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.

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.