Reconciliation spurred my first real rebellion against church and religion. Rather than boredom, this was a theological issue. I have only received this sacrament 3 times in my life. Each time was with my CCD class. Reconciliation/confession starts in 4th grade and you're supposed to go on a regular basis (monthly - if not, yearly). I kept it to the minimum by going with my CCD classes once a year.
I was not (and am not) the only one who hated the idea of telling a priest yours sins and being given a punishment for it. Since I went in the CCD groups, all the other kids went to public schools too which meant most of their parents weren't observant enough to send them to parochial schools. We all thought confession was dumb. We would get in groups of our friends and talk about what exactly we were gonna tell the priest. We'd come up with three specific examples to tell him; usually fighting with parents, with siblings, and with friends were among the three. We'd get our 5 minutes with the priest, he'd tell us how to repent*, then we'd gossip with each other while we waited for everyone else to finish. It was quite a ridiculous process.
I know there are many people like me who hate the idea of priests acting as intermediaries between people and G-d. I have never kept this a secret from anyone, including my mother. After my final confession in 6th grade, she picked me up in front of the church and asked me how it went. I said it was fine. Then she asked me what I talked about with the priest. Instead of pleading the fifth and telling her that was between me and the priest, I told her "nothin' really." She said, "What do you mean? You're supposed to tell him your sins so you can be forgiven." Screw that. I told her, "If G-d is all knowing, then G-d knows what I did wrong, and He knows when I'm sorry. I don't need a priest to tell Him."
What could my mother** say? Her 12 year old had thought it out very thoroughly, and didn't need the sacraments of the Catholic Church.
*I think once the priest told me if I did an extra chore for my mother, like emptying the dishwasher, then I would be forgiven for fighting with her. How silly.
**My mom hasn't been to confession at least since this incident. I don't know what influence I had or when her last one really was. Is is my fault? Is there even blame to be placed? I can't really answer that right now.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Questions, Doubts, and The Trinity
I'm not gonna beat around the bush here, people. No one told me Jesus was supposed to be G-d. Yeah, sure, the nuns and teachers said "Son of G-d." But "Son of G-d" and "G-d" are a hell of a lot different. One can easily be a metaphor. We're all supposedly G-d's children; I just thought that Jesus was the best behaved or something, a shining example of who we should strive to be.
It wasn't until the junior high years when I started catching on to this idea, and by that point it was probably too late. I had spent at least ten years thinking of G-d as G-d and of Jesus as a human being named Jesus. How was I supposed to reconcile the two? You better believe I asked questions about the trinity at CCD. I remember telling my eighth grade CCD teacher that if Jesus was supposed to be a piece of G-d on Earth, then after he died he should have just become one with G-d again, and his separate entity of Jesus should have ceased to exist (I think this was pretty impressive logic since not one adult helped me get there, although I of course no long believe it to be true).
This may come to a shock to readers of a non-Christian religion, but asking questions is not a good thing, especially in the Catholic Church. Some Catholic teachers might say they encourage their students to ask probing questions and think deeply about their faith, but that's not the standard practice. Probably 90% of the people who've left the Church as a result of childhood/teenage experiences will cite their frustration at not being allowed to ask questions. To the Church, questions=doubts. Maybe sometimes the questions do stem from doubt. But other times the questions may come from a genuine curiosity to understand just what the hell they're talkin' about. Either way, questions shouldn't be discouraged. But that certainly was my, and my best friend's, experience.
I can't think of a specific example from my own life to illustrate just how discouraged questions are in the Church, but I have a great story about my best friend. Let's call this friend Suzy. Suzy had the same general experience I had with the Catholic Church: went to public school so she did weekly CCD classes & went to church with her mom & sister on Sundays. Suzy didn't/doesn't understand the trinity either. So during her eighth grade year (the one leading up to confirmation) she keeps asking questions about it. The teacher tries to brush her off or explains in a rushed and annoyed manner. Suzy just says flat out, "How is this possible? I don't get it!" After a while she started to get sent to the priest to discourage these questions. Someone might try to interject here and say, "Oh! No, they just sent her to an 'expert' so she could get better answers." To whoever is thinking that, you're wrong. The priest did try to discourage her from asking questions and from "interrupting" class. He asked Suzy, "Don't you want to marry a Catholic?" [because the only way she could is if she is a confirmed Catholic] Suzy replied, "I don't know." An honest answer. Then the priest asked, "Well, don't you want to get married in the Church?" The priest thought he had her on the ropes, that she would give in, say yes, and stop asking questions. Wrong. Suzy said, "No, because I want to get married outside." Then the priest gave up.
In my opinion, the fierce discouragement of questions probably drives many young people, who would otherwise be faithful Catholics, away from the Church. For me, it is just one on a long list of reasons.
It wasn't until the junior high years when I started catching on to this idea, and by that point it was probably too late. I had spent at least ten years thinking of G-d as G-d and of Jesus as a human being named Jesus. How was I supposed to reconcile the two? You better believe I asked questions about the trinity at CCD. I remember telling my eighth grade CCD teacher that if Jesus was supposed to be a piece of G-d on Earth, then after he died he should have just become one with G-d again, and his separate entity of Jesus should have ceased to exist (I think this was pretty impressive logic since not one adult helped me get there, although I of course no long believe it to be true).
This may come to a shock to readers of a non-Christian religion, but asking questions is not a good thing, especially in the Catholic Church. Some Catholic teachers might say they encourage their students to ask probing questions and think deeply about their faith, but that's not the standard practice. Probably 90% of the people who've left the Church as a result of childhood/teenage experiences will cite their frustration at not being allowed to ask questions. To the Church, questions=doubts. Maybe sometimes the questions do stem from doubt. But other times the questions may come from a genuine curiosity to understand just what the hell they're talkin' about. Either way, questions shouldn't be discouraged. But that certainly was my, and my best friend's, experience.
