From Liberal to Conservative to Uninvolved

Steve Bogner has a nice post on the recent America article "Dodging Traffic" by Mary Moloney Haggerty. I'm going to offer a few excerpts here as well because I think it speaks so well to the experience of many Catholics my age. She speaks of attending a "liberal" parish and becoming disenchanted with the intolerance she experienced there, and her move to a "conservative" parish, which she found at first inviting, but also ultimately incomplete and alienating. Finally, as a result, she became for a time an "uninvolved Catholic."

How many of us have been through this process? How many young Catholics are still "uninvolved" for these very reasons? I think many Catholics are too involved in defending their "territory" and adopting a "if you're not with us, you're against us" attitude that they fail to see all the frustrated, faithful Catholics who aren't involved because they don't--and don't want to--fit into some cookie cutter notion of what others think a Catholic should be. I think many of you will find that her words resonate with your own experience--I know they do mine!:

Last week, over our Wednesday morning cup of coffee, a conservative Christian friend smiled as she told me I am the most conservative liberal she has ever met! There was a time when this would have brought anything but a smile to my face. But that day, I laughed out loud . . .

On her "liberal" days:

We were forging a new path that the American church desperately needed, and it felt good.
That lasted until I began to see cracks in the sidewalk along the way. A few parishioners wanted to start a prayer group based on the Rosary. You would have thought they wanted to turn the priest around and bring back the altar rail, for all the support they got . . .

On her "conservative" turn:

So I found myself a new spiritual home—the conservative parish on the other side of town. Ah, it was like coming home to the Catholic Church of my childhood . . .

Then, slowly, I noticed some things that concerned me . . .
And the huge “God Is Pro-Life” banner displayed next to the altar left me wondering why we never heard anything from the pulpit about the death penalty or root causes of poverty. I began to feel tired watching the energy poured into “dress-up Sunday” and listening to homilies extolling the virtues of former times and the dangers of today’s corrupt world.
So I did something I had never done before: I became an uninvolved Catholic . . .

On the challenges of becoming involved again:

Few things get under my skin as much as assumptions made about my beliefs based on where I live, attend church, vote or play. I do not fit into a box based on demographics or education or income. The only box I am willing to climb into is that of my faith. Sometimes that means a vote for the right, other times a vote for the left. Always it is a response to an invitation.