Why I Am Still a Catholic by Stanford Peter;

Author:Stanford, Peter;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2019-11-23T00:00:00+00:00

More than a Plastic Paddy

Dermot O’Leary, 31, is a television presenter. His parents are Irish but he grew up in Colchester. He started out in local radio and has gone on to present T4, Big Brother, Born to Win, Shattered and a Saturday morning show on Radio 2. He also runs his own TV production company. He has worked with the Catholic development agency, Cafod, and lives in north London.

I’m like a lot of British Catholics – certainly those of my generation – in that I am constantly questioning my faith, asking why I’m still a Catholic. It tends to come down to a few, very basic questions. Yes, I believe that Jesus died to save our souls. Yes, I go to mass and am a regular communicant. Yes, I pray. Yes, I believe that life is sacred. Yes, I hate abortion and see it for what it is, though I accept that it exists.

Yet, the way I live my life is so far removed from the Church’s official position that I sometimes wonder if I can even dare to call myself a Catholic. I use contraception. I’m not married to my girlfriend. I have gay friends. And I don’t believe, as the Creed puts it, that there is only one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. Catholicism isn’t for me the only true way to heaven.

So I was, for example, very heartened recently when I read what the Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks had written in the first edition of his book Dignity of Difference1 – that there is not Truth, there are truths. That had great resonance for me, even though later he was forced to withdraw the remark.

There are clearly many other ways to reach God, but if I believe there is a God – which I do – then Catholicism is what I’ve been given to work with. I’m not someone who is going to go shopping around to find a religion that suits my views and lifestyle. I have a healthy distrust of converts to any religion. Invariably they seem to swallow the whole pill and ignore the aftertaste that one gets.

So my own questioning from within Catholicism goes on all the time. Even when I am at mass, there are sometimes sermons when I am so tempted to walk out. Especially when they are all about how evil television is. Or how we should all be going out to evangelize. Yet the frustration has never once reached the point where I would give up my faith.

The toughest battle over the years has been to accept that I have a right to question, that the Church may even be healthier for the questions asked of it by Catholics. There is a whole tradition within Catholicism that says there are rules, it’s a club, and if you don’t agree with the rules you can use the door. I’ve slowly come to see, though, that the official Church, the priests and bishops, the infrastructure which can be so

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