A Lapsed Catholic's Contemplations:Reflections on the Interior Castle

What/Who Is A Lapsed Catholic?

Let’s Talk about Lapsed Catholics (or me for example)

I have always needed a better word to describe who and what I am in terms of religion. I was born and baptized a Roman Catholic, but my parents seldom practice and live up to the tenets of Catholicism.

I think lapsed catholic would be a word for it.

My grandparents, devout Catholics to the bone, brought me to Church on Sundays. They even have this “panata”, a promise to go to one of the pilgrim Churches in out province every Summer. I can vividly remember staring and fearing the image of the Our Lady of Perpetual Help during mass. My Lola loved to sit in the front pews, on the right side of the Church where that very image, encased in wood and glass used to be displayed. I would be the only kid among the old ladies who wore white dressed and veils. Yup, I am that old. Catholic women wear chapel veils at Mass as an external sign of their interior desire to humble themselves before God.

We always go to the second Mass which used to be held at 6 AM. I was literally forced to join them and when I grew older, I stopped going.

I attended a Baptist Kindergarten. It shaped most of my knowledge about the Bible. Our teachers taught us and read to us Bible stories. They also sang Christian songs. I had a very good Christian upbringing, an inkling of what is right and wrong and what is bad or good. I can say I was very obedient kid too who is afraid to lie. And that was not because of my Christian upbringing.

I develop a love for truth when, at six years old, I stole my Lolo’s cacao fruit. When he asked about it, I also lied to him. The next day, in school, one of my finger go stuck and broken on our school gate. That was when I learned that stealing and lying are very bad things and have very real consequences.

I also did not know how to swear. As the eldest daughter in our Clan, I grew up with adults and never had much of a playmate. I only learned swear word when I turned ten and was attending a public high school.

 My reintroduction to the Catholic Church (since  I stopped attending when my grandparents could not longer make me) was when I joined the Jerusalem Mass choir.I was 14 years old at that time. How can you not feel that there is more to religion when you are singing all these hallowed songs at Mass every Sunday? I joined our Parish choir and we sang during all the other Masses on Sundays and at weddings and burials too.

What was enlightening then was the concert organized in our Parish, a recreation of the famous Jesus Christ Superstar musical/movie. The songs bothered me. I got too close with Jesus’ pain,and bothered by all the lyrics we were singing.

One of the songs that left a scar in my heart is Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s Gethsemane. Jesus was suppose to sing it. That Little Boy, Jesus, which I saw in a movie, that handsome, kind, and quiet little boy grew up into this…man?

The lines go this way..

“I only want to say

If there is away

Take this cup away from me

For I don’t want to taste its poison

Feel it burn me

I have changed

I’m not sure, as when we started

Then, I was inspired

Now, I’m sad and tired

Listen, surely, I’ve exceeded expectations

Tried for three years, seems like thirty

Could you ask as much from any other man?

I don’t recall hearing the actual song, but I can remember the painfully heartfelt rendition of our Choir member who played Jesus. It was heartbreaking. I felt like crying every time we rehearsed. Every time, our “Jesus” would wail out the lines “Could you ask as much from any other man?” it breaks my soul. And until now, I can hear his cries in my head and I would get teary eyed.

The introduction is actually getting longer than I would hope. I also don’t think people would care to know much about me.

But, after several years serving in a Catholic organization, I felt that people would be able to relate in this journey.

I was once a Catholic because I was required to be, then I became an atheist (on a day I decided that I decided that God does not exist because I can’t feel Him in my life) until He made His presence know to me by leading me to join His people and until now, when I left that Catholic organization and returned to my old ways not knowing where this journey would lead – I feel that you would understand and feel what its like and where I -we- are at.

But if you have known God all your life and felt loved by Him all the time, then this is your chance to understand us – me – the journey that we are taking…the steps we walk, the path we traverse.

Oh, and lets go back to that long awaited definition (after I have given an example) of a lapsed Catholic. A lapsed Catholic, also known as a backsliding Catholic, is a baptized Catholic who is non-practicing.

This question was raised in Quora. What is a lapsed Catholic? A Roman Catholic priest seminarian answered in 2016 (hopefully he is a priest now). HE said that a lapsed Catholic is someone who no longer practices the Catholic Faith. He or she may still identify as Catholic ( I do) but may or may not go to mass (I don’t), or received the sacraments regularly. For those like me, who wants to come home, a site was provided….

https://www.catholicscomehome.org/

Click the link when you feel called to return. For now, I want to walk this path, wherever it may lead me.