There's no doubt about it, this is a huge change.
The obvious physical and social restrictions are now lifted as I leave Buddhism behind, but a whole new challenge now lays before me. I personally don't know how to live as a Catholic. Yet, it seems that everyone else does. A constant stream of advice as descended upon me and oddly enough, everyone is offering different and sometimes conflicting advice. Apparently, there are thousands of ways to live one way. I understand that, but it doesn't help a man with less than a month to become a bona fide Catholic.
Some people say that I need to read the bible, while others disagree. Those who want me to read it tend to cite certain books of the Bible that I should focus on. Fair enough. Those who don't want me to read it usually chime in with comments like "Catholicism isn't really about the Bible." Excuse me, but Catholicism is definitely about the Bible and I do plan on finishing it this month. That said, I can appreciate where the don't-read-it crowd is coming from. Many of them are actually Catholic and have found that being a member of the Church was more about adhering to rules and observing rituals and holy days, than reading the good book.
The conflicting flow of advice isn't really helping me, so I must create my own path this month. I have found two churches that I will be attending this month. Since my time is limited, I'm going to up my dosage of church and exposure by going to more than one mass a week and having meetings with the priests after the service or during the weekdays. I will also be doing confession as much as possible.
In short, I'm going to try my best to receive holy communion and be accepted into the Church. This is going to take time, dedication, study, observance and, due to time constraints, a lot of luck.
My first Mass ever tomorrow morning. It'll be interesting. Stay tuned.
It will be interesting. I am definitely staying tuned!
ReplyDeleteYou've picked an unusual order for these traditions, it's really too bad you're not doing Judaism and Protestantism first. Anyway, I know you said the conflicting advice isn't helping, but I thought I'd throw a little more into the mix anyway. When you do Judaism, you're going to need to be reading the tanakh (old testament) anyway. So skip that and just do the few old testament books that are used exclusively by Catholics (like 1st and 2nd Maccabees etc.), and the new testament, so you can have some time for the catechism too, that's pretty key. Or if you've already figured out what you're doing, fell free to ignore all of that!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the advice. I thought about all sorts of orders, but decided to observe each religion during their respective holy months.
ReplyDeleteI'm about 1/3 through the New Testament now and will start on the Deuterocanonicals/Apocrphya next week. After that, I will get down and dirty into the grit of the text.
Sunday's post should be up in a couple hours. Gotta tweak a few things.