more off-topic no-books stuff

like everyone else on the st. leo's email list, i received a link to the survey talked about here.

at first i wasn't going to take it, but eventually i did. and being who i am, of course i have criticisms to make about it. it's primarily full of questions about my parish, and ends on some questions about the church in general. as the article notes, it doesn't ask any truly controversial questions, although i was able to passive-aggressively fill in some bubbles about parish closings. what bothers me about the survey is that it doesn't ask me anything about, for instance, the archdiocese of Detroit. it's like being given a survey by your management team that asks you to rate your coworkers, your supervisor, even the company, but doesn't care how you feel about the management team. i have complaints, yes, about my parish or the church in general, but lately i think i have more about the AoD.

my most ambivalent feelings, though, have nothing to do with the content of the survey. first of all, i took it. i started it out of curiosity, then quit, then went back to it and ended up being more emotionally invested in it than i expected. so emotionally invested that i lied on one of the questions. late in the survey, you're asked what your status in the church is. and instead of telling the truth, which is that i'm not catholic, i lied and said i had converted. at the time, i explained this to myself by saying that whoever reads this survey will be less likely to pay any attention to my opinions. what do they care what some heathen who drops in at st. leo's every week thinks the church's biggest challenges are, or what makes me keep going, or what would make me stop going to mass?

and all of this sounds perfectly reasonable, except why do i care? because apparently i do. i seem to have an emotional investment in this, in being taken seriously. and that's a change that seems to mean something, even if i'm not yet sure what.

i haven't talked to my friends about this, for the most part. a couple of them know that i'm studying with sr. sue, and most know that i'm friends with sue and sr. maryfran. but even with the few i've talked to about studying, we don't talk about what it means, or where it goes. one of my friends has informed me openly that he'll have no respect for me if i convert. it's all been very In The Closet for me. so this means something, but i don't know what it means or how i feel about it yet.