I can't think of a specific example from my own life to illustrate just how discouraged questions are in the Church, but I have a great story about my best friend. Let's call this friend Suzy. Suzy had the same general experience I had with the Catholic Church: went to public school so she did weekly CCD classes & went to church with her mom & sister on Sundays. Suzy didn't/doesn't understand the trinity either. So during her eighth grade year (the one leading up to confirmation) she keeps asking questions about it. The teacher tries to brush her off or explains in a rushed and annoyed manner. Suzy just says flat out, "How is this possible? I don't get it!" After a while she started to get sent to the priest to discourage these questions. Someone might try to interject here and say, "Oh! No, they just sent her to an 'expert' so she could get better answers." To whoever is thinking that, you're wrong. The priest did try to discourage her from asking questions and from "interrupting" class. He asked Suzy, "Don't you want to marry a Catholic?" [because the only way she could is if she is a confirmed Catholic] Suzy replied, "I don't know." An honest answer. Then the priest asked, "Well, don't you want to get married in the Church?" The priest thought he had her on the ropes, that she would give in, say yes, and stop asking questions. Wrong. Suzy said, "No, because I want to get married outside." Then the priest gave up.
In my opinion, the fierce discouragement of questions probably drives many young people, who would otherwise be faithful Catholics, away from the Church. For me, it is just one on a long list of reasons.
Monday, August 29, 2011
First Communion
Second grade is the grade you receive the "Holy Sacrament" of communion for the first time. There's a lot of preparation and build up to this wonderful event. There are special rehearsals and the priest will come to talk to your class about what a big deal it is. Well, being the eight year old that I was, I didn't really understand the enormity of this event, and, honestly, I didn't understand until about two years ago...
Sometime in the year leading up to my own first communion I was sitting in mass, listening for once, and I heard the priest say "This is my body [or flesh, not sure which it was then], shed for you and for all, so that sins may be forgiven," and "this is the cup of my blood, the cup of the new and ever lasting covenant," while holding the communion bread and wine. I tugged at my mom's arm like, whaat? Body and blood? That was totally gross to my eight year old mind. My mom just looked at me and said "It's just bread and wine. You can eat it. It'll be fine." Well that made me feel better. I wasn't so concerned then when first communion rolled around.
Any Catholics or people familiar with Catholicism are at this point wondering exactly why my mom didn't tell me the truth. I don't know. People unfamiliar with the truth, let me lay it out for you. Catholics believe that during the mass when the priest blesses the bread and wine, that they actually become the body and blood of Jesus Christ and that taking communion is a spiritual nourishment one should receive from the earliest age possible on a regular basis. This... This I did not learn until my freshman year of college (i.e. two years ago). But because my mom told me that as a little kid, I spent the next eleven years believing that communion and all the stuff the priest says before hand was just a metaphor. I believed that Jesus was just being a little dramatic at the Last Supper and that the priests kept it going as tradition... or something like that. This also led to serious issues understanding the trinity (more on that later).
The reason I bring all of this up is that when I went to college, I had three Catholic suite-mates who went to church every week even though there were no parents forcing them - weird right? Anyways, after a while of them asking me to go and refusing, I started to come around. They wore me down a little, I guess, and I thought I could try out church. Maybe it wasn't as bad as a remembered. I thought I'd give it the ole college try. I did still believe in G-d after all. But when I finally learned about the whole communion business in a history class, I got a little freaked out and didn't know what to do with that information. How was I supposed to just undo eleven years of thinking it was just metaphoric bread? There's no way that this bread was somehow actually Jesus.
This was just one of many issues I had during my trial period at the college church. You will come to learn more of them later.
Sometime in the year leading up to my own first communion I was sitting in mass, listening for once, and I heard the priest say "This is my body [or flesh, not sure which it was then], shed for you and for all, so that sins may be forgiven," and "this is the cup of my blood, the cup of the new and ever lasting covenant," while holding the communion bread and wine. I tugged at my mom's arm like, whaat? Body and blood? That was totally gross to my eight year old mind. My mom just looked at me and said "It's just bread and wine. You can eat it. It'll be fine." Well that made me feel better. I wasn't so concerned then when first communion rolled around.
Any Catholics or people familiar with Catholicism are at this point wondering exactly why my mom didn't tell me the truth. I don't know. People unfamiliar with the truth, let me lay it out for you. Catholics believe that during the mass when the priest blesses the bread and wine, that they actually become the body and blood of Jesus Christ and that taking communion is a spiritual nourishment one should receive from the earliest age possible on a regular basis. This... This I did not learn until my freshman year of college (i.e. two years ago). But because my mom told me that as a little kid, I spent the next eleven years believing that communion and all the stuff the priest says before hand was just a metaphor. I believed that Jesus was just being a little dramatic at the Last Supper and that the priests kept it going as tradition... or something like that. This also led to serious issues understanding the trinity (more on that later).
The reason I bring all of this up is that when I went to college, I had three Catholic suite-mates who went to church every week even though there were no parents forcing them - weird right? Anyways, after a while of them asking me to go and refusing, I started to come around. They wore me down a little, I guess, and I thought I could try out church. Maybe it wasn't as bad as a remembered. I thought I'd give it the ole college try. I did still believe in G-d after all. But when I finally learned about the whole communion business in a history class, I got a little freaked out and didn't know what to do with that information. How was I supposed to just undo eleven years of thinking it was just metaphoric bread? There's no way that this bread was somehow actually Jesus.
This was just one of many issues I had during my trial period at the college church. You will come to learn more of them later.
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.
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.
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