Catholic Weird

One of the many great things about being Catholic is all the weird stuff. What other religion has stigmata, bilocation, demonic possession and exorcism, incorruption, scientifically verified miracles, locutions, levitation, visions, hermits,  anchorites, consecrated virgins, dark nights of the soul, Marian apparitions, confession/absolution/reparation for sin with the seal of silence, souls in purgatory, indulgences (plenary and partial), particular and and Last judgements,  relics (first, second and third class), bleeding hosts, and other?  Imagine how boring it is to be a universalist, content that everyone is saved! 

How ironic! We have the magisterial intellectual legacies of St. Thomas, Cardinal Newman and Balthasar. And these geniuses all recognize this other stuff that is bizarre, random, frightening, gratuitous, unnatural, illogical, unpredictable, mysterious and awesome.

The institutional Church goes to great lengths to downplay the miraculous. The great mystics warn against fascination with ecstasy; but they do not deny it. Bishops are reluctant to pay any attention to the appearance of the supernatural; but sometimes they cannot avoid it. The Carthusians in Vermont buried a monk of great holiness in their customary way: placing the body directly into the ground without a coffin. They realized the body was not corrupting. They stood over it and prayed for the natural decay lest they be distracted from their rigorous silence and prayer by attention.

I love to teach this stuff to my 6th grade CCD class. They are rightly fascinated! It is an excellent antidote to the deadly monotony of secular, empirical, disenchanted modernity. How flat, fatiguing, arid, and discouraging is the universe of evolution, technology, mechanism, and bureaucracy!

How blessed are we Catholics to live in an enchanted, mysterious, ultimately inexplicable cosmos: in the midst of the dramatic clash of heaven and hell; the invasion of the supernatural when least expected; the horror of pure evil; the splendor of Holiness; the agony and ecstasy of genuine love; the commingling of humility and magnanimity; the stability of gratitude and worship; and the triumph of Hope! Thank God for Catholic Weird!