You don't tug on Superman's cape, and you don't debate abortion with Brandon Vogt

Please-- don't get your blood on my nice white gei.

I recently got my butt rhetorically kicked by Brandon Vogt. (This is a little like having your butt physically kicked by Chuck Norris: you really didn't expect it to come out any different, and you're kind of honored that he took the time.) I commented on his post that asked non-Catholic readers to fill in the blank: "I'm not Catholic because ______." I cited the Catholic stances on abortion and homosexuality as major issues for me, and Brandon proceeded to pull my "arguments" to pieces on logical grounds, pretty much leaving me sputtering, "But... but... it just feels so mean." Which, as pretty much anyone could point out, does not constitute an argument.

Well, I'm not ready with a rebuttal or anything. I still can't argue with the rationality and lucidity of Catholic social teaching. But I can examine my reasons for not embracing it at a "gut" level.

Indeed, I think I did touch on this in Brandon's combox, but then I subsequently buried the lead:

Culture war aside, I'm generally concerned that the would-be "humility" of subjecting my own thinking to the teaching of the Church is actually an abdication of responsibility. What if the Church is wrong?...

Finally-- and this is not so much an objection as a circumstance-- my wife remains an agnostic. And as I learned during the time I tried to conform my thinking to Reformed/"biblical" theology, when I adopt a worldview that would call hers "wrong", all hell breaks loose. She feels hurt, even while I can't really carry it off because I don't really feel any conviction that she *is* wrong, or at any rate that her wrongness is culpable. She's a nice, very smart lady, trying to figure it all out while not hurting anybody and raising her daughters to be nice, smart ladies like herself (and I pray God she does just that!). She doesn't wish to be married to a theologically-conservative Christian-- certainly not one who wants to be "open to life"!-- so I find that my (probably uninformed, probably broken) conscience tells me I must try to avoid being such a person.

Let me be clear what (I hope) I am not saying: I am not saying "It's my wife's fault I'm not Catholic." Indeed, you might say it's her virtues that hold me back. The world is replete with stories of conversion where Spouse A accepts Christ (in one form or another), while Spouse B goes on living a dissolute, God-dishonoring life of booze and selfishness until Spouse A wins Spouse B over with their Awesome, Loving Christian Witness.

This will not be my story. My wife is in no way dissolute. She is not given to trinkets and baubles and material doo-dads. She tries to be as charitable as decent standards of prudence allow. Injustice affects her like poison ivy: she can't sit still for it. I feel confident that she would go to the wall for her family.

She's also wicked smart. (Why the hell is she married to YOU, then? Touche. She must have a blind spot.) I don't want to give too many details since I'm trying to keep this blog anonymous, but suffice it to say she has scaled any number of academic mountains, if not with ease, then with tireless perseverance. She reads the news; she knows the score; she is quite capable of independent, critical thought.

And she flatly rejects Christianity. Forget Catholic social teaching (the specifics of which make her cringe): this archaic notion of God becoming human, and giving His life for a sinful human race, she simply will not give the time of day to. Oh, she'll allow that in its milder manifestations a belief like this might be psychologically helpful. It's not so bad to believe in God and imagine that He loves you. But the minute some organization begins to speak for God, she loses all patience.

Is she a wretched, lost sinner? I suppose. I can't help feeling that I should be so wretched and lost myself. I love the woman, but I also admire her. I end up wondering-- not what's wrong with her that she should be so hostile to a theologically-conservative worldview-- but rather what's wrong with me that I should be flirting with these ideas in the face of her obvious virtue and goodness, and in opposition to (what should I call it?) the founding principles of our marriage.

I pray the rosary on my evening commute most nights. Last night I stopped by a church that's on my route and sat and prayed the last decade sitting in my car outside the perpetual adoration chapel. This is how it is for me: I drive by churches like some kind of creepy love-lorn teenager driving past the house of a girl who's rejected him. I feel like I'm doing something vaguely dirty, vaguely adulterous in my devotions, in my desire to approach God through Catholic belief and practice.

And I'm not sure how to clean that up.