Role of Community in Catholic Life

Hello:

I'm back in the office today and have managed to work through most of my cold. I was able to stay up with my emails and most of my work while I was out, so today hasn't been too bad. My biggest problem has been deciding what to BLOG about today. One of my goals with starting this BLOG was to become freer with my writing and to make writing a part of everyday life. That seems to have worked well (perhaps too well). Themes occur to me several times a day. The better ones make it onto a list, the lesser ones flutter off into the cosmic ether they came from. Earlier today, I was going to focus on my love of Zinfandel wines. Then I remembered a topic inspired by last weekend's MS150 ride but quickly switched to telling the story of "The Monster Under My Bed". After all that back and forth, what I'll actually be writing about is...
the role of community in Catholic life.

Of the posts I have written so far Variety in observance of Catholic Mass has generated the most discussion and I am going to try and recapture that feel. This morning's St Louis Post - Dispatch carried an interesting piece about the community impact of the recent closing of St Aloysius Parish. The piece discusses a man who grew up across the street from his parish, was educated, met and married his wife, and raised three children within view of the church steeple. Like many cities, St. Louis has experienced a number of parish closings and the impact has been significant. Particularly among those parishes that were founded and still attended by various ethnic groups.

Rather than dwell on parish closings (today), I'd rather discuss community. Since I have been working on this BLOG, I've been trying to get a better sense of what it means to be a Catholic. [For those of you new to this BLOG, I am not Catholic] I had expected to find the answer in the trappings of the Church; the architecture, the rituals, the "hocus pocus". Instead what I find is the pervasive sense of community that transcends strife and disagreement. The following quote may do a better job of articulating what I am trying to say.

To be Catholic is to live a certain way. This doesn't mean all Catholics
are exact duplicates of all other Catholics, or that our lives more or less take
the same path. No. Nor is the Catholic life about the
trappings; it is about a certain way to be human and to believe.
Catholicism, though seemingly bent on fulfilling every dark stereotype ever
flung at it, is also a huge, miraculous playground where one minute it's bread,
and the next it's Jesus. Try that in a Presbyterian church.

This quote is from It's My Church and I'll Stay If I Want To: Affirming Catholicism by Lonni Collins Pratt. The title seems a little odd to me, but the writing style and language are very approachable. She discusses leaving the Church at the age of 16 and her 24 year exploration of other faiths that lead her to return to Catholicism at a time when the Church is weathering a variety of scandals and issues. This is currently her only title with Liguori Publications.

Obviously this topic can't be covered well in a single posting. So I'll set the stage with this one and we'll return to this theme from time to time. I am plannng a redesign of this site and hope to be able to group posts by topic in the near future.

Peace,

P. Del Ricci - Dark Glass