Sacred Sunday

Botticelli's Venus

Thought for the day: 

As I read the opinions and editorials surrounding the Vatican's recent edict listing both priests raping children and the ordaining of women as priests as graviora delicta or grave offenses, I wonder if there ought to be a type ritual associated with severing one's ties completely from the Catholic Church. A Sacrament of Severance, perhaps? I have read, equally, many good Catholics' views on the whole thing -- on what is good and admirable about the Church, on its many good deeds, etc. etc. I've read those editorials, the articles passed around on Facebook among "friends," and my own back and forth again thoughts that are partly constructs of my culture and typical Catholic "guilt" and partly a really well-intentioned effort on my own part to be tolerant. While these winds that sway can often make me list one way or another, my feet are growing roots, I think, that are slowly enabling me to stand firm. The trouble is that so much of the ritual that makes the Catholic Church beautiful is what also makes it  horrific, and those opposites are not the yin and the yang, the life and the death, the ever-repeating cycle of good and bad that makes the world what it is. I need a ritual to remove myself, ironically, permanently.