A piece of news is disturbing me so profoundly I can't work out how to handle it. That is, I don't know how to accept this information internally with anything like grace or true understanding. Socially, I know quite well what to do. One smiles and says the right thing. Then one goes home and sits with one's head in one's hands, wondering how one could have missed all the signs.
The most rational, witty, intelligent woman of my acquaintance has decided to become a Catholic.
I'm completely floored. It seems incredible that she actually believes in the intercession of priests and saints, unbelievable that she thinks there is an omniscient, omnipresent God who interacts with humanity. I'm not saying there isn't, you know, only that I can't believe she has come to believe this. This woman, of all my friends, would have been my last candidate for religious conversion. This may simply go to show how little I knew her all along. Or it may be a suddenly urgent attempt to come to terms with aging, death, fear, and loneliness. I'm not sure I'll find out. I'm certainly not going to ask.
I really am shocked, though, by her choice of religion. I guess it's because she was raised Mormon, and her childhood belief system always struck me as truly bizarre (me, raised a Christian Scientist!). She had to deal with sacred underwear and men getting their own planets to rule after they died. She had many stories of the oddities her family and friends took for granted. She took delight in arguing the holes in the religious logic she was taught.
The thing is, I would have thought after seeing through the bizarre constructs of Mormonism so clearly that she got herself excommunicated there was no chance she'd fall for some other convoluted Christian faith. I can't seem to write about this without using loaded words. Fall, seeing through; clearly, to me she is a dupe of some sort. The truth is, I can't reconcile my picture of this friend of almost 20 years, someone I thought eminently rational, enlightened, reasonable, with someone who lights candles to saints and recites prayers.
I'll say it for you. Perhaps I am the one who's a dupe, not her. Maybe my own circumstances, exposed to the outlandish modern religions the various members of my family adhere to, mean I can't appreciate what is meaningful about Catholicism in this day and age. All I know is I find her conversion inexplicable and incredible.
It will take me time to come to terms with this.
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