Benjamin Arnoldy | Boston | Catholic

When I am aware of God, it's always when I am feeling good about myself and the world. As such, my God inhabits the summits of mountains and stands by me during graduation ceremonies. This feel-good God gets two hearty thumbs-up.

But, unfortunately, the religion that introduced me to God instilled in me an obsession with getting to the bottom of the question: What is a well-lived life? In that quest, it is the Catholic Church that plays the gritty God role for me. This has been nothing short of a serious problem.

It's tough for me to criticize an institution that educated me, filled my early imagination with an alternate reality, solaced and cajoled me with a sense of divine justice, and — through its opposition to birth control — literally gave me life.

But living in the Catholic Church has been like having a philosopher clinging to my back. Most of the moral issues that I have truly explored, I thought through in arguments with him. Yet, even when I resolve my stance on an issue contrary to the Church, there he is still — no longer as a reasoning philosopher but as a heavy-handed little Saddam.

This infuriating way of life was best summed up by one of my Catholic teachers in one of my Catholic schools: "Is it possible to be an intellectual Catholic?" He asked it aloud, but it was a question that tore himself.

With a mix of envy and incredulity, I listen to friends who grew up without State-Sponsored Religion (i.e. the religion of religious parents). They tell me of "searching" for the divine. They describe a God who is more like pure energy than a being or a judge.

But I cannot really take them seriously. First of all, their spirituality sounds suspiciously like The Force from Star Wars. Second, few of them have had to sweat, cry, and rage over their religion. And I suppose it is my Christian upbringing that makes me believe that spiritual rewards only happen after bearing a cross.

In college I was determined to outwit the philosopher. I reasoned that if I studied all the major religions, I could argue with him from the standpoint of other religions, rather than just liberal humanism. Other religions had God on their side, whereas liberal humanism could only claim most of the great minds since the Enlightenment.

I found in Hinduism an engagement with a messy world, and I threw that at the philosopher who kept arguing retreat from "worldliness."

I found in Buddhism a self-help solution to suffering, and I threw that at the philosopher who kept arguing supplication to Mary.

I found in Judaism a tradition of openness to religious argument, and I threw that at the philosopher who kept arguing that I shouldn't argue.

I found nothing in Islam, since it seemed to me that rather than a philosopher on the Muslim back, their burden was a heavy-handed little Saddam all the time.

For a while, I thought I was back on the spiritual path, moving forward as a Hindu-Buddhist-Jewish Catholic. I went to Church on my own. I identified myself as Catholic (though stressing my broader perspective). Then, someone out-ed me for the double-agent that I was trying to be.

One of my college friends came home with me during a break. We were walking together along some railroad tracks that ran through the forest behind my house. He walked on the gravel bed edge while I walked between the steel rails. He turned to me and said, "As in life, you are walking in the center, and I am walking on the edge." I had no idea what he was talking about until his lips quivered and blurted out, "I'm gay."

In the sorting out that followed, I asked him why he hadn't told me earlier.

He responded that he wasn't sure whether I would accept him since I was Catholic. I realized that my identity was being overwritten by the pronouncements of popes and the petty injustices committed by people I will never meet.

I started identifying myself as "spiritual not religious," to smoothly convey that yes, the concept of the divine is important to my inner life, but, no, I am my own man fully responsible for my own character.

The Catholic Church no doubt saw this sensibility a long time ago, and instituted sacraments. Under this system of sacraments, major junctures in the inner life such as marriage, repentance, and weekly spiritual house-cleaning, all have an outward ceremony explicitly linked to the Church. Even for a Catholic unsure about wanting to be accept all Catholic doctrine, these habits are hard to leave behind. But it's equally hard to attend without compromising your integrity.

I finally decided to confront one of these sacraments head on. I strode into a confession room with the intention of confessing nothing and instead seeing if I could get a confession from the priest. I looked the priest in the eye and told him the story of my friend and asked him to grapple with Church teaching. For a change, I could watch someone else struggle with the philosopher.

He started out by informing me that his brother was gay. I could see from the sadness in his eyes that he knew he had to fight a battle that he didn't believe in. He stuck it out, though, since it was his ordained role to do so. He explained that Church teaching on love, sex, and relationships expresses an ideal. The fact that the ideal is not always possible is something the Church commiserates with.

I took the priest's idea and inverted it. The positions that I have struggled to arrive at are ideals that someday maybe the Church will adopt.

I suppose I think of myself now as ideally a Catholic. The ideal Catholic Church has its saints: Rev. Robert Nugent, Fr. Romero, James Joyce. Joyce? Apparently Joyce disavowed his Catholicism, only to find himself standing in the back of Church each Sunday.

E-mail Benjamin Arnoldy at benjamin@csmonitor.com.

— graphic by Jeffrey Avila