Fear and My Catholicism

So a common phrase Jews use is "my Judaism." Each person relates to Judaism differently and finds different aspects important. I've never heard Christians use an analogous term, but I've been thinking it's probably a similarly real concept. So I'm going to try to summarize "my Catholicism" and talk about something I've been thinking about a lot lately.

So much of my Catholicism centered around fear rather than delighting in the Lord, as I've heard it said. It was never about having faith for happiness or to brighten my life, even though in first grade we had to sing that song "This little light of mine" as a class in church. I learned things, and if I believed them, I believed them out of fear. I believed because I was afraid of what would happen if I didn't. What was there to fear? Hell. The devil. Mostly the devil possessing me. Boy, that sounds crazy, exaggerated, and like an old fashioned movie. Ya think?

You know the movie The Exorcist? Not some new, updated version, not the one about Emily Rose. The original Exorcist. That movie's not allowed in my house... my parents' or my own apartment.

When I was 9 years old, I heard my dad and my brother talking about The Exorcist. When I walked in the dining room, instead of them saying never mind or go upstairs and play, they decide to tell me about the movie. I mean, they really told me about it: detailed descriptions of possession and exorcism scenes, the entire plot, and the theology behind this movie. Catholics believe that the Devil can possess a person and that when this happens, a priest has to exorcise the devil out of him/her. If you don't know about The Exorcist, I'll briefly describe it. A twelve year old girl gets possessed by the devil. Some of the classic scenes are her head spinning all the way around, her projectile vomiting an insane amount (on the priest, I think), and her walking in a contorted backbend down the stairs. Her eyes are crazy looking and her voice is, well, demonic. It kind of sounded like a deep, broken robot. 

Now, I've never actually seen the whole movie. I saw a few scenes in 8th grade, and luckily I had to go home and I was with like 5 people so we were talking a lot. In case you haven't been reading my blog from the beginning, 8th grade was the year I was confirmed, so I still kind of believed in all this Catholic stuff. But I didn't need to see this stuff when I was 9 years old to be afraid. My dad's and brother's descriptions were scary enough. I can honestly tell you, they regretted telling me.

I became convinced that I was going to be possessed by the devil. At first I thought they said a 9 year old girl, so hello I was a 9 year old girl. I was already afraid of the dark and this didn't help matters. I always fell asleep with the TV on, but then my dad would turn it off a couple hours later. After I heard about this exorcism stuff, I would wake up every night after my TV was off. Turning my TV back on wouldn't help because I immediately started thinking about the devil coming to get me. I was terrified. My mom worked third shift so there was an open space in my parents' bed. I would go into my dad's room and sleep. I was certain he would protect me. After about a week my dad was like OK, Mary, this has to stop. But it didn't. I was terrified and I would cry if he didn't let me in his room once I woke up. This went on for months.

One day I came home from school, and there was this jar of water just sitting on the counter. Weird. My mom came in the kitchen and I asked her what it was. She and my dad told me that they went downtown to our church, talked to the priest, and he gave them some holy water and instructions for how to bless my room to keep the devil out. We just had to sprinkle the water all over any entrance he could come in through and make the sign of the cross. So we sprinkled that water all over the door, the closet door, the windows, my bed skirt, the ceiling for good measure. Holy crap, that room was blessed. Then every night when I would wake up scarred, I would remember we had blessed the room and that the devil couldn't come in. I starred at my precious moments cross and hoped it would work. 

As the years went by, the constant fear faded. But every now and then I would think about The Exorcist and get scared again. Eventually, I stopped believing in all that but I was still always scarred in my room when it was dark. I watched a lot of scary movies about stuff that could actually happen. The fear changed from the devil to murderers, rapers, and the like. But I know a lot of my childhood belief in G-d was out of fear that the devil was real and would get me. I believed in Catholicism because I didn't want to go to Hell. Hell is hot and scary, right?

Why my dad ever told me about The Exorcist, I'll never know. He went to Catholic school through 8th grade. He saw it when he was 17 years old and came home and slept with his overhead lights on all night. He told my brother and I that we were never to bring that movie into the house. He would never watch it again. He laughs now when he tells people how scarred I was as a kid, but he was just as scarred and hasn't really let go of his fear. 

Also, I feel like historically, baptism was pushed on infants because parents were scared of their babies dying and going to limbo. What's limbo you ask? It's like baby purgatory where they fly around with only heads and wings. They can never make it to heaven because they weren't baptized. Gosh, that sounds terrible so you better baptize your kids! And baptism also always had this angle of, well you don't want to go to hell do you? Well you better be baptized and believe what we tell you! 

