9/17/19 Jen, Paul, Will (to see video, click HERE)
The three twenty-somethings hanging out on the front steps
had a lot in common when I asked about their spiritual beliefs. They had arrived independently to the same
conclusions, but it seemed to revolve around one common theme that motivated
them all: Catholic guilt.
Jen, Paul, and Will had all grown up in Catholic households
and attended Catholic church and schools, and had a litany of reasons why they
no longer followed Catholic teachings.
They accused the Catholic Church of being guilty of all sorts of
atrocities over the centuries, and of using church teachings and a shaming
culture to impose its control over them as children and young adults, though
none claimed to have been a victim of the current sexual abuse scandals.
But it wasn’t the guilty behavior of the Church that they
gave as the primary reason for their rejection of Catholicism, but the way the
Church made them feel guilty about their own behavior. All three had dismissed the idea of a
conscious afterlife for themselves, or the personal nature of a God to whom
they might be accountable to. They saw
claims of a moral conscience to be just another way in which humans might
control one another, and felt they could be just as morally responsible without
God or religion.
As we talked I began to think about why I as a protestant
Christian don’t feel such a deep burden of guilt, even though I am surely just
as guilty of sin as my Catholic counterparts.
I think the answer might have something to do with the physical and
spiritual focal point of a typical Catholic mass: the cross of Calvary, with a
depiction of a suffering Jesus still on it.
Protestant churches typically have an empty cross and -
putting concerns about graven images aside - the emphasis is more on the
finished work of Christ on the cross, verified by his resurrection. When Jesus uttered His last words from the
cross, that “It is finished”, we understand that to mean that the debt has been
paid, that there is nothing we can or must add to His work of redemption.
Our Protestant emphasis on reading the Bible for ourselves
allows us to see that “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who
are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who
gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death.” (Romans 8)
No one can hold the threat of condemnation over our head as
a manipulative tool in our ignorance, or point to the perpetual suffering of a
Jesus statue on a cross to shame us, as long as we keep reading and being
reminded of the precious truths and promises of Scripture. I have met many Catholics who also read the
Bible for themselves and have discovered the wonder and joy of God’s amazing
grace, but far too many more who haven’t been able to get past the guilt that
Jesus came to save us from.
My prayer for Jen, Paul, Will, and many more like them who
have rejected Christian faith because of Catholic guilt, is that they can know
the hope found in Jesus’ finished work on the cross and the joy of a faith
relationship with our risen Savior.
Thanks Jen, Paul, and Will for your honesty and an
interesting conversation. It can be seen HERE at https://youtu.be/VWG1YNDdVII
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