IN THEIR OWN WORDS
Markey, Eileen
The question for younger Catholics is not, Why do we leave the church? There are plenty of obvious reasons: patriarchy, a secular world, lack of faith, poor liturgies, homophobia. The more...
...But we also can't leave...
...Eileen Markey is an American journalist living in London...
...Over the course of two thousand years, Mary has become a virgin and professors have had to sign loyalty oaths, but the story hasn't changed...
...We stay also because we are educated enough to understand that we are the church...
...Even if we don't go to Mass every week, our worldview, our approach to politics, to work, to relationships, moves within a Catholic framework...
...We stay because we were raised with a high level of practice and taught the rough rudiments of theology at Catholic schools and universities...
...We stay for the radical message of love and forgiveness and community...
...The essential teachings of the church stand in stark contrast to a cynical, consumer culture...
...The struggle is a fight to reform this church of ours...
...Not only the classic struggle to know and serve God...
...The countercultural stances of other groups and institutions get sucked up into marketing every few months, but the church remains separate from all that...
...The more interesting question is, Why do we stay...
...For many of my peers, being Catholic means being in struggle...
...This is my church, and reactionary Vatican pronouncements aren't going to get me to leave...
...I would not belong to any other organization whose practices I disagree with so much...
...We stay out of loyalty to a vision of what the church could be...
...There are three or four reasons why we continue to call ourselves Catholic, even as we disagree with Vatican teachings on women priests, on birth control, on dissent, on homosexuality...
...If we leave, we accept defeat...
...And we like the idea of something that can't be sold...
...We are able to discern which teachings are central...
...Many of us stay in the church because we appreciate its countercultural stance...
...But finally, what keeps us Catholic is what makes us Catholic: the Eucharist...
...Like Catholics of any generation, we like the story...
...It is part of our identity, from plaid jumpers in childhood, to respect for celibate, learned men, to a take on fighting poverty that is not charity but justice for fellow humans...
...We stay because in remaining we add a drop of liberal thought into this sea of conservative practices...
...Should be...
...We feel a sense of ownership for the church...
...And the story of Christ and his church still resonates...
...For all its religious, political, and personal meanings, the Eucharist is why I'll never leave my flawed church...
...We are not supposed to pick and choose what we believe, but we know it is more essential to believe in the Incarnation than to believe that only men can be priests...
...The young Catholics still here stay because we assent to the community consuming God together, to the message that we are all connected, to the idea that the divine is present in all of us, and to the belief that this assent nourishes us...
...So we stay...
Vol. 128 • November 2001 • No. 20
