Why bother?
Posted on February 28, 2010 | 18 Comments
I’m currently doing some research for various writing projects, and, today, I’ve been reading a journal article called “Different Identity Accounts for Catholic Women” (it’s available only via institutional database subscription, so you’ll be able to see only the abstract at that link), written by Elaine Howard Ecklund and published in the Review of Religious Research in 2005. I haven’t finished reading it yet, but am finding it to be quite interesting so far. Here’s the abstract:
Through interviews with thirty-seven individuals, I compare personal “identity accounts” for women who agree with Church doctrines, those who disagree and leave the Church, and those who disagree and remain loyal to Catholicism. Surprisingly, women who leave and women who agree with Catholic doctrines have similar accounts for what it means to be a Catholic. The central part of this paper is devoted to understanding women who are dissatisfied and remain committed Catholics. These women view Catholic identity as negotiable, finding meaning and voice in their parish and in the wider Church. This group also believes in their own abilities to make changes in the doctrines of the Church, revealing that individualist religious identities may actually foster commitment. Findings expand research on religious identities and have implications for the relationship of personal identity accounts to institutional change.
and a brief passage:
Perhaps most illuminating for theorists who try to connect identity constructs to changes in institutions are findings about women who have strong disagreements with Catholic doctrines and remain committed to Catholicism. For some of these women, being able to negotiate the content of their identities as Catholics and find meaning and voice within Catholicism fosters loyalty in the midst of dissatisfaction and offers a particular action strategy for changes to the larger Church. These findings broaden research on religious identities and religious individualism, and have implications for eventual changes to Catholic institutions.
I’m so confused by why these women bother to compartmentalize and rationalize to such an extreme degree. I know that all of us engage in compartmentalization and rationalization, but few of us, I’d imagine, do it to such an extent. The desire to find “meaning” and “voice” is certainly understandable. What I don’t understand is why these women are somehow able to justify remaining a member of a religion with which they have “strong disagreements” as long as that religion helps them to find meaning and a sense of self. From what I’ve read of the article so far, this justification comes from, as the abstract says, the idea that “Catholic identity [is] negotiable” and the belief that they have the ability to “make changes in the doctrines of the Church.”
But here’s what I don’t understand: why is Catholicism a necessary aspect of their search for meaning and personal growth? There are a multitude of places and communities in which one can find such things. Why, since they clearly disagree with much of Catholic doctrine, do they feel the need to remain attached to Catholicism? Sure, you can cherry-pick Catholicism to death and only follow the rules/accept the aspects of Church doctrine with which you agree (negotiable Catholic identity, as the author puts it), but why bother? (Parenthetically, I think that such cherry-picking is, in addition to being ridiculous, a dishonest activity/choice that allows one to feel as if they have washed their hands of the “bad parts” of Church doctrine and helps them to avoid taking responsibility for the horrible things that the Church has done and still continues to do. But that’s for another post.)
And honestly, it’s purely delusional to think that you’re going to change Church doctrine. You’re not. Yet it seems that clinging to this delusional hope helps these women to justify their continuing Catholicism.
It’s all very confusing to me, perhaps because it’s similar yet simultaneously so different from my own experience. I became an atheist and left Catholicism when I was sixteen. I didn’t make these choices out of my disagreement with Church doctrine, though (although I did and still do disagree with it); instead, I had just grown tired of pretending that I still believed when I didn’t. There was no evidence to support the existence of God, and I couldn’t go on acting as if there were.
Thus, I stopped being a Catholic not because I was fed up with Church doctrine, but because I no longer believed in God. I was certainly horrified by the nastiness of Church doctrine, I was annoyed by the sexism, and I was definitely unhappy with the religious aspects of my Catholic school education, but I left Catholicism quite simply because I no longer needed it.
This article is very interesting to me so far, primarily because I am so befuddled by the women Ecklund describes. I just don’t get it. And I just keep thinking to myself, “why bother?”
