Now What?

CHAPTER ONE THE BIG PICTURE Understand What It Means to Be Catholic Imagine yourself immigrating to a distant foreign country. For a long time now, you've been planning this transition, getting ready for your total immersion into another culture with exotic surroundings and languages, with laws, customs, holidays, and social conventions that differ from what you're accustomed to. Even though you're excited and ready to enthusiastically embrace this new world of ideas and experiences, you still find yourself a little apprehensive about feeling out of place once you're there. Right? Don't worry. That feeling is totally normal. Many people feel that way as they make the journey into the Catholic Church. And for some, that feeling goes away only gradually, even after they've become Catholic. The Church is a big place filled with many wonderful things that, at first glance, might seem puzzling or difficult to get used to. In due time, these things will become familiar and comfortable. In the meantime, it helps to consult a guidebook (like this one!) to get your bearings and learn your way around. Once you take that momentous step and officially "immigrate" into the Catholic Church, you may, understandably, find yourself asking, "Okay, now what do I do?" And while the short answer to that question is simply, "Be Catholic," it's not a terribly practical response, because those two words encompass a great deal. Let's break things down into their component parts and explore them so you can get a clear look at all the major aspects of being Catholic. This will help you see the big picture, the fifty-thousand-foot view. Let's consider in two ways what it means to "be Catholic." First, what's involved in living out a Catholic identity? Second, what does that identity of "being Catholic" comprise? Each of these sides of the same coin deserves careful consideration. LIVING AS A CATHOLIC Being Catholic involves many rights and privileges, as well as duties and obligations, similar to the way rights and duties are part of citizenship in a given country. In the United States, for example, citizenship confers on the holder the constitutionally recognized rights to vote in elections, worship God freely, and exercise free speech, to name a few.1 It also obligates the citizen to fulfill certain duties to the country, such as paying taxes, defending the nation by serving in the military (if drafted), and serving on a jury (if summoned). In the same way, to be Catholic means to avail yourself of those rights and privileges that derive from your new identity as a member of the Church. In becoming Catholic, you receive God's priceless gift of grace through baptism, confirmation, and the Holy Eucharist. This transforming grace literally makes you an adopted son or daughter of God and, therefore, an heir to every good thing God has in store for those who love him. As St. Paul put it: For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of sonship. When we cry, "Abba! Father!" it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. (Romans 8:14-17) All baptized members of the Church share in the rights and privileges that stem from that glorious status of fellow heirs with Christ. Many practical examples of this are spelled out in detail in the Church's Code of Canon Law2 and include, but are not limited to: the right to make known your needs and desires, especially spiritual ones, to the pastors of the Church (Canon 212.2); the right to receive assistance from the pastor out of the spiritual goods of the Church, especially the Word of God and the sacraments (Canon 213); the right to participate in the mission of the Church (Canon 216); the right to be free from any kind of coercion in choosing a state in life (Canon 219). Similarly, there are duties and obligations that every baptized Catholic is required to fulfill. Many of these, too, are elaborated in the Code of Canon Law and in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (see CCC 2041-2043) and include, for instance, the "Sunday obligation" (i.e., the duty to attend Mass every Sunday and every holy day of obligation3 and to rest from all servile work on those days);4 the obligation, if choosing marriage, to be married in the Church (unless granted a dispensation by one's bishop); the responsibility of financially supporting the work of the Church to the best of one's ability;5 and the duty to confess your sins at least once a year and to receive the Holy Eucharist at least during the Easter season. When you think about it, all this talk about rights and duties, although it might sound formal and legalistic, could apply to the way any family operates. Each member of a family enjoys certain privileges that come from being part of the family. And each member is expected to pull his own weight when it comes to the family's division of labor, right? Everyone, according to his age, capacity, and availability, is expected to pitch in with doing chores, yard work, and so forth. It's not that the family members are hung up on rules or anything like that. It's just that, in any human society, in order for there to be order, mutual fulfillment, and happiness, everyone involved must have certain rights and duties; we instinctively expect and respect this fact. This is no less true of the Catholic Church than it is of your own family or workplace. Being Catholic means doing those things Catholics naturally do: going to Mass, reading the Holy Bible, praying, striving to cultivate virtue and avoid vice,6 learning the teachings of the Church, and so forth. In short, it means living out your Catholic identity. Next, we'll consider what that identity consists of. WHAT MAKES A CATHOLIC Most cradle Catholics, raised in the faith from infancy, learn the language and culture of the Church effortlessly. They speak Catholic-ese fluently and understand intuitively aspects of the Catholic Church that, for many non-Catholics, seems strange or incomprehensible, even off-putting. Examples of this are devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary and the saints, confession to a priest, infant baptism, purgatory, and the papacy. But this is to be expected. Anyone growing up in Spain or Germany or Japan would intuitively understand the subtle nuances of those cultures. Immigrants to those countries, however, must make an effort to understand things that are, at least at first, foreign to them. Likewise for converts, learning the language and culture of the Church is a natural and important part of becoming Catholic. An analogy I've used many times to describe the different perspectives toward the Church is that of a stained-glass window in a large, old cathedral. When seen from the inside, as a cradle Catholic would view it, the window is bright and beautiful, an explosion of color and meaning. The light streaming through it illuminates everything. To someone looking at it from the outside-someone who was not raised in the Church-however, the same window might appear dark and dreary, lacking the color, meaning, and beauty it has when viewed from the inside. It's really a matter of perspective. And becoming Catholic involves gaining that perspective, even if it comes into view only gradually, as it tends to for most converts. Being Catholic means embracing and assimilating into yourself the Catholic identity. It's a kind of osmosis. Recall what happens when a stalk of celery is placed upright in a glass of water and blue food coloring: It becomes entirely imbued with blue. Likewise, when you truly become Catholic, you gradually "soak up" the ethos of Catholicism, its moral and doctrinal teachings, the Mass and other liturgical celebrations, its two-thousand-year history, replete with a host of saints and martyrs, a sensus Catholicus (a Catholic sense of things). To be Catholic means, as St. Paul says, "not [to] be conformed to this world but [to] be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect" (Romans 12:2). That "renewal of your mind" is the perfect way to describe taking on the Catholic identity. It becomes part of you at an ever-deeper level, like the stalk of celery becoming blue from bottom to top. The wonderful thing about all this is that membership in the Catholic Church, being universal, is not a single, monolithic, one-size-fits-all identity that everyone is forced to wear. We'd call that a straightjacket. No, our Catholic identity is expansive and many-faceted, permeated with tremendous variety and nuance. It admits some things and excludes others, the way the human body admits foods and liquids that are good for it and rejects substances that aren't. A truly Catholic identity allows a person to experience, appreciate, and cherish the profound love of God and the magnificent, even exhilarating freedom that comes with being an adopted son or...