Look, I know my Catholicism isn't other people's Catholicism. I know I'm super biased, based on years of bad experiences. I've never claimed to be an objective commentator or reporter. If you're reading this blog trying to learn about Catholicism, stop. Don't read this to learn what Catholicism is. Go to the book store and buy Catholicism for Dummies or find a practicing Catholic and ask them questions. I am literally the last person who should be teaching anyone about Catholicism. All I can do honestly is tell you my own experiences and how I feel about them now and how I felt growing up. And today, I feel like even if I believed in the trinity and all that, I would never be able to connect to Catholicism because of things like the devil and exorcism.

Oh, by the way, my parents never actually went to church and talked to the priest or got holy water. It was water from the sink and they lied to me about that whole thing. So, whenever I think about that stupid movie, I think about how scarred I was and all these terrible feelings about Catholicism come rushing back. I still feel a weird sense of betrayal toward my parents for 1) lying to me about that whole situation and 2) raising me in a religion that has such scary stuff associated with it. And once I start thinking about any of it, it's like I can't stop. My mind will wander from memory to memory. That's why I'll never watch The Exorcist. I don't want all that stuff brought up and I have virtually no interest in seeing all those scenes I spent years fearing would happen to me. I couldn't fall asleep last night and I started thinking about it. It took me hours to fall asleep and I basically wrote this entire thing in my head last night. Hopefully I won't think about it for a long time.

Faith & Confirmation

So, as I mentioned in my first post, I was confirmed in the Catholic Church in 2005. I also mentioned that we had to pick a confirmation name and write a report on it. What name did I pick, you ask? A name that now could not be more ironic: Faith. Even at 14 I didn't have very much faith so I obviously didn't pick it because it described me. I picked it because confirmation names must be picked in honor of a saint. There are over 10,000 saints and not one of them was named Buffy. Quelle suprise. There is, however, a saint Faith (I have no memory of what earned her her sainthood, so don't ask). I wrote my report on her and in my statement of why I chose that name, I very clearly stated that it was because one of my favorite characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer was called Faith and she was totally badass. OK. I didn't say badass to the church. But that pretty much summarizes what I did say. Now, I laugh every time I think about picking this name because in the religion which requires the utmost faith, I have none. I don't have faith in the theology, the system, or most of the people.

For my service project to the church I acted as an usher for about three months. Basically, all I did was collect the money and release people from their seats for communion. I had to go to church anyways so standing up and walking around during the mass was totally worth my service hours. Best part about ushering: the couple who was in charge of it have a beautiful son. He is a year older than I am and I got to sit next to him for three wonderful months. Of course I was secretly hoping he'd want to "go out" with me, I was a 14 year old girl, people. (I'm 87% sure he's an atheist now, so church did us both wonders.)

I won't go into detail about the trinity again, just going to reiterate that it was a serious problem for me. I just kept hoping and hoping as we got closer to the actual ceremony that it would finally click. I had anxiety over it. Then I just gave up and resolved that I would understand it when I was older - like it was a calculus problem or something and I was only ready for algebra. Well, I got a 5 on the AP Calc test and I still don't get it. And I finally figured out, it simply isn't possible. The solution does not exist, DNE.

So you might be wondering now, why did you go through with it? Why not just say no thanks and not be confirmed? Easier said than done, mon amis. How am I supposed to tell my Italian father and grandfather that I don't wanna be Catholic? If I had, they probably would have just laughed and said I was 14 and that I didn't know what I wanted. This wasn't like not wanting to go to school. If you're not ready to make a life long commitment, then you shouldn't do it. No one would have let me get married. So why did I have to confirm my faith? But that's not the way things work in the Catholic Church or my family. To my family, and to a lot of other people, the Catholic Church is about tradition, and you don't monkey with tradition.


However, I did make one attempt to get out of it, but it wasn't the most well planned strategy. It was sort of an accident. About three or four weeks before the ceremony, my mom took me out dress shopping. I was very cranky and didn't like anything she/we picked out. Then we saw the director of religious education - a woman who to this day does not like me; the feeling's mutual - and I was not thrilled. So then in the dressing room I'm getting really agitated by it all and my mom looks at me and asks, "Do you even want to be confirmed?" Almost immediately, I responded with wide eyes, "No." She sighed. The next month I was confirmed.

I don't think I will ever in my life forget my confirmation. I was sitting on the left side of the church, about four rows back and my confirmation sponsor was sitting on my left. She was wearing blue and I was wearing pink. When the bishop got to the part about becoming adults and what a huge step we were all making, I peeked to the right and looked at everyone. Did I really think that anyone was going to jump up and say, "Forget this!" and walk out? No. But I wanted to see if anyone else looked as doubtful as I felt. To my surprise, everyone looked so calm, sure of themselves, and excited for the next part of their lives. "Crap," I thought. "This is it."

There was a party back at our house afterwards. And everyone congratulated me. At least there was food.