Oh, for Christ's sake:

Apparently some Catholic leaders believe that John Kerry shouldn't be allowed to take communion because of his legislative support of abortion. There are just so many things wrong with this. Kerry doesn't say Catholics should have abortions (or for that matter that anyone else should), just that the government shouldn't stop it. In fact, he hasn't committed anything close to a big enough sin for him to be declared excommunicate (at least not in this context; I know nothing of Kerry's private life). Not allowing someone to take a sacrament is the biggest punishment in a bishop's arsenal; shouldn't it be saved for someone who, you know, actually sinned?

Sometimes I just get so angry at the Church, which can't seem to realise that the world has changed sincethe Middle Ages, much less since Vatican II. In most Catholic churches now, women take more roles than men, and many churches wouldn't be able to run without women lectors, communion distributors, and any of a number of other things. But the Church hierarchy is still misogynistic, still mired in thousand year old theology. Women aren't evil because Eve tempted Adam, because they have periods every month, because men desire them at the expense of their prayers. I'm talking to YOU, St. Paul.

I want to be Catholic. There's definitely a lot of the theology I like. I need the idea of Purgatory. I like the emphasis on the saints; it's easier to feel an real affinity to St. Jude and St. Claire than to God. I like the Church's flexibility regarding the Bible, and even some of the social positions of the Church. Aesthetically, I prefer a Catholic service over any other that I've been to; it seems to find a line between the ornateness of an Orthodox service and the bareness of many Protestant services that I rather like. I like the Latin, when you can find it, the music, the comfort in knowing what's coming next in a Mass and how you should respond. I like feeling that there are millions of others doing what I'm doing.

But honestly, it's hard enough to believe in a deo pio, a deo iusto, a deo scito, when the world seems all wrong. Why does the Church have to try to make it even harder for me? Why would the Church punish a man who seems by all accounts a relatively pious Catholic because of a political view that he holds? Why does the Church continue to treat the backbone of its community as second-class citizens? Why can't the Church evolve?

I know that the stock answer to this is that the Church is perfect and therefore need not evolve. If that's the case, then I guess I'm not a Catholic. Look, there is nothing that the Church calls infallible that bothers me. I believe that Mary was assumed bodily into heaven, I believe that Arianism was wrong and that icons are OK, I'm OK with the council of Trent and fourth Lateran and everything I've read about all those eastern and western councils. But what about the other stuff? If the liturgy can change, why not the Church's views on birth control? Why must these doctrines that are the product of their times (I mean, Augustine said that a baby wasn't alive until his mother felt him move inside her, which would legitimate birth control and abortion up till what, about the fifth month?) become part of Church dogma? Right now, I will continue going to Mass and taking communion, even though I don't think the government should ban birth control. Maybe the bishop of St. Louis would say I shouldn't.