Smash Wednesday

Today is Ash Wednesday, which I forgot, as is evidenced by the fact that I had a buffalo chicken samich for lunch at Trainwreck. Oops.

Then M left me a voicemail, conveniently over lunch, reminding me that it's Ash Wednesday and that I'm not to eat meat, nor am I to snack between meals. I got the message after I returned from lunch, yummy buffalo chicken samich already consumed.

So I sent him an instant message and confessed, and he jokingly wrote back that ooooh, I'm a bad Catholic.

Which actually hit a lot closer to the target than he anticipated.

I've been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be Catholic, and I must admit I've got some confusion going on. Granted, it's not hard to get the clouds swirling in my addled brain, but a swirlin' they are.

See, there's this archbishop we've got here in the Lou, and to put it mildly, I disagree with darn near everything he chooses to open his pie-hole about. When it comes right down to it, I'm pretty sure I'd rather pray with all the folks he's thrown out of the Church than with him. Blasphemy, I'm sure, but there it is.

In the last couple weeks, though, he's really been buggin' me. After a local Catholic publicly stated his personal beliefs that are inconsistent with the Church's teachings, the archbishop said that it is "not possible to be a Catholic and hold those positions."

Personally, I believe a lot of things that aren't consistent with Catholic teachings. For instance, I think women should be allowed a stronger role in the leadership of the church. I think that if priests were allowed to marry and have children, we'd have a heck of a lot more priests. I also think that the help M and I received, the help I needed, to get our Zozo was not wrong. I'd do it again in a heartbeat, and after having sat through support group meeting after meeting and growing to love other women, sisters, who were struggling with the same thing I was, I refuse to believe that their attempts to bring a beloved child into this world were not wrong, either.

According to the archbishop, then, it's not possible for me to be Catholic. Which is really disheartening, given that I chose this religion.

I think to myself, okay, just ignore him. There are tons of really great Catholic priests who aren't like him. Only, that's difficult to do because, well, he's the freakin' archbishop. He must be doing something right in the Church to rise to that position.

So here I am on Ash Wednesday, feeling at odds with my church. Does my church still want me? Heck, given how much I disagree with the archbishop, do I still want it?

Which is quite a lot to be thinking about along with work, school, raising a child and being a wife/daughter/mother/sister/aunt/cousin/niece.

My brain is tired.