to become Roman Catholic, and, a stereotypical convert, I became super-faithful: a daily communicant; a lector, cantor, and Communion assistant; a Rosary participant; and a regular attender at missions and retreats. This time my German wife joined me until her death in 2006. The following year I even spent time discerning in a Catholic monastery but decided that I was not cut out to be a monk. In 2011, however, now in Boulder, Colorado, where Catholicism was much more conservative than in Hawaii, I left the Church and became Episcopalian in a broad version of Anglicanism—"Catholic light,” some folks called it—a faith I have happily stayed with ever since.
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I liked a number of things about being Catholic. Among them were going to Rosary or Padre Pio meet-ups. I also enjoyed serving in various liturgical roles, including doing the two Passover prayers I knew in Hebrew during Holy Week. I was a sincere fan of several of our priests, the deacon who taught the orientation course I took for new Catholics, and our bishop. I made friends with several parishioners, and the congregation was very supportive when my first wife died. I especially liked the missions, generally week-long sessions with famous Catholic clerics like Fr. Richard Rohr and Fr. Philip Chircop, SJ, and the single- or multi-parish retreats in idyllic retreat centers on Oahu. I also loved the pomp and circumstance of the Masses: the vestments, the kneeling, the self-crossings, the incense, the liturgical language, and the short, sometimes impressive homilies (sermons). When I got to the ultra-conservative Archdiocese of Denver, in which Boulder is located, though, I was depressed by the narrow-mindedness of the clergy, who emphasized how our Church was correct and the others wrong, who denied children of gay or lesbian parents the right to attend parochial school, who disliked Pres. Obama, and who loved the strict Pope Benedict but were no fans of the liberal Pope Francis. I also disliked the all-male clergy and their sexual abuses. On Christmas Eve, 2011, the priest preached a sermon on demon possession. Demon possession on Christmas Eve! And therewith ended my life as a Catholic, although I did visit Fatima, Portugal, before going as an Episcopalian on the Camino of St. James in Spain in 2017.

Pope Benedict XVI

Pope Francis