"Babette's Feast" and the Protestant Envy of Catholicism

I suppose one always wants the things one can’t have; I find it a source of constant irritation that, having been brought up by evangelical Christians, I will never be a lapsed Catholic.¹ I was speaking about this with a friend of mine yesterday, who has the good fortune of being a lapsed Catholic herself. There’s a nice little glamor to it, like being a wealthy divorcée in a 1920s novel. There is no glamor in no longer attending a megachurch, even or especially if you decide to make being “ex-evangelical” a key part of your identity. “Ex-evangelical” sounds embittered; “lapsed Catholic” sounds beautifully drooping, like a wisteria vine, or a debutante with a secret.

Some of this, I’m sure, has to do with the long cultural shadow of Conclave. I am easily swayed by fun movies. I have often emerged from a movie theater wishing desperately that I was a doctor, or a dancer, or whatever profession I have most recently seen depicted onscreen, only for the wish to be replaced by another, equally powerful, as soon as I watch another movie later that week.

I do realize that a Catholic upbringing has very little to do with a world-weary Ralph Fiennes cultivating the friendship of secret cardinals, or conducting ancient procedures with great care and excellent stationery.

But an evangelical upbringing has even less to do with excellent stationery; when I was a child, our church had a food court that served chicken fingers. I liked them at the time, of course, but nevertheless I could not shake a secret conviction that my tastes were not being properly cultivated, as they ought to have been.