Spiritual Divorce???

     Several hours of love, spiritual commitment, and celebration of our lives' joys and sorrows leads me to wonder regarding the future of our worshipping community.  An Archdiocesan action may well result in a change of priests.
     I cannot respond in anger, submissiveness, hostility, or cynicism.  I responded to spiritual vacancy quite early in my adult life by converting to Christianity from Universalism.  I did not abandon my Universalist roots.  They inform my Christian life.  Twenty-nine years after my conversion, I cannot go back.  I cannot live by my intellect, logic, and reason alone.  Faith is essential to my life.  I have been spoiled by the integrity of the Catholic parishes--the Catholic worshiping communities in which I have lived.
    I have experienced the closing of one campus worshiping community due to an Archdiocesan action approximately eleven years ago.  Though painful, I am much stronger--much richer--by the move into a different Catholic faith community.
     Trademarked words that represent the best in their respective product, or service fields lead to the making the names verbalizing imProper nouns--trademark.  We wipe our tears with Kleenex, clean our ears with Q-Tips, we google the world wide web for information, etc.
     A spiritual profile of myself is not simple.  It complexity is essential to understand, not elusive, but, essential.  Most identifiable to most are the words Catholic in ritual, Christian in my living.  Not perfect, by any stretch.  Yet, isn't that what it means to be Christian.  It is an imperfect striving to be perfect?  Were our strivings perfect, then what would the need be for perfection? After all, wouldn't perfection be an achievement, and not a goal?
    Catholic and Christian are words that describe me as an adult seeker of ritual, and life.
    More elusive to many are my childhood cornerstones--Universalist, and Unitarian.  I understand them more as one fellowship today.  As a child, there seemed to be a more peaceful, maybe less militant understanding of what Unitarian meant.
   Only as an adult have I come to understand that each fellowship shapes, or expresses what it means to be Universalist, or Unitarian.  I was raised in the First Universalist Church in Minnesota during the 1960s.  Although the denomination was always known as the Universalist-Unitarian Fellowship, the individual churches were known as either Universalist, or Unitarian.  I don't remember knowing any Unitarians.  I understood "Unitarians" to be more militant in the expression of their commitments.  I have no recollection of what led me to that sense.  It may be the stark contrast between Unitarian versus the Trinitarian foundation upon which Christianity is built.  Universalism, I was raised to believe, was built upon the belief that there is good to be found in all world religions.  My child sense of the Universalist church that I was raised in was composed of individuals who were quite active in their support for the United Nations, and the World Federalists.
    Only as an adult have I begun to understood how the current affairs in the world shape how each Universalist, or Unitarian Church expresses its commitment to the belief in the pursuit of thoughtful, logical, reasonable deliberations.  As a Universalist, I was raised to believe that there is good to be found in all world religions.
    Only as a Catholic have I come to appreciate the vast difference between religion and faith.
Much moreso than in Christian denominations.  The gradations among Catholic parishes--Catholic communities--are understood by many Catholics to vary much more dramatic than they are.  Yet, the gradations are not as grandiose as they may seem to some.  The structure of the Catholic celebration focuses around the altar--the Table of Christ.  A Catholic could walk into any Catholic church, and be reasonably certain that they would hear one reading from the Old Testament, a second reading from the New Testament, a psalm, and a reading from one of the Gospels--Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John.  Acts might be read during the Easter season.   Three liturgical cycles of biblical readings, seasons of the liturgical year including Advent, Christmas, Ordinary Time, Lent, the Triduum, and Easter are constant across all Catholic parishes.
    In no way do I mean to dismiss the vast differences between the Catholic Church pre-Vatican II, and Post-Vatican II.  Though born in 1960, I am a child of the Post-Vatican II Catholic Church.  My sense from Pre-Vatican II Catholics is that to be Catholic implied much more of a unified expression of beliefs and forms of expression, than is the case today.
    Individuals I knew, who were raised as pre-Vatican II Catholics, led me to believe that there was one way to be Catholic.  I do not mean to blame them, or denigrate their message to me.  They were expressing their experience to me.  When I was introduced to post-Vatican II Catholics, I was blown away--perplexed.  Each individual had tremendous integrity, and yet, they were not expressing their Catholicism identically--not by a long shot.
     I do not think that the changes that are forthcoming in my Catholic faith community will be as drastic as the  Universalist versus Catholic, or the pre- versus post-Vatican II Catholics I experienced during the last thirty years.  Yet, I do believe the change will be radical.  I pray it may inform my faith, and the faith of my community, rather than weaken its fabric.