Easter

Went to church this morning. Then ate a big Easter dinner. A friend lent me a book to read.

An observation which has come to me more than once of late: lifelong Protestant though I am, the older I get the more I am inclined toward Catholicism. My spirituality has long been more than half Catholic. Well, there are family reasons for that. Not that I expect I'd ever convert. But the inclination is there, and it grows on me.

Mainline Protestantism is a thin gruel, and it grows thinner decade by decade. One major roadblock to my turning Catholic is that so much of the Catholicism I've seen on the ground comes across as a third-rate imitation of Protestantism, with bad Seventies music thrown in to boot. Protestants at least usually have good music rousingly sung. Catholicism is most attractive when it's willing to be itself. I don't need third-rate Protestantism, that is already quite available on the Protestant side of the aisle.

I sketch impressionistically, but perhaps you catch my drift. Of course there are other factors as well. The long and the short of it: however watery the Protestantism of my fathers may be, however much richer and deeper Catholicism may be in the ideal, I will no doubt remain what I am: a Protestant with a Catholic tinge.

Meanwhile, it is Easter. Resurrexit!