The Sculpting of Conservative Judaism into an Irish Catholic

Alice Kinahan, my grandmother, attended Catholic school at an early age in Dublin before she became an Irish immigrant in her late twenties to the United States. She met my grandfather through her church in San Francisco and there she started not only a life for herself and her husband but for her many descendants as well. She had always wanted a big family, coming from an immediate family of sixteen she knew it was something predetermined. And like the Irish Catholic immigrants in the 1830s, she pushed them to be involved tightly with the congregation. She emphasized clericalism and spirituality with the trinity, stressing core significance on family values and morality. But unusually, her journey tapers from the hierarchical dominance of the Catholic religion and parallels closely with the movement of Conservative Judaism. They understood scripture exposed the laws of God but was written by humans, therefore expressing flaws.¹ These ideas were born in the 1880s basing the principles of the Orthodox Jewish traditions in reaction to the establishment of the radical Reform Jews. Rather than succeeding or changing the culture, the conservative movement settled on a medium between the two forms of Judaism. Throughout the development however, the Conservative Jews seemed almost as diverse as its predecessors. Gertel mentions the religion splitting, a silent tug of war separating the liberals from the more orthodox, painting a grey rather than its stark counterparts.² This grey encompasses my grandmother’s odyssey. As she came to America, her views were quite orthodox but soon turned sour to the tyranny of the church. They didn’t bend as far as the protestant denominations but she changed her perception of what it means to be a Catholic and like the Conservative Jews clung to the traditions she knew from her religion though expressed support for things she never would have thirty years ago. There is a growing platform in the church for optional celibacy for priests as well as woman recruited into the holy order as priests or rabbis in the synagogue.³ LGBT rights are also heavily debated, blurring the lines from a strict outline identified in the bible to a smeared gradient. The Catholic Church may not be compartmentalized into three distinct divisions like Judaism but the one church is becoming more different from state to state, from parish to parish than bread and wine.

My grandmother has constituted the history of Conservative Judaism not through her religion but through her reforms and understanding that religion cannot be put into a box. When you cut the trunk of a tree, the base may sap and tumor but the branches will grow anew, growing not a single leaf the same. What I mean by this is her roots stayed true, they were uncut when she came to America and the traditions that she held onto as a child she spread and taught to her family but when something unexpected happens, like the cutting down of a tree, you have the time to sit back, think, and learn. And that is exactly what she did, evaluating what she thought was right from wrong, as did the conservatives, and when she was ready, she branched and flowered into her religious views today. Even now, the church continues to change and learn and grow, something we as humans are accustomed to and something that Conservative Judaism and my grandmother do everyday. What is intriguing is how this reform and history of this religion can shadow so closely the development and molding of my grandmother’s traditions and beliefs. She put an emphasis on the cultuses that the church preached but began thinking of the bible less literally and more metaphorically, as code that deciphers the good, bad and the ugly. Conservative Judaism did the same in the late nineteenth-early twentieth century, questioning the bible critically yet sticking to the roots of the beliefs and practices it employed.  

           

           

 ¹ Peter McDonough, The Catholic Labyrinth : power, apathy, and a passion for reform in the American church /  New York : Oxford University Press, [2013]

² Elliot Gertel, "Is Conservative Judaism - Conservative." Judaism 28, no. 2: 202-215. 1979. ATLA Religion Database, EBSCOhost (accessed August 23, 2013).

³ Pamela Nadell "Developing an American Judaism : Conservative rabbis as ethnic leaders." Judaism 39, no. 3: 345-365. 1990. ATLA Religion Database, EBSCOhost (accessed August 23, 2013).

Tolerance and Behavioral Modifications in America's Blended Religious Views

In the chapter two of the novel Religious Pluralism in America, Hutchison covers an array of different topics that come together to form a unified message of tolerance and behavior. As an insider, one may expect an outsider to conform or assimilate into the appropriate behavior based on religious or cultural views, while the insider can be as different as they wanted. Though this stance is clearly unfair, tolerance and therefore change usually wasn’t accepted until the outsiders had big enough numbers and took a stance as citizens.

 1) The Millerites are an example of an insider group that was accepted despite its radical nature. Can you give an example of an ‘outsider’ religious group that was rejected due to its radical stance and why?

2)    A radical insider, William Miller, predicted the second coming of Christ three separate times before the Millerites finally began declining in numbers. Though clearly deluded he was still accepted because he was an insider. If the second coming of Christ were to actually occur, would people believe a man claiming he is the son of God and how do you think it would be addressed?

This article questions the issues of sexual inequality in the Catholic Church and relates the tolerance and behavior quandaries presented in Hutchison’s Religious Pluralism in America.

http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/sexandgender/7237/excommunicated_for__grave_scandal__of_ordaining_women/

The Priceless Gift of Family

Since I can remember, I have been unwillingly entwined with the inescapable web that is the Catholic religion. It began when I started elementary, forced into catholic school and continued even after I joined a public high school in the form of Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, more commonly referred as CCD. Though over the years the church has left a sour taste in my mouth someone has kept me from calling myself an Atheist and stick with the less conventional “non-practicing” Catholic. That horrifyingly brilliant woman is my grandmother. Nani, my family calls her, has inspired me in astronomical ways not just with her actions but also surprisingly with her dedication to her faith. While the rest of the family doesn’t attend church every Sunday she rises before daybreak and strolls down the algid San Francisco streets to light a candle for my late grandfather. A simple ritual, but to her it’s everything. Even when she is miles away from her church she finds some method of paying respect to him and her God. This small practice keeps the fires of hope alive, burning deep within her being that she will reunite with her husband, my grandfather, in the everlasting kingdom.

Nani considers herself a practicing Catholic not because she directly follows the bible but because she absorbs the principles and responsibilities of the text and applies them to her everyday life. When her church held petitions in front of mass to achieve signatures opposing LGBT rights she slapped the priest on the wrist, an inexcusable assault on the holy man, but necessary because she was disgusted by the way her fellow believers were acting. The code she lives by is not something that is documented but spiritualized and unwritten between her and God. And like her code the creed is not the same aged scripture that is recited every mass but the shadowed example of the code created by her and her maker. Her meaning, her life, her purpose is more than just a golden trimmed book but the actions applied from lessons learned from the Holy Bible and everyday occurrences.

Unlike Sunday mass, my family and I spend every Christmas and Easter together attending the extended ceremonies that take place on the special occasions. My grandmother leads the prayer before every meal and insists the food is untouched until she is done. She also bakes her famous Yorkshire puddings that also make everyone feel at home. During the Christmas mass in particular Nani again lights a candle for my grandfather but also lights a second. A few years back I asked her why she took the time to light two and she looked up at me and smiled, “I light another for the gift of family and that we are all safe, healthy and together again. That is all that is important to me.” This made me really think about not only what religion meant to her but what it meant for me. Through my ignorance I believed that religion was simply going through the motions and doing my duty as a Catholic but to her it was and is much more than that. It is a lifestyle choice but whether or not she chose it is irrelevant. Religion is apart of her now it is who she is. It defines her just as much as her English ancestry, if not more. She considers her family a gift from God, a community that will always be there for her. She holds to these simple traditions, these fragile moments in time together because that is what she gets out of her religion and her beliefs the most, the gift of family.