As I had mentioned in previous posts, I have gone to catholic schools throughout my entire life. I went to the same catholic school from pre-kinder all the way through high-school. But now that I am in college everything is different. Before coming to college here I was aware that this was a Catholic school but I never took the time to think how it would be like to go to a catholic college. I figured that since it was college, it wasn’t going to influence school in the way it does.
Back in high school there was mass during special celebrations and it was mandatory for us to attend and then, when I would go visit my grandparents I would go to mass with them for special occasions like Holy Week or Christmas. But that is as far as I would be involved with religion. Here people are more involved with religion and it is more visible here than when I was in high-school, I have been able to see how it affects the way people think and who they interact with. Of course there are people who are religious at home, and it also affects the way people act, but I simply never encountered as many people as here. Or maybe, after thinking about it, I simply never cared to stop, observe, and analyze people in general. Therefore it could be just me who didn’t observe before coming to school here and now that I am here I try to pay more attention to smaller details. Some people believe in the Catholic teachings word by word; if they are told that religion believes that it should be like that, then that’s what they believe. There are also people who question what religion stands for in order to decide if they will support that ideal or not. I was reading at Dave’s blog and I really liked the way he described it: cafeteria catholic. He uses this term to describe “someone who picks and chooses what to believe and follow from the Catholic teaching.” I think it is a great description because there are many things that I may not agree with the Catholic teachings but there are some others that I love. My favorite part of the Catholic religion is the focus on social service. As I mentioned in previous posts, when I was in high school we did service work at a pre-school for low income families that is funded by our school. My high school is owned by the Franciscan community of Minnesota and we always grew up learning about the importance of service. Last year I went to New Orleans on a service trip and it was a great experience where I got to meet a lot of people from the area, and do manual work like mudding the walls (which I had never done before). I think service is a very important part of the Catholic teachings and I am glad that I have had the opportunity to do service work in high school and in college.
I just remembered what Dave McDermott told us when he came to speak to our class. He said that service made much more sense when there was faith behind it. I don’t necessarily agree with that. I believe you can do service just because you believe you can make a difference one step at a time by helping others. I think anyone, no matter what religion they belong to can do service in the same passionate way a Catholic would, but I do like that the Catholic teachings place a high level of important on service.
I had never heard of Dorothy Day or the Catholic Worker movement before this past summer when my roommate Kate lived there in Chicago. I don’t remember having an argument where knowing about it would’ve been useful but it is good to know that there is actually a place where you can see the Catholic teachings being applied.
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Ahh...I wrote a whole comment to your post but then during the verification thing something happened and I lost it all. I'll try to remember as much as I can, but it might not make as much sense as it originally did (sorry)!
I found it rather interesting how you attended a catholic school for all the years of your education, but only noticed the involvement of people in the religion during the college years. It would seem to me that the lack of involvement during the early years would be because of parent's influencing the students to attend religious activities. During college however, a person's religion really becomes their own. If a student does not want to be involved in religion during college, there is no one there to make them attend Church. I think it's pretty neat that you noticed people are more involved during college. I wonder if that is simply because you choose to attend a religious institution. At a state school the religious involvement as a whole might be quite a bit less. I definitely see where you were going with talking about people's different levels of involvement within religion. The term, "cafeteria catholic" is very fitting. I think it is interesting how people make the connection between their faith and their daily lives. It seems to me that there are lots of people who attend Church on Sunday then forget about God for the rest of the week. There are also people who integrate faith into every aspect of their lives.
Your focus on the social service aspect of Catholicism made a nice connection with our service learning class. I hope your time spent serving during our class will be as rewarding as your service experiences in the past.
-Jill
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