I don't know sometimes if what I choose to blog about actually matters to anyone, since I've been told off by some people for telling stories that don't matter, minutia that doesn't need to be recorded, and, yes, sometimes I do blabber on about things that don't matter to anybody but me but that's what I do, deal with it.
With that said, I want to talk about two main themes tonight, about my status with the Catholic Church and what I consider my home, literally and philosophically.
The Catholic Church. I started thinking about this while we drove into the University this morning for WICS. A news report was playing talking about Pope Benedict's Palm Sunday message, urging peace and understanding and trying to find God around oneself in the world. "Yes, it would be nice, to
be understanding, to
really understand..." I said to the reporter and the Latin postulations in the background coming from the ever-so-holy pope.
I remembered, when it was mentioned in the report, that it was two years ago today that Pope John Paul II died, which I recall hearing at my first WICS while standing out in exact same hall I stood in this morning.
I remember working in my Foods class and wondering what the new pope's name would be, after the agonizing process of waiting to hear the results of the "election". I remember the faint hope for the first African pope or Latin American pope perhaps, or the even fainter hope for a liberal candidate, such as a cardinal from the Netherlands (if I'm not mistaken).
I had been having doubts about the whole concept of Christianity and Catholicism and the Church, even though I had become a fierce defender of it against the attacks of one of my Anglican friends. My family hadn't gone to church for years because we hadn't found the right priest and time and congregation to be a part of until we somehow heard about a Youth Mass the priest at St Pius X was putting on. This man, Bogdan, was the priest for our group, the man who would whip off his robes as he sang along to the final song the youth choir sang at the end of mass, who opened the floor during his homily and asked questions about the readings and about the church and its direction and challenged us to think and was challenged with questions that he mostly would answer and some that he would divert away. He was liberal and open-minded and didn't really condemn any groups the church deemed abhorrent or wrong, he opened the church's doors to the Inn from the Cold intiative and backed it from the beginning. He was, in short, very awesome, and made me feel like a Catholic, despite poking fun at my refusal to take communion because I thought it was a silly thing and creepy to be eating Christ's body. I had memorized the invocation of the Holy Spirit to bless the gifts and all the necessary prayers and communal confessions, even if I did change them sometimes and leave out parts like "as we forgive those who trespass against us" when I was in a bad mood and such. I have taken communion twice in my life, once on one of the last Sundays Bogdan was with us, as he had been asked to transfer to a small community on an island in rural Nova Scotia (under suspected pressure from older, more hardline and traditionalist parishioners), and once by accident from someone giving out communion who refused to bless me as Bogdan usually would.
The new priest tried to open things up but he was a traditionalist with not as many people-skills or open ideas for the youth, and eventually closed down the mass we had been attending for coming up on two or three years (if memory serves).
Then, while I was listening to the gripping story of Clara Callan (written by Richard B. Wright) being read out on the radio (Between the Covers on CBC) in the spring of my grade 10 year,
not long after the new socially right-wing priest was installed, I realized that my faith in God was over. That there wasn't any left, and my isolation from the Church and in church and my fundamental disbelief in almost everything in Christianity and God were complete with same realization the main character of this book had.
And then it came to me as I sat there at the kitchen table looking out at the trees and the snow and the sky - I no longer believed in God. I had been feeling such intimations for some time now, but today, at twenty minutes past seven, it came to me clarified and whole. God does not exist. The proposition that He does exist obviously cannot be proven, and so we must rely on what we believe to be true. Or feel to be true. Or want to be true. As they say, we must take it on faith. But for some time now, my faith has been like the branch of a tree that over the years has been weakened by wind and weather. And today it was as if that part of me, that branch, finally gave way and fell to the ground. It is a dreadfully barren feeling, but I am powerless to repel it. This I now believe. We are alone on this earth and must make our way unguided by any unseen hand. Perhaps a man called Jesus did live in Palestine two thousand years ago. Perhaps he was an inspired orator, a kind of faith healer; he may even have been a little mad. He attracted followers but also made powerful enemies who killed him. His body was placed in a tomb, but his followers carried it away in order to create a mystery and a myth surrounding him. He once walked this earth but he was not immortal. He rotted into dust as shall we all; as did Mother and Thomas; as is Father rotting now beneath the snow; as shall I one day.
Wright, Richard B., (2002).
Clara Callan. R.B.W. Books Inc.
While my views on religion as a whole are somewhat different and shady and shaky, I do know that I have a tremendous dislike for the Catholic Church. Without going into many details, I'll glaze this over with the institutionalized hatred crimes the Church has supported and perpetrated throughout history and around the world, and the personal effects it has had on me. No, I wasn't abused by a priest or anything like that, but I feel that the Church's general stances on certain issues are not helpful and are regressive and hateful and unnecessary.
So, that, in a nut shell, which probably isn't sufficient but will be for now, is my position on the Catholic Church.
So, my views on home. I was talking to Joseph about this while he was doing the dishes when I got home from Rhiannon's. I don't feel like I'm an Albertan, despite living most of my life here. I am and always will be a Newfoundlander and that's that. I've very proud to be a Newfoundlander, and I tell people that I'm a Newfoundlander living in Alberta. This seems trivial, but my understanding of a concept of home is not just centred around where I'm living with my family at the time but really, where I come from and where I feel at home. In this respect, I feel I have two homes: the one where I live with my family and what I consider to be each home.
I consider my grandmother's, Nan's, house in Harbour Grace (a town with a population in 2001 of 3 380 people, it's about an hour and a half to two hours drive from St. John's) the epitome of home for me in Newfoundland. For years, we would visit this community and stay with her and my grandfather and have breakfast with them and play games and help with chores and watch movies and read and talk and spend time with my mother's relatives. Despite not having been back since December 30th 1999, the last night I was in Newfoundland, I still feel this connection to this saltbox house my grandfather and great-uncles built. I refer to Newfoundland as my real home because I feel it really is. It may seem hypocritical that I don't especially want to move back there to establish myself but I do want to visit and do what I can for Newfoundland when I can. I don't want to move back because there are no jobs that I feel I would be too keen to take up, but I feel that I should try to do things for my province to help them out. I criticize the Albertan government because I've grown up here and know specifically what's going on here and don't in Newfoundland, which I regret. I wish I could be better informed about what's going on there, and my ears always prick up when it's mentioned in reports.
My home with my family is Calgary. And I really don't think I would've wanted to not grow up here. I feel like it was a good place to grow up and establish myself as a person overall and make friends and figure a lot of things out, and I'll always identify Calgary for the sentimental value of certain places essential to my childhood and development into a real person, but I am excited to get away when I get the practical chance.
I don't feel like I have a real, set home because I was divorced from my province and grew up in Ontario and mainly out West, and do want to move back towards the East, to Ottawa or Montréal eventually, after I get my first degree here probably.
Anyways, I needed to express my feelings on these matters and wanted to get them out so here they are. Thanks to Mr. Wright for putting my situation into perfect perspective at the time and still today. I'm hypocritical about selected beliefs, allowing a heaven for those who believe but not expecting anything after death is the general stance, and not believing that there is a higher power, or that if there is, I have nothing to do with it. However, I do believe in coincidence and accept that there are some things that I won't ever understand, the origin of the world and the spark for evolution, and I'm fine with it. Some things just are and I don't have to question them, that's why philosophers and scientists are for.
That's my long post for the night.
Until later,
Me.
