Most high schools put out a list shortly before graduation – Most Likely to Marry for Money, Most Likely to Run for President, and so on. I don’t recall ever seeing Most Likely to Join the Clergy, but it would make for an interesting brain-teaser.
As it were, one day I encountered a fellow in the Denver Tech Center who looked keenly familiar. Upon second glance, I recognized him as Kyle, a high school teammate I hadn’t seen in more than a decade. Metro Denver may be a sprawling monster now, but there’s still no getting around that universal Disneyland truth: It’s a small world, after all.
After briefly catching up, Kyle mentioned he was joining a new church. Naturally, I inquired which one, and he eagerly replied, “The Catholic Church!”
This caught me by surprise. I realized I’d never talked about religion with Kyle, or virtually anyone else I knew growing up – that was one of those forbidden topics in suburban public schools.
I asked him, “Did you even go to church before?”
As it turns out, he had been marginally active in his high school youth group and college Campus Crusade – none of this I, as a fellow marginally active youth group alum (albeit of a different church), would ever have guessed. Kyle was popular: a perennial shoo-in to student senate, a good athlete, a girl-magnet, even. These don’t add up to “church boy” in most people’s minds.
And now, of all things, here he was planning to cross the great Protestant-Catholic divide for no apparent reason.
I asked if he had a bride-to-be whose observant parents were forcing him. “Nope,” he laughed. In fact, he had recently parted ways with his longtime girlfriend while taking up the three-year journey. My unfamiliarity with Catholicism led me to think he was not just training to join the Church, but – gasp – become a priest.
Many months passed while I labored to make sense of this. I’d heard of all kinds of people leaving Catholicism (many of whom were featured speakers at my church), but I’d never heard of anyone becoming Catholic.
Then Pope John Paul II died and, well, it all somehow began to make sense. As I watched documentaries about his papacy, I couldn’t help but compare him to an American politician, partly because we were close on the heels of an election, but more because his life contrasted so starkly against the ostentatious sanctimony of American politics.
Particularly in recent years, I have marveled at how so many people who trumpet for a “culture of life” are the very same folks who practically start foaming at the mouth at the sight of anti-war demonstrators. Conversely, the same people who moralize about “free will” then go hire trucks to haul religious effects off public property.
There must be something eternally reassuring about joining an organization that, perhaps more than any other time in its history, has the modern luxury of remaining true to its own theological doctrine.
These days it’s easy to forget there is a huge difference between political platforms and religious ideologies. Many are becoming so spiritually exasperated they are at last choosing to pursue a path directed by faith rather than by any political party.
So often, to my chagrin, the church of my own heritage stands behind many of the inconsistencies evident in politics. Today’s Protestant political movement, while true to its faith on many points, is out to pasture on others. And many of the truly faithful are taking flight, even to Catholicism – the very church we were raised to believe was the banner-bearer of double-standards.
I recently caught up with Kyle again to discover that he has since completely entered the Catholic Church and is planning to pursue a master’s degree in theology – and that he is engaged to be married this summer. (So much for my mistaken musings about the priesthood.)
In a way, it’s too bad he won’t be eligible for the clergy, I thought. However, I have comfort seeing how Kyle’s faith has taught him something about harmonizing the different domains of his life. Maybe that’s the lesson to pull from all this.
And you don’t even have to become a priest to get there.
Joel Hughes is a financial analyst and classroom trainer in Littleton.
