A Catholic In The World
By Peggy Noonan
This article first appeared in The Magnificat Pilgrim’s Guide for the Great Jubilee, Diocesan Supplement for the New York Archdiocese, 2000. The website of Magnificat, a monthly Catholic worship booklet, iswww.magnificat.com
Recently I popped into St Patrick’s Cathedral after a morning business meeting in midtown Manhattan and realized as I walked in that it must already be noon, for Mass had begun. So I walked down the center aisle and joined a hundred or so people scattered throughout the pews. I don’t go to Mass at St Patrick’s very often and was struck that the worshipers there were ‘there’ – they were listening, responding, and didn’t seem distracted by the milling tourists just beyond, who were chatting, walking about, and looking at statues. So I tried to be there too, and found it surprisingly easy. But now and then I’d look up and see tourists, small groups of whom were standing and watching us. I think they may have been thinking what I used to think when I’d wander into a church and accidentally came upon a Mass. ‘Boy, there are people worshiping God here in the middle of the day. How interesting. This is like going to a museum where you see what people used to do.’ In those days I saw the people in the pews as Representatives of Modern Christianity. So now I improved my posture and tried to look absorbed for them.
Faith in the modern world
Later I thought that little moment in the Cathedral might serve as a metaphor for the position of those who try to live their faith in the modern world. They do the small and unexceptional things they do, and the world now and then strolls by and notices and thinks, ‘How interesting.’
I do not find the little piece of the world in which I live to be hostile to Catholicism, or rather hostile to Catholics trying to lead Catholic lives. I find people in general to be wondering, and interested. My closest friends are largely non-Catholic and mostly agnostic, and they are both curious about my belief and respectful of it. Many of them ask questions, very specific ones about prayer, about what happens in the Mass and what it means. Sometimes I don’t know the answer and call around to get it and report back. You can learn a lot this way. Sometimes I improvise. Once a friend needled me mildly about the Virgin Mary and how some question the high place we give her. My friend was politically of the left, so I sighed and said, ‘Yes, sexism is a force in the world and we have to help people appreciate Mary’s power and not fear and resent it.’ There was silence for a moment, and then she started to laugh. ‘That was good,’ she said.
I feel free to tell them of my struggles. I tell them I adore Jesus and know that he is real, which is a real gift, and that the bumper sticker speaks for me: ‘My boss is a Jewish carpenter.’ And yet I find it hard to love him. I ask to love him because I know it’s important; I should and want to and feel I must. This, the difficulty of love, makes them think of parallel struggles in their own lives, with people they know and are related to. I tell them what I want is to be a Filipino woman, for all of them I know who are practicing Catholics seem lifted by their faith; it infuses them. I see them at Mass or doing the Stations, and they are of Jesus, in Jesus, with Jesus; they’re lit with him. They are what the Irish used to be. I want to be like that again.
Hard truth and comfort
Sometimes when I speak of my faith, I perceive on the part of my friends a wistful, ‘It must be nice to think like that.’ Now and then I think I perceive the kind of approval that makes me think of grand old New York dowagers, Edith Wharton ladies, talking about the help: ‘Bridget’s a fervent Catholic, Mass every morning at 6’ meaning she’ll never steal; she’s disciplined; and you never know, these peasant-ish religions can affect a house in positive ways! Now and then, not often, I feel a little patronized. ‘Your faith must be a great comfort to you,’ an agnostic lady of great brilliance said to me a few years ago. Without thinking about it I said, ‘Yes, it is.’ Then I caught something in her tone, and realized she meant, ‘Life is a challenge, and we all need our consolations, and if that works for you, then go for it.’ So I said that actually what I need is truth; if I wanted comfort there are other ways to go; but yes, the Christian paradox is that if you go for hard truth you get real comfort. Unlike the other forms it isn’t transient and passing; it stays.
The better way
I love my friends and pray for them and ask them to pray for me. I think I am for them like one of the people in the pews in St Patrick’s, and they are watching – interested for a moment, maybe a little bemused, a little yearning. I try to remember to stand up straight for them, I try to remember to be unselfconscious, to be absorbed, to be true. I often fail. But I know I am trying to be for them what the Filipino women are for me: a reminder, an inspiration, a hint that there’s another way and that it’s better.
Peggy Noonan is the best selling author of seven books on American politics, history and culture. She is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and a weekly columnist for the Journal’s editorial page website. Her articles and essays have appeared in Forbes, Time, Newsweek, the Washington Post, the New York Times and other publications. Her most recent book, John Paul the Great: Remembering a Spiritual Father, was published by Viking in November, 2005. When Character Was King: A Story of Ronald Reagan, published by Viking in November, 2001, was a New York Times bestseller.