Comments
18 Responses to “Why bother?”
February 28th, 2010 @ 9:06 pm
I had always found it odd that people who were very pro-gay pro-women etc. remained Catholic, but I assumed that they held enough other Catholic beliefs that overall, Catholicism was the best fit for them. However, it just struck me that many of those beliefs (salvation through Jesus, miracle of transubstantiation, etc.) are not unique to Catholicism. What does Catholicism have that other branches of Christianity don't, besides a belief that their leader is infallible, a church hierarchy that is more concerned with protecting the image of the church than preventing the rape of children, demonization of homosexuals, second-class roles for women, and doctrines which increase the spread of HIV? What does Catholicism have that balances all that out?
March 1st, 2010 @ 1:19 am
You'd have thought that someone who wanted the comfort & what-have-you of religion would become some vague liberal Protestant, rather than choosing (yes, choosing) to be a member of a sect which obliges them to agree with one particular person's views & those of his predecessors (except, of course, in cases where the old ones go unmentioned because secular morality has moved on & made their once-infallible views embarassing).
Perhaps it is because, like some secular Jews or Anglicans, they just like the culture they were brought up in. I find that perfectly understandable, I can understand someone attending a religious service without holding any beliefs. You'll get a lot of people who call themselves Muslims who are not especially religious but wouldn't dream of outing themselves as atheists.
Partly due to pressure, partly because being “Catholic” is linked to tribal identity (as in Ulster), & also because they just like the culture & community they were brought up in. I was not brought up with any religion, & the faithful haven't got me yet. But the secular culture I live in, such as my local, regional & national identity, the family & friends & people I have grown up with, & what have you is something I am grounded in.
I think I am more patient with this line of approach than a lot of people. But when you see things like the child abuse, the scandal last year in Brazil, you just feel like saying “Are you that fucking* thick you can't see you're a part of this &, by not voting with your feet, you help it along?”
I don't behave like Richard Dawkins, but I admire him & think his approach is more use than mine, frankly. But as we are reminded:
http://gretachristina.typepad.com/greta_christi...
“There's another lesson that I think atheists can learn from the LGBT movement; one that the LGBT movement took a little while to learn. And that's to let firebrands be firebrands, and to let diplomats be diplomats.”
Is that a good excuse for not being confrontational, eh?
*Yeah, a word that really offends conservatives. But I think the things that offend me are more genuinely offensive. Just a bit.
March 2nd, 2010 @ 1:17 pm
That's a great point and, yeah, I have no idea what Catholicism offers that other religions don't (other than, like you said, horrible things.) I would imagine that a lot of those who are among the disaffected-yet-still-Catholic group rationalize their disagreements with doctrine so that they can stay with the religion they grew up with, or that their family practices, or something of the sort. What I find fascinating/ridiculous is that some of the women in this study actually think that they can change Church doctrine. That's just delusional, and if that's the way they justify staying with the Church, they're being completely dishonest with themselves.
Ugh.
March 2nd, 2010 @ 3:41 pm
Hi, Miranda. First-time visitor via RDF.
I have a friend whom decades ago I helped rescue from a life of Catholicism, and there's much in this article that mirrors what still goes on in his family. I think it's hard for a free-thinking person to grasp the fear and panic that arise at the prospect of living without the anchor which you've been told your whole life you cannot survive without. The dissonance being discussed must be less traumatizing than the prospect of a life untethered. Obviously, this seems nonsensical to any atheist, but I suspect the phenomenon is real.
Also–though I say this hesitantly and with great delicacy–I think there is an element of 'obedience' in women of an earlier generation (my mother-in-law comes to mind) which men are less likely to exhibit. I wonder if this or a sense of fidelity or commitment come into play in some mixture. I think modern society has little time (or less and less) for this double standard, thankfully.
March 5th, 2010 @ 8:12 am
Hi, Miranda!
Thanks for writing this. I can relate to the women who left Catholicism because they disagreed with the beliefs. I left Islam for simiar reasons (though I continued believing in God for several years before I realized that there was no evidence in support of my nicer version of God either).
