My Catholic Upbringing

I grew up in a semi-small town with a majority of Catholics, then Lutherans, then other Protestants, and a few Jews and Muslims. There are at least three Catholic Churches in the town, and there used to be a private school associated with each (now I think they've combined to one central school for lack of enrollment). My brother attended one of the parochial schools, but thankfully he got in trouble so much and it was so expensive that by the time I was to start school, my parents decided to switch to public schools. (You might be thinking I got screwed because private schools are better than public schools... not in the case of my town. The public school I ended up at is one of the best in the area. The Catholic Schools got easier and easier as the years went by.)

Anyways, I went to Church most Sundays with my mom and brother. I don't remember my dad ever going except for Christmas and Easter when I was very young. I used to get so mad and ask my mom why I had to go to church and he didn't. He would always say, I had to go all the time when I was young, now it's your turn. As if going to church was some sort of payment everyone had to make for a portion of their life. I often got in trouble for checking my mom's watch during church. I knew that mass lasted exactly one hour and that was about fifty minutes too long, in my opinion. I spent my time staring at the gorgeous - and I mean absolutely, stunningly gorgeous - stained glass windows and counting the number of lights in the ceiling. There were well over sixty lights in the main worship area. I usually would get up to go to the bathroom about ten minutes before communion started so I could have something else to do.

Starting in first grade and for the next eight years I had to go to CCD - religious ed. classes - once a week on Wednesday nights during the regular school year. Those sucked, too. I got sick a lot as a a kid, so if I got sick on a Wednesday that was a HUGE bonus. I got to miss school and CCD. I'm pretty sure I got in trouble for missing too much one year.

So the final year of eighth grade rolls around. The last year sounds great, right? Wrong. There were about 127 hoops to jump through before CCD was over. This year of confirmation had to be a special, so we had to do thirty hours of service in the community, the church, and our families; write a paper about our chosen confirmation name; do a big project depicting our relationship with G-d and the Church; go on a all day retreat to some shrine out in the boonies and probably many more things I've blocked from my memory ON TOP of still going to CCD classes (now on Sunday mornings) and going to church. What... a bummer. I totally tried to get out of being confirmed - more on that later - but I failed. In May 2005 I was officially confirmed as an adult in the Roman Catholic Church.

After that I slowly stopped going to church. My parents didn't make me anymore and I wasn't tryin' to wake up early on Sundays.