"Will Somebody Please tell Protestants that the Reformation is Over?"

Well, first of all I would just to notify everyone of today's great achievement: I made two eggs sunny side up this morning and didn't break either of the yolks.

So, once upon a time a few years ago in a mythical land called Omaha, I was driving somewhere with my family and my best friend Hope. We are rolling along all peaceable-like, when out of the blue my sister, who is riding in the back seat with said friend, turns to her and asks, "Are you Catholic?" Hope laughs a little at the strange question before answering yes. My sister turns her gaze back toward the window and says in the sly, self-assured voice of an inquisitor, "Just as I suspected." Bursts of laughter errupted from all three adults, thankfully including Hope. I swivel around from my position in the front seat and ask her, "Why do you say that?"

"Well," my sister answers, still in the dark as to what has brought about all the mirth, "she looks like a Catholic!" Hmmm... We never could get her to spill what were the precise physical features that marked someone out as a member of this faith.

My sister and I, you see, were raised under the tutelage of a very disaffected Catholic, namely my mother. We will never forget her horror stories of having to pin Kleenexes on her head if she forgot her hat on a Sunday morning, or the infamous nun who wouldn't believe her when she said she broke her arm on the playground. It is no wonder that we had misrepresentations in our minds from an early age. This is a fact that Hope can definitely attest to, since my negative attitudes carried me all the way to high school, where I somehow found myself at the lunch table with a best friend who happened to be Catholic, telling her that Catholics weren't really Christians because they worshipped Mary and believed that good works can get you to heaven. Ouch. Thankfully, Hope was patient and took the time to start straightening me out.

I started to get a lot less bent out of shape when I actually tried going to Mass and a couple of other Catholic services while I was traveling in Europe this past spring. Then I happened to take a Christian theology class this past fall that was taught by a professor who was very knowledgeable of and sympathetic to Catholic doctrine. Now, perhaps five years after that car trip, I have come to believe that not only are Catholics Christian, there is much that Protestants can learn from them. For example, I love the way in which they embrace the arts, and I found the more liturgical, structured style of their worship (which I had been told for years led to spectator-Christianity and spiritual dryness) to be an engaging framework in which personal and corporate expressions of faith could bloom. Don't get me wrong, I am not ready to jump ship, but I am quite fed up with all of the finger-pointing and back-biting. In true Postmodern "smorgasboard" style, I want to be able to learn what I can from that tradition, while still maintaining the good parts of the faith that I've grown up in.

Partially to that end, and partially to feed my own hunger for liturgy, I have been attending a morning prayer service that meets every weekday over at St. Ignatius of Loyola Catholic Community, just about 15 minutes from my house. I love these services and the spiritual food that I get from them, which is so different from my own tradition. My mom doesn't know yet that I've been going. It's not that I'm keeping it secret, it just hasn't come up, and furthermore I really can't tell how she'd take it. Her opinion has not changed much in the past 15 years. I think it's pretty funny that my only instance of teenage rebellion would be going to a church service. Do you think she would prefer it if I took up pot smoking? In any case, I am no longer willing to write off either Catholics or Protestants for their differing beliefs, and will continue to pray for and work towards the knitting of both traditions back into one unified family of God.