Tuesday, May 24, 2005
CATHOLIC TO THE CORE
In the midst of all the bad news about being Catholic comes this commentary by Chicago Tribune correspondent Charlie Madigan. (Scroll down to April 20, "Does the Pope Matter?"):
I recall a funeral I attended years and years ago at St. Ben's in Chicago. An old Irish guy had died and I was asked to sing. I was flattered. I got there early. There were a dozen women in the church praying the rosary in hopes that God would bring an end to Communism and its oppression of religion.
I have never been able to get the image of those women out of my head. It's burned in there, and what it tells me is that at the center of this huge church -- with all of its broadly discussed problems, weaknesses, even its sins -- sit the many believers.
Through disappointment, through scandal, through the discomforts of changing liturgy, though the disappearance of parish priests, the transformation of nuns and everything else, the Catholic Church still has a core of believers bigger than anyone can count. Bigger than anyone can imagine.
Yeah, I guess this is why I'm still Catholic in spite of everything. It's sort of in the genes.
