Reluctant Catholic Thoughts about the church and my faith.

Shouldn’t I be happier?

I found this 2006 Pew report about happiness and I noticed some trends. Here's a snippet from the survey results:

But through this admittedly limited prism, we found some fascinating correlations.

Several of them stand out: Married people are happier than unmarrieds. People who worship frequently are happier than those who don't. Republicans are happier than Democrats. Rich people are happier than poor people. Whites and Hispanics are happier than blacks. Sunbelt residents are happier than those who live in the rest of the country.

We also found some interesting non-correlations. People who have children are no happier than those who don't, after controlling for marital status. Retirees are no happier than workers. Pet owners are no happier than those without pets.

[...]

There is virtually no difference in happiness by gender and only a bit of variance in happiness by age. [...] It turns out that the young are less happy than the middle-aged or old. [...] [H]ealthier people tend to be happier, and so do better-educated people. [...] Recent immigrants are about as happy as those who have been here for generations. People who often feel rushed are less happy than those who don't. Suburbanites are a bit happier than city folks [...]

All things being equal:

• I'm married: +1
• I'm not poor: +1
• I'm white: +1

So that puts me three "points" above average right?

Well, I'm also:

• Not a frequent worshiper: -1
• Not republican (or democrat): -1
• Not living in the sunbelt: -1

So now I'm back to zero - unhappy.

Am I really unhappy? Probably not. I'm mostly happy. I'm likely in the 50% of the survey that said they were "pretty happy." So why am I not "very happy?" It's an interesting question.

I think infrequent worship is a big part of it. I'm not at piece, and I know that. I'm just not sure how to fix it. When I go to Mass, I don't feel right. I feel disconnected. When I pray, it feels fake. I'd like to figure out how to re-engage with my faith, but I don't know how.

I don't think I'm alone. I suspect this is a fairly common thing.

God’s transcendence and immanence

In section 2 of What Catholic's Believe we look at God. The only part of this booklet that really stands out for me is the section on God's transcendence and immanence.

"Transcendent" means "more," it does not mean "absent."

As much as we can know about God, based on His revelation, He is still largely beyond the limits of our human experience and hence remains largely unknowable. That's transcendence. God is beyond our ordinary range of perception.

I think I like this section because, as much as we think we may know, we still know relatively little. I suspect some would say, "We know enough - we have revelation." But I feel like that doesn't do enough to acknowledge our limited ability to even understand what we think we know based on what's been reveled. Even simple precepts of the Church, have years of study and dialog behind them. It requires context, reflection, and debate to come to understanding. But even that, doesn't mean that we can still fully understand.

Take an arguably simple look at the human condition through something like "Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions." While I suspect there are deeper and more academic looks at the human condition (psychology and human behavior) than Dan Ariely's, I think he does a fantastic job of illustrating how even given the same information, we behave differently based on a variety of factors that may or may not have anything to do with what decision we're being asked to make. We simply can't know.

So where does this leave us? We can't experience God through normal perception. And even if we could, we likely couldn't trust our conclusions because of our biases and prejudices. I think that's okay. Again, I think that's where faith comes in - that's part of the fear and trembling.

Faith

In college, I read Fear and Trembling by Søren Kierkegaard. It was an incredibly influential work for me, not only because of the reading and class discussions, but also because of the discussions I had about the story outside of class. I loaned it to friends and listened to how they responded to it. I discussed it with a Jewish friend of mine, who gave me powerful insights based on his understanding of what his faith teaches of that story.

After I finished reading Fear and Trembling I began to view faith not as adherence to a religious practice, but instead as a very real and very scary belief and action. You necessarily can't come to faith through logic alone. To have faith, one must have the "strength of the absurd." This was a departure from the cafeteria-Catholic understanding of faith that I grew up with.

This post was inspired by my reading of the Luke E. Hart series based on the Catechism of the Catholic Church. This particular section of the series (and I don't know if they will all be this way) took what I view to be a shallow look at faith. It's overly concerned with the differences between Protestantism and Catholicism (which isn't what I care about when I'm reading something titled "What Catholics Believe"). And it doesn't do enough to address the need to be authentically religious. That is, you need to take the initiative to take responsibility for your own relationship with God.

For me, that's what faith is.

Catholic Church Statistics

I received an interesting email from the Vatican Information Service (oh yea, I've got time on my hands) which had the following information on the statistics for the Catholic Church in France:

The information, updated to 31 December 2006, comes from the Central Statistical Office of the Church.

France has a population of 61,350,000 of whom 46,427,000 (75.5 percent) are Catholic. There are 98 ecclesiastical circumscriptions, 16,553 parishes and 674 pastoral centres of other kinds. Currently, there are 186 bishops, 21,074 priests, 42,425 religious, 1,577 lay members of secular institutes and 62,831 catechists. Minor seminarians number 134, and major seminarians 1,299.

A total of 2,108,240 children and young people attend 10,195 centres of Catholic education, from kindergartens to universities. Other institutions belonging to the Church, or run by priests or religious in France include 94 hospitals, 103 clinics, 520 homes for the elderly or disabled, 96 orphanages and nurseries, 49 family counselling centres and other pro-life centres, 247 centres for education and social rehabilitation, and 65 institutions of other kinds.

That's cool stuff. So, of course I wanted to know what the stats are for the United States. If found this page, which appears to be a reputable source. Even better then the data contained on the site, there are some great graphics and reports under the Frequently Asked Questions section of the site. Here's a sampling: