Why Does Joe Catholic Feel Guilty?
Joe Laconte
April 1, 1995
A young person may offer any one of a litany of reasons for walking away not only from his childhood church but from his church tradition-from boredom, to disbelief, to hypocrisy, to scandal. None of these played any role in my decision, at nineteen, I to abandon the church of my parents and grandparents. My reasons were, as best as I can recall, driven by a desire to know the truth about God and his offer of eternal life.
Now anyone will tell you: my theology then was about as coherent as a tossed salad, and it has improved only slightly since. But a question kept coming up at the large midwestern university I was attending, a question my Catholic upbringing seemed ill-suited to answer: "Why did Jesus have to die for your sins?" You cannot attend a Catholic church and not be familiar with the concept that Jesus died for sin. But, if my own experience and continued interaction with Catholics is any guide, you may well be a faithful Catholic and have little idea how the Bible answers that most crucial of questions.
As an Italian-American Catholic, I was familiar not only with church sacraments and traditions, but also with the cultural stew" in which much American Catholicism tends to simmer. "God helps those who help themselves"-that was a sort of mantra around our dinner table, quoted as though it were lifted from the book of Proverbs. I suspect the notion grew out of the ethic of work and responsibility that was so deeply imbedded in my immigrant grandparents; they had left their small Italian villages to work long hours at low pay to start their own businesses in New York City. By sheer force of will, they had created for themselves, and their children a new life in a new world.
A Cosmic Bargain
This little saying seems to ...
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