I find it interesting that the women who agree with the Church and those who left the Church agree on what it means to be Catholic. I think those who left are being honest about what the Church actually stands for. While reform certainly does happen in religion, it seems to happen very slowly, and I don't think that the regular Church members have much say the rules of the Church. If the Catholic Church was a democracy, then more moderate Catholics could try to convince more Catholics of their views to change Church policy, but it's not. Ironically, in a way, leaving the Church seems like it might be most effective way for people who disagree with it (even if they continue to believe in God) to change its policies, since it would make the Church realize that they will lose members if they don't fix their problems.
Also, concerning what you wrote about people not wanting to take responsibility for the Church's bad actions, I think it's a good point. Catholics who disagree with the Church in the U.S. or other countries where the Church does not have a lot of official power (despite its attempts to interfere in government) can consider themselves Catholic while not following the rules (e.g. taking birth control). Meanwhile, Catholics in other countries where the Church has more power in the government may not have that option, especially in poor countries where people depend on aid. So, for example, in the U.S., a person can take birth control, despite the Church's policies, but people who depend on aid from Catholic charity organizations don't have any choice in the matter. They're given false information about condoms and even if they wanted to use birth control, they don't have access to it. Basically, I think this idea that a person can be Catholic while disagreeing with the Church is a privilege that some people have. To use an even more extreme example, it's kind of like how Muslim in the U.S. have the choice of being moderate, but in a Muslim theocracy, Muslims who want to be more moderate may be forced to follow the more extreme rules they don't agree with.
Thanks again for writing this. Also, I just wanted to say that I think it's great that you write above literature on your site. I love to read!
-Sharmin
March 7th, 2010 @ 3:28 am
Hi Miranda! Interesting post.
Yes, I would tend to agree with all that's been said by other commenters. Indoctrination and fear are powerful and useful phenomena and can make leaving any church seem unthinkable. But humans being humans, there's always that tendency to fudge things in order to reconcile how one really wants to live and think with how one's religion dictates one is supposed live and think.
Even churches themselves are not above a bit of fudging. The Catholic denomination is more immutable than, for example, the Anglican: there have certainly been changes but only the Pope is allowed to change God's mind. On the other hand, I've noticed that Anglican ministers seem to be just as prone to creative interpretation of church doctrines as their congregation members… In this case, the motivation may be their own personal convictions or an effort to keep up with the secular moral zeitgeist.
This malleability of religion is one of the (many) reasons I finally came out to myself as an atheist and shed my own indoctrination. It has 'Human Beings' written all over it.
March 7th, 2010 @ 9:08 pm
Thank you!
& Yes, that malleability and the “cherry-picking” that many religious people and religious leaders do was one of the things that first made me doubt that there was a God. And, once I became an atheist, I was able to take a step back from Catholicism and see just how ridiculous it all is and see the extent to which people have used it/shaped it to serve their own needs.
March 7th, 2010 @ 9:17 pm
Hi Sharmin! :) Thank you for the comment!
I think you hit the nail on the head with this:
Absolutely! The Church certainly isn't a democracy, and I find it so strange that any layperson would think that they are going to be able to change the Church/its doctrine in any way.
And this:
Is such a great point! I hadn't even thought of it that way, but it's so true. Thanks for pointing that out- it makes me want to look into it more.
& Thank you! :) I love writing about literature.
March 7th, 2010 @ 9:21 pm
Hi there! :) Thanks so much for visiting/commenting!
And definitely- I certainly experienced some of that fear and panic when I left the Church, but, because I was still a teenager at the time, it probably wasn't as difficult for me as it is for those who spend much of their adult lives in the Church before leaving it behind.
And, yes, I think you're right about the “obedience” thing. I'm really interested in how and why women either choose to stay religious or to leave their religious upbringings behind, and I'm curious about how much one's self-esteem and feelings of guilt play into that decision.
March 7th, 2010 @ 9:27 pm
Excellent point- I sometimes forget just how much power the Pope wields. I think that, because I grew up so immersed in the Church, I am a bit inured to its weirdness and occasionally forget just how bizarre things like Papal Infallibility are (and, like you said, how ridiculous (and ever-so-convenient for the Church) it is that previous Papal Infallibility is no longer seen as “infallible” once the zeitgeist has moved on.)
September 10th, 2010 @ 8:47 pm