The difference

Now it is Holy Week and here comes the weird feeling of doing double time in two churches. I went to the Roman Palm Sunday Mass in part because it was the one I could get to and in part because I am used to it being moving. I don’t know if I’ve changed or what, but it seems to have gone drastically downhill. Nobody sings. Everybody looks depressed and afraid and it seems like everyone is trying to hard. Dean is there as sacristan. He’s trying to hard as well. I understand, I understand, I know your history Dean. Never had a father, never lived in one place or went to one school for very long, never was one of the guys, never had a place of importance, never got to be very sure of who you were, so of course you jump at the chance to look important and officious.

Now I realize that the reason I never applied to the public university was because it was public. Ah, when you are Catholic the whole world is Catholic, and though there may be something out there better for someone else (maybe) it is not better for you. We do not acknowledge the existence of other churches or other people or other ways, all of life, all right and wrong, is defined in a book. Heaven, hell, purgatory and earth are all mapped out. You have one allegiance, which is to the Church. Which Church? Ah, you know… Even a liberal Catholic, even a pro-choice Catholic who is all for the ordination of women and impassioned about gay rights is still such an animal. Or else, why remain in a church that you don't agree with? Even a Catholic atheist is someone who refuses to believe in a Catholic view of God. We all only see Rome.

There is a sort of agnosticism involved in becoming Anglican. The Common Prayer book is blessedly vague. The world an Anglican lives in is an ecumenical one full of Lutherans and Methodists, a nod to Catholic cousins, an awareness of Buddhist and Pagans and all the other people out there. It is a much more secular world I’ve come into. It is a free world. But, I admit, I miss the old world because sometimes freedom feels like falling.