In Lauren Winner’s memoir, Girl Meets God, she recounts her transition from Orthodox Judaism to Anglican Christianity.  Couched among the tales of her various love affairs, the story of Winner’s tumultuous conversion mirrors her romantic relationships with men.  Winner writes of how she found herself consistently enamored by Jesus while persistently fighting against her burgeoning devotion.  In the end, she gave in to the love affair.  I read this book for the first time when I was sixteen—at the age of first love and first heartbreak—and undoubtedly, it gave me a paradigm for understanding my increasing attraction to the Catholicism of my upbringing.  If becoming Catholic was like falling in love, perhaps leaving would feel something like a break-up.

We have rituals for break-ups, for mourning the loss of a lover, a once-constant life companion.  We let ourselves cry.  We call our friends, and they show up, sit on our couches, and hold us as we try to catch our breath, like Kate. We take down pictures and put old letters into shoeboxes that we shove into our closets, perhaps opening them from time to time for grieving. When we have no paradigm for life without that ex-companion, friends tell us to wake up in the morning, to get out of bed, and they promise that someday it will be a little bit easier. Those around us testify to a hopeful future until we believe it.

Later in the day after reading Kate’s blog entry, I sat at dinner with my boyfriend Jack, telling him how I had carried her heavy words with me all day.  Jack leaned forward to speak—then paused. “I have a frank question for you, if I may?” he asked. “I know you don’t think you can leave, Jessica.  But do you ever wonder if you could, maybe some day?”  Jack has stood beside me during Episcopal liturgies where I wept silently, yearning to belong to a community like that—a more egalitarian space where, for instance, a woman could consecrate the bread and wine of the Eucharist.  Afterward, I told him I was crying because I could never imagine leaving the Catholic Church, even in the moments when I want to.  Feeling stuck in my relationship to the Church hurts sometimes—but I have no paradigm for life without the liturgy and people and tradition that I have loved for so long, even with its major imperfections.

“Sometimes I think it’s possible,” I responded.  “But, I think I would need a funeral first.” Jack tilted his head, wearing a confused look.  This was not a clever way of saying I will be Catholic until I die.  It had simply occurred to me, “I would need some sort of ritual. You know, at funerals everyone who loves you gets together, and they celebrate your life with them.  They mourn your absence but they commend you into another space.  At the very least, I think I would need that to leave Catholicism.  To feel okay about it.”

For many people, leaving Catholicism is a courageous decision made in response to the painful circumstances imposed on them by the Church.  Many suffer within Catholicism for many years before they leave, and for many leaving is a concerted effort to salvage Christian faith.  It is not a rejection of it.  More than ever, it is apparent to me that we need a pastoral response for those who need to leave.  We need some way of communicating those messages of condolence and hope that we share with our friends as they mourn the loss of a lover: “It seems that this is the best thing for you right now, even as it hurts,” or simply, “It’s going to be okay.” We need to go sit with them, and listen to the stories of their grief.  We need some way to say, “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry…”

It was a friend’s mother who gave me Girl Meets God in high school.  She was raised Catholic, and during her college years she increasingly attended a local Protestant church. She became involved in their ministries, and eventually she found herself identifying with this new community much more than the Catholicism of her upbringing.  One summer she was at a Christian camp with young people from her church, and she befriended a Catholic priest who was also there with a group from his parish.  She told him about her life in the Church, and how she had decided to leave Catholicism for this new Protestant community.  This priest offered to say a prayer with her, one that would mark her departure from Catholicism and her entrance into this other Christian community.  And indeed, their prayer marked this transition for her all those years later.

When she told me this story as a high school student, I thought it was so strange. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would intentionally seek a mark of separation from Catholicism. Excommunication was the only thing I could equate to this type of event, and that is something forced on people—not sought out. But today I wonder what a prayer like that could do for people like Kate, or for many of the people I know and love.  And I wonder what the offer of a prayer like that would do for me.

On Thursday I went to an evening liturgy at the Episcopal Cathedral.  Instead of extending my palms over the altar during the Eucharistic prayer as the presider had implored us to do, I attempted to wipe the tears from my cheeks without attracting the attention of the small congregation.  Instead of singing and casually swaying with the melody of the communion song, I was preoccupied by the tense knot in my throat, trying to swallow it–along with all that unbridled emotion.

It was the liturgy of my dreams, right there in front of me: the liturgical prayers and rituals I loved, enacted by a community with lay and ordained ministers of every gender, sexuality, and race, language that reflected tradition while emphasizing the full and equal participation of all.  All this filled me with joy and excitement–yes–but the tears were an outpouring of another kind.  As I stood there amid that liturgy, I imagined what it would be like to call this my church.  And I cried because I could not imagine it.

I could not imagine my church becoming this type of church, nor could I imagine leaving my tradition for the sake of calling this one my own.  Even when faced with the manifestation of this seemingly ideal worship community, being Catholic–or potentially not Catholic–remained overwhelmingly complicated.  There is some complicated power that binds me to Catholicism.

I do not live as Marie Currie died, denying the source of my wounds.  I know it pains me at times to be in this tradition, but I also sense right now that there is a force keeping me here.  Maybe I will figure it out some day, detangle myself from its mysterious pull to enter a space where I can call a liturgy like that my own. Until then…

When I looked across the hundreds of lifted hands I remembered what it felt like to be the recipient of this symbolic gesture. The smiling faces and open palms said, “We are so glad you are here with us. We are so excited for your life in the Church.” That message brought me peace and comfort at my Confirmation at year ago, when I received a similar ritual of welcome and belonging. This weekend I found myself anxiously longing for that sort of ritual experience again.

The envy I felt toward the Catechumens and Candidates made me realize how much I am paradoxically within and without the Church. On one hand, I long for ritual in order to make sense of my life. How Catholic of me, right? On the other hand, the catalyst for my yearning is the very fact that I don’t feel a sense of belonging in Catholicism at times. Why would I jealously long for this ritual experience if I did not feel a lack of belonging in the Church?

In light of all that, I’ve concluded that I want a ritual of my own. We—those of us who identify as Catholic yet feel we live in the margins of the tradition—we could really use a ritual of healing, welcome, and belonging.

Surely, it is not just Catholics who need one such ritual. Many of us feel burned by any number of religions at one time or another. What if religion recognized this, and tried to offer us a ritual to make us sense of the times when it falls up short?

I began to wonder why I feel a need for this type of ritual beyond the numerous ones that already exist in my tradition. What need do I have that the pre-existing sacraments cannot tend to? Why doesn’t the Eucharist or the sacrament of Reconciliation serve as the type of communal symbolic practice I long for? These thoughts have challenged me to reconsider my approach to the sacraments: What if I regularly confessed anger, pain, and bitterness I sometimes foster toward the Church? Could I experience reconciliation in this aspect of my life if I approached the sacrament like this? What if I thought of Eucharist as a personal invitation to life in the Church—one extended again, and again, and again—despite my frustrations and occasionally unkind words toward the institution? With a little intentionality, could these sacraments help me make sense of my ambivalent belonging in Catholicism?

Until I can come up with a ritual of my own for people like me, I am going to try to be more honest with God about the baggage that I bring to the sacraments: “God, I really want to be here, but I don’t feel like I belong here, or that people want me to be here with them sometimes. By the power of Your Spirit, help me work through all this in the ritual we now celebrate together. Help me to believe You are here, and that You want us all to be here, too.”

Amen.