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Alan Creech
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July 11, 2007
> 12:59 PM
the road back in > a catholic update I was asked by a new blog-friend, Tiber Jumber, how things were going in the process of re-entry into the Catholic Church. I suppose we could do with an update on things. I suppose things are going fairly smoothly, externally anyway. Our VBCC transition has gone far better than anticipated at this point. No craziness there, very mature and positive responses all round there. "Don't you miss that, being church in that way?" Well, I'm not sure what I miss yet I don't think. It probably hasn't been long enough to know. I think I do to an extent. There is an overshadowing of that, though, of basically knowing I'm going in the direction I'm supposed to be going and so, whatever that community is becoming, it is becoming what it should be as well. So it makes the missing anything much less an issue. This is a process, like anything else, and I keep being reminded of that inside myself. Even though, in a real way, I'm technically "back in" myself, that getting totally hooked back into the Catholic thang is still going on. There still yet may be a couple of things I have to do, not sure yet. And my family is in the outer edges of the river, in the process of wading in as I help direct the way from the other side. That's weird for me. I was telling Liz earlier today, this transition is BIG and we need not act as if it's not. It's a life-transition for certain and we'll not fully know how it will feel to live this new life until we're all properly in it for a bit. For a person who is Alan Creech, this means no small amount of sometimes far too anxious thoughts whirling around my head on any particular day. All that is to say, this is not merely a smiley happy super smooth and thought-free process. It is what it is and I think I understand that, and it's still happening, so there you go.   In order to acclimate ourselves to this new ecclesiastical world, we have been attending Mass at a local parish here in Lexington called Pax Christi (that means Peace of Christ - in Latin of course, all Catholic speak Latin, didn't you know that?) Why this one? I'm not really sure, it just seemed a good place to check out, I'd been there once before, and now that we've been for a month (and yes, dear hearts, I refrained from receiving the Eucharist until after I went to confession - and the family is still abstaining until they go through the rite of entry) - now that we've been going for a while, it seems comfortable enough. It's a far bigger church than I've ever been a part of, on the roles anyway, but probably only around 300 or 350 at Mass on Sunday at this point in the Summer. Sure, if I had my idealized notion of what things should be like, I'd wish for a small, very local parish of at most a couple hundred people - a bunch of those scattered all over towns in neighborhoods everywhere. This way you'd have more of the relational community thing inside the big Catholic thing. Ah well, there ain't none of those, so we adapt, we adjust, we live into a new thing.You see the pictures there - that's the house of Pax (new nick name?). That structure won't excite any random traditionalists out there for sure. It won't do much for most of my emerging church friends either. Hell, they'll probably feel sorry for me - church in a building, didn't you use to scream loudly against such things? Oh well, we change and move right along don't we? Yes, is the implicit answer to that question. While I still have much sympathy for some parts of that "movement," I have long ceased to be as angry or as against certain things as I used to be. And going into this big Catholic world, I doubt very much if I'll be very tightly embraced by either extreme - the Traditionalists on the one side and the Progressive or "liberal" crew on the other. I likely have tendencies in both directions and no, I'm no getting into that right now. So, I'm here in middle somewhere and no (again), that doesn't mean I don't have very strongly held beliefs and opinions on things. I do. I'm sure I lean "right" when it comes to theological things. I have no problem saying that. It all depends on who you're asking though usually. There's always something interesting to deal with anywhere you are. I had lunch with the Priest there yesterday - pretty good time. It was good to just get a sort of ball rolling, talking to him about our situation, etc. The process isn't going to be as long as I thought, apparently, for Liz and the kids in this parish. RCIA isn't a hard/fast thing. It's done different ways in different parishes. And it's done differently, at times, for already baptized Christians who are coming into the Church as opposed to new Christians who haven't been baptized yet. It looks like around 3 months from when it gets started. We'll see. I don't like the up-in-the-air stuff. I want to get this thing going. So does Liz. And it'll be better for the kids not being in limbo (no jokes!). I suppose that's all I can think of at the moment. That's enough isn't it? Good Lord, I can go on. Peace be with you. technorati tags > roman catholic church, catholic church, catholic reversion, catholic conversion, catholicism, alan creech, swimming the tiber, crossing the tiber Labels: catholic, church, personal 0 Comments:| permalink | e-mail me | 
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