When I mentioned that I was a cavalier catholic, I think it's necessary that one minds the lower case 'C's. Most times, being catholic for me is a descriptor like saying that I grew up in Los Angeles. These indications describe my current embattled and disenchanted condition. My mother, on the other hand, is a Catholic. Nay...CATHOLIC. I'd put spotlights on that word if possible. However, my current thoughts are less on the focus of faith and more on the act or state of faith itself. Catholicism merely serves as the structure or formality in which my mother believes. Lately, I've been thinking of faith increasingly because it contrasts so easily with my father's lack of it. There seems to be a chiaroscuro of faith and that which may be the opposite of it, say the Dodgers.
It's interesting to see my mother's decline and mordant stagnancy. She seems to linger on the fringe of life (or is it death). My father seeing this decline has started to pray, or that is, he has claimed to have prayed. He's promised to attend church with my mother when she recovers. He talks of miracles. "A word for miracles exist because they occur," he said one night in a moment of reflection and sadness. He has beleaguered a silent god. "Why would he harm one of his daughters," he asks. Save for the fist shake, the venom in his voice is how his cynicism kills. His god existed only for his questions and doubts. When my mother kept silent, I thought her faith fell too. And it shook me.
But I doubted her faith. See paragraph 1. She's one of those all caps Catholics. She's left it in His hands, by the grace of God.
There are values of faith that I often overlook because I recall too easily the jackasses who hide behind their god and ideologies and wield these structures as weapons. It's the glib one-liner that comes to mind - a knife can be a tool...or a weapon. (How about nukes? What are those? Anyway...)
My mother's faith has kept her calm in the face of the impending maw of death. Somewhere in her basic fiber, she knows that she'll return to the previous state of nonbeing (thanks Schopenhauer), and I hope that she finds the peace that she was unable to have on this plane.
