A New Paradigm

My name is Angela Biggs. I was born October **, 19**, and christened Angela Marie ***** – in the Catholic Church.

I grew up attending Mass very regularly. My mother tells a story of a Mass when I was two. I was playing in front of my seat and wandered out into the aisle, where I walked right up to the altar. My mother was mortified, but before she could figure out a discreet way to get me back, the priest picked me up and proceeded to finish saying the Mass with me in his arms. My mother is still embarrassed.

At the age of eight, a Catholic participates in her First Communion, after which she is obligated to receive at least once a week, and my mother was very diligent in assuring that my sisters and brother and I did so. I joined the choir at the age of eleven and became a cantor at the age of twelve. (A cantor is a leader of song, and holds a position of great responsibility, because music is a very integral part of a Catholic Mass.) During college, and after, I was personally encouraged by more than one group of nuns to consider becoming a nun.

My great-grandmother was Irish Catholic. My grandmother was Irish Catholic. My mother is Irish Catholic. I’m of mixed descent, but I too am Catholic. It is my culture, but it is more than just the way I was brought up. It is in my blood.

After I was saved, I grew dissatisfied with what the Mass had to offer me. Plentiful were the opportunities for worship in its deepest and humblest form, but the opportunities to learn about God, personally, were lacking. I read the Bible voraciously, but felt the need for guidance, and had nowhere to turn. I certainly couldn’t turn to a Protestant church.

You see, from the time I was a child, I have been learning about the hatred Protestants have for Catholics. Not from Grana, or my Nana, or Mom; not from my Church, or anyone in it; but from you. I first learned about hatred from the people of God. I heard it in school, I saw it on TV, and after I met the man I would later marry and tried attending Protestant churches, I heard it from your pulpits. I heard it from your teachers.

I heard it from my own people at your microphones. I have seen former Catholics get on a stage and proclaim for all to hear the evil of the Catholic Church, deplore the methods it employs to brainwash its people and keep them from God, and wonder at the grace of the God who saved them from such a fate as those Catholics will suffer in the hereafter. I have never heard a single word about personal responsibility. I have never heard a word of gratefulness. I have never heard a word of compassion, from those people or any other Protestant.

And so I confess:

It took me twenty years to find God because I was proud. He had to break my heart into a million pieces before He could enter it. That is my fault. That is my responsibility. I have always had ready access to a Bible. It is not the fault of the Catholic Church that I never opened it. I think for myself and act of my own volition, with the brain and the will God gave me. There is no excuse for relinquishing that right to anyone or anything else.

I thank God for being born a Catholic. When I was saved, I was changed, but who I was has everything to do with who I am. The Catholic Mass is where I first heard of God. It was through cantoring that I learned Psalms, learned much of the Word, and learned what it is to worship with my whole body and the best God gave me. It is through the Catholic Church that I learned about humility, about kneeling quietly in the Lord’s presence, about beauty and the vastness of God, and about the peace of His Spirit. It is because of my obligations as a dwelling for the Eucharist that I learned about the quiet sacrifices required of duty to the Lord. It is through the Catholic Church that I was able to soothe my aching teenage soul with the balm of ritual, so that even when I couldn’t worship properly, I could still take comfort in my Father’s presence and love.

It is through leaving the Catholic Church that I learned compassion. My youngest sister asked me to be her Confirmation sponsor last year, and though I felt bound by conscience to decline, I did it with great regret, and attended as her guest. I spent the entire Mass crying. The Catholic Mass involves three different readings from the Bible: one from the Old Testament, one from the New, and one from a Gospel. These readings are often just a few verses, and never, except at Easter and Christmas, more than three minutes long. This means that the average Catholic never hears the Word of God in all its power and glory. When you are told about children in Africa whose ears have never heard God’s Word, how do you react?

The Bishop at my sister’s Confirmation, a man who is supposed to be responsible for shepherding thousands of people to God, gave a rambling homily (our equivalent of your sermon) that lasted about ten minutes, during the course of which he paraphrased any Biblical references he used – including, much to my amazement, the well-known parable of the sheep and the goats. And then at Communion time, I had to stand aside – not because I disagree with the physical presence of Christ in the Eucharist, but because I disagree with almost everything else. It hurt me to turn down my sister. It hurt me to skip the Eucharist. And it hurt me to watch all of those people, raptly attentive to nothing. It was horrifying.

It was not a reason to hate. Jesus didn’t hate. He felt pity. He had compassion.

From what I have seen and heard, most Protestants learn anything they happen to know about Catholics from other Protestants, or from former Catholics who are eager to renounce everything that made them who they are in order to fit into a new community. The Catholic Church does some things wrong. It has done some very wrong things. But it also has a few things very, very right, and I do not regret the time I spent there. In fact, I regret that I had to leave. I regret that I have nowhere to go.

Protestants seem to belong to a secret society. One face is presented to the world, your love-one-another face. In the safety and isolation of your services, or whenever you think there is no outsider around to hear, another clause is added, and God’s Word becomes “Love one another, unless the other is a Catholic”. Are you shaking your head in denial? My husband didn’t believe me either, until I asked him to try listening with fresh ears. He came back to me within two weeks and apologized because he had been wrong.

You, all of you, love your brothers and sisters in Christ too much to let this continue. It’s true that not everyone actively participates. However, you all know that by standing by and watching wickedness without standing up to stop it, you become responsible for its presence. I too am guilty of this. Today is the first time I stand up: for God’s love, for my people, and for your sake.

Catholics, whether they are saved or not, are loved by God: just as much as you are. Those who are not saved are our responsibility: just as much as those children in Africa.

I am not merely asking you to change the way you speak about Catholics. I am asking you to clean the inside of your cup. I am asking you to foster compassion in the stillness of your hearts. I am asking you to lay down your pride, your fear, and your hatred… and love God’s children.

Luke 18:10-13. “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men – robbers, evildoers, adulterers – or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.” But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ “

We all know which man “went home justified before God” (Luke 18:14). Which one are you?

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