Being Catholic

Sometimes, it's strange being Catholic. There's a certain oddness to living a Catholic life, one full of seemingly endless guilt, but somehow being cheery about it. The funny, and radically different thing about being Catholic is that there's no attempt to save the world. If you ever meet Catholic missionaries, they're not like Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses. There's no door to door and bible thumping. They do shit. They work with prisoners. They aid the dying. They dig wells and feed children and serve food to the starving.

The one thing about being Catholic is that it comes with a certain mindset. Some might call it apathy, but after being Catholic for... oh... 20 years now, I've come to realize that there is something to being Catholic. You do what you can and let God to the rest.

I can't save my patients. I can't stop the cancer from growing. I can't stop the heart from failing. I can't stop the bacteria from invading every organ. I can only do what I can and let God do the rest.

The thing about being Catholic is it's so blue-collar. Let someone else preach. God's work isn't in talk, it's in deeds. There's something very reassuring about that.

The other funny thing about Catholicism is that it comes with the inherent understanding that the fights that are hopeless, the ones you'll never win, those are the ones that are most important to fight. Maybe that's why it seems like there are so many Catholics in internal medicine... or maybe it's just me.