Axar.az presents an article "The Holy Bone" by John Samuel Tieman.

A young friend said, “I don't get it. You've got a doctorate. You publish scholarly essays and serious poetry. But you're as quick to quote Pope Francis as you are Albert Camus. I mean, John, you're Catholic. What happened to you?” Here's what happened.

A Jewish friend once said of being a Jew what I can say of being a Roman Catholic. ''I wasn't born to a faith. I was born to a fate.'' Most days, I'm not sure what I believe. But I'm sure I'm Catholic. That said, my young friend asks a serious question.

A little background. I was an altar boy when the Mass was still in Latin. I attended Catholic grade school and high school. In my twenties, however, I could think of nothing stupider than to be a Catholic from Missouri. I ran from my culture. I gave Buddha a shot. I tried existentialism, and, of course, Karl Marx.

In 1978, I spent an afternoon with the English poet, Jon Silkin. That evening, he was to give a reading in Oxford, where I was doing research. Another young writer joined us. Jon and the young man, whose name I've sadly forgotten, were both Jewish. The young man asked Silkin how he integrated his Jewishness into his writing. “For all my doubts, I'm still a Jew. I can't run from that. So I learned to live with who I am.” Then Jon turned to me and said, “Which is something you have yet to do with your Catholicism.” That day, I stopped running from who I am. That day, I began my journey home. It was a circuitous trip.

Then there was this moment of clarity. Not long ago, I saw a Mass on a Catholic TV station. It was said by a Passionist. I have a fondness for the Passionists, for their combination of the contemplative and the active. The priest was an administrator at some university out East. This was his retirement Mass. At the end of the Mass, he gave his retirement speech. He planned to spend his remaining years in his cell and in his lab, contemplating eschatology and experimenting in molecular biology. Then, to show his love for colleagues, students, viewers, he brought with him a relic of the founder of his order, St. Paul of the Cross. He ended his career by blessing us with The Holy Bone.

That's why I'm Catholic. A molecular biologist blessing folks with The Holy Bone. There are no Holy Bones in a Unitarian chapel. There's one in every Catholic altar. To be a Catholic is to be comfortable with paradox and mystery. It's everywhere in The Church. Go to Mass. “Take this, all of you, and eat it: this is my body … Take this, all of you, and drink from it: this is the cup of my blood ...”. It's primitive and profound. It was shortly after he recited these words that Archbishop Oscar Romero was martyred. It was because of these words, words that inspired him to a love for the poor and the oppressed, words that inspired in him such self-sacrifice, that he was assassinated “in odium fidei”, in hatred of the faith.

I admit that it's an annoying Church, this Church that gives us priests who abuse children, this Church that goes berserk over birth control. This is also The Church that gave us John Henry Newman, Francis Of Assisi, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Thomas Aquinas, and Pierre Teilhard De Chardin. I like Thomas More. I just reread his “Utopia”. I like to picture the existentialist philosopher, Gabriel Marcel, praying his rosary. I like the rosary.

And that's why I'm Catholic. Paradox. Mystery. Beauty. Self-sacrifice. Poetry. Scholarship. All that and The Holy Bone. But I think you want to know more than simply what I am. I think you want to know what I believe. My earlier disclaimer notwithstanding, I take some small solace from not being sure what I believe.

Thomas Aquinas says that one proof of God is in the orderliness of the world, an orderliness that could only have been created by a divine intelligence. I understand the argument, and it's a tight one. I just don't live in a very tight world. Every time I see order, I then see the Middle East, Trump, Covid, sub-atomic theory. I spent a decade and a half teaching in a ghetto. I saw combat in Vietnam. I've not lived a very tight life.

Nor am I wise like Aquinas. But I sometimes think I glimpse God. A former student wrote that she got her law degree. A couple out for a walk, and I hear them laugh. These make me feel better, but I don't think that God is about feeling better. No one promised that for feeling better were we destined. In Mexico, I saw God in a peasant child, who died of malnutrition. I find God in the memory of another student, who died in a drive-by shooting.

I wish I could be as wise as Aquinas and as certain. Finding proof was his adventure. Mine is groping in the dark, hoping for another glimpse of the light. I take some small solace knowing that mine is a path crowded with friends. But certainty? Proof? Order? That sounds a lot like control. And I can prove I don't have any of that.

So what do I believe? I some days think the important question is not what I believe, but – what do I pray? I belong to a Church that, at its core, is predicated upon just a handful of ideas. These ideas are then compounded by two millennia of when The Church is at its best, colourful and comforting magical thinking. There are days when I pray, “Lord, let something like this be as true as it is beautiful.”