On Being Catholic by Howard Thomas

Author:Howard, Thomas [Howard, Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Spiritual & Religion
ISBN: 9780898706086
Publisher: Ignatius Press
Published: 2009-07-22T04:00:00+00:00

9

Catholics at Prayer

To be Catholic is to think of oneself as having been adopted into “the whole family in heaven and earth”, as St. Paul teaches. Naturally, all Christian believers see themselves thus: but to be Catholic is not only to have an especially vivid sense of being in this family; it is to carry on one’s entire life of faith, and hence of one’s prayers, in no other context at all.

This view of things issues, often, in forms that may set on edge the teeth of non-Catholic believers. Hail, Mary, full of grace: everyone knows that salutation. To Catholics it is as natural as greeting one’s own mother. To many Christians it looks like idolatry: this charge is sometimes made by zealots who perhaps have not paused long enough, ever, to find out just what this mode of address might mean among Christ’s faithful.

Or again, a non-Catholic may have heard (even, alas, as an expletive) some quick reference to Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. This may arouse in him the suspicion that the Catholic Church has introduced onto the stage two additional figures by way of edging the Lord himself ever so slightly off center and of diluting his exclusive honor with an honor spread out between two nondivine figures.

And yet again, what is a Christian to suppose when he overhears a group of Catholics saying in chorus, “Holy Michael, pray for us. Holy Raphael, pray for us. Holy Agatha, pray for us”? Fie. Don’t Catholics know that we may “come boldly to the throne of grace”, and that we are to “let our requests be made known unto God”, and that there is only “one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus”? Why this circuitous route? Why this multitude through which Catholics seem obliged to force their way in order to come to that Throne with their prayers?

No doubt the most colorful, and even jolting, way in which non-Catholic Christians come upon this Catholic exultation in the whole family in heaven and on earth presents itself in the images that may be found in many Catholic churches.

To be sure, thousands of parish churches were stripped of their images in the wake of the Second Vatican Council; and it is therefore not unusual for a Methodist or Baptist to find very little to offend him as he steps inside a Catholic church. “Why, this could be our church!” might even be heard, although a closer look will reveal a certain arrangement of furniture, with an altar at the center of focus, that may not fit comfortably with non-Catholic categories.

On the other hand, especially in Austria, Bavaria, and the Latin countries of the world, one is likely to find oneself having stumbled into a dizzying panoply of statuary and painting as one enters a Catholic church. Anyone who has ever visited one of the great cathedrals in France or England will, of course, have found statuary: but in the gothic cathedrals, the statuary is unpainted and made of the same gray stone as the rest of the building.

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