Will Ulrich: Lapsing through the year

Not too long ago for me, the day after Halloween was All Saints Day. This year's version of November 1 is -- well -- Thursday.

You see, I am what some might call a lapsed Catholic. That word "lapsed" conjures up a whole pre/post lapsarian, Miltonic/Augustinian set of issues in me, so I try to avoid it.

I call myself as I see myself: a sub-standard Catholic.

This wasn't always the case. A product of no less than 13 years of Catholic schooling, I gobbled up catechism at a young age. I can clearly remember being far-and-away the best memorized student of the rite of mass in second grade. Standing proudly next to my grandparents at 9 a.m. mass on Sunday, I'd belt out the Nicene Creed as deftly as I would Vanilla Ice.

My young mind was in love with the mysteries of the Catholic sacraments. The chalices, the vestments, the incense, everything, transported me to a different plane.

As an altar boy, I admittedly dabbled in some of the petty vices of the trade, sneaking sips of sacramental wine and telling dirty jokes to crack up the other guys on the altar.

I even got a kick out of some of the fringe benefits of the gig. I'd get out of morning class to serve funeral masses, and I'd often get tipped for those and weddings. The best tip I ever got was from a silk-suited cosa nostra type who gave me and my fellow acolyte a $50 bill to split after slapping us on the cheeks and telling us, "You looked good out there."

The lighter side notwithstanding, I viewed my vocation as altar boy with a certain reverence. I really believed Father Monaghan -- a diminutive, leathery British missionary who had been a priest in the Falkland Islands during its war -- when he told us we should walk proudly "like soldiers of Christ."

I continued to attend mass every Sunday through my first three years in high school. Throughout this period, my reading opened up new doors in my intellectual Catholicism. I read Chesterton and Cardinal Newman; I read modern papal encyclicals and saw how modern Catholic teaching -- at least when it came to issues of social welfare -- jived with many of my opinions. I didn't feel like towing the Vatican line on things like birth control or abortion, but those issues weren't vital to me.

As my senior year in high school started, so began my drift away from the Church. A stiff indifference kept me away on Sundays. I though long and hard about the religion in which I had been brought up, and the conclusions I made are personal and -- frankly -- not really of interest to the average reader.

Since I've been at Penn, the Church has played virtually no role in my life. My Catholicism has become largely an afterthought. I don't know if this is how I'll stay, and I certainly have all the respect and admiration in the world for people who keep faith an integral part of their everyday existence.

What I do know is that my 'lapsing' has made the path through the calendar a much more labor-intensive project. One of the great things about organized religions is that they cut up the year into digestible, identifiable little chunks.

For a Catholic, there are the various holidays and days of obligation, and then there are the liturgical seasons of the year: Lent before Easter, Advent before Christmas, Pentecost, ordinary time. The one that always gave me the biggest kick was ordinary time; how wonderfully magisterial it is to actually have to guts to declare a period of time "ordinary."

As the priest tells you from the pulpit, there's a way to approach each and every part of the year. Once you get away from church, however, it's up to you to imbue meaning into the days you encounter.

Without an ecclesiastical cookie-cutter, I've accepted this new responsibility. November 1 ceases to be All Saints Day, and it is instead up to me to make it into something, into an anniversary, into a start of something, into an end of something.

I honestly sometimes miss the rhythms of observant Catholic life, the rising early on Sunday, the days of rest and prayer. But then again, I think I like the freedom to inject your days with whatever you please a little bit more.

For now at least, I prefer to go it on my own.

Will Ulrich is a senior Philosophy major from the Bronx, N.Y.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.