Post Confirmation: High School Experiences

After confirmation, one concept of the ceremony became increasingly true in my life: I was treated as an adult in regard to religion (for the most part). My mom slowly stopped waking me up on Sunday mornings. She didn't tell me that I was a sinner for not going and not wanting to go to church. I was finally allowed to make my own decisions. My brother and many other kids had stopped going to church in high school, but more so because they didn't want to wake up early and were sick of being told what to do. These kids still went to church on important holidays and occasions. One such occasion is the graduation mass held for all graduating seniors in the parish. My brother happily went to this mass. When my invitation came, I put it in the recycling pile. My mom pulled it out and asked me if I had seen it. Of course I had; how else did it get into the recyclables? She asked if I wanted to go and I responded by asking "Why would I go? I haven't been to church in years." She sighed. I'm guessing she was holding out hope that I would get over my rebellion and go back to church. I wasn't a rebel without a cause, though.

Although I quit going to church, I didn't stop wrestling with my faith or with G-d. During the many nights when it took me hours to fall asleep I would ask myself questions about the nature of G-d: Is He like a person? Does he stretch out like elasto-man to be everywhere at once? Is He Jesus? 3 pieces? 1? Is He our consciousness? Does He even exist? It was extremely difficult for me to understand G-d outside the Catholic teachings, so for a long time I went back and forth. Sometimes I believed there is no G-d; essentially I was an atheist. Other times I prayed to Him fervently. I would feel guilty about praying but not going to church. Why was I praying when I didn't believe in or follow the teachings of the Church?

It is very important for me to mention here that in March 2005 my brother was deployed to South Korea and I did not see him for 13 months. We constantly read and heard about the nuclear threat from North Korea. I have no idea if the time he spent there was more dangerous than other times in the past ten or twenty years, but it sure seemed like it. The anxiety and fear I felt necessitated I reach out to a higher power. I didn't want my brother to be sent home in a box. And so I prayed.

It was the times that I knew everything was fine, because my brother told me so, that I would begin to feel guilty about the way I prayed. He was fine and nothing was going to happen to him so why the heck was I praying to a being I didn't even know existed? After Korea, my brother went to London for 3 years. There were tons of terrorist attacks there on trains, buses, and elsewhere. What else could I do but pray? My brother's time in the Army is when my faith developed into what it is today. G-d is a unity who is ultimately incomprehensible to humans. A three pronged god conflicts with the nature of a truly higher being who has created and continues to create the universe. G-d is not a Christian and you don't have to go to church to communicate with Him and to be close to Him. He took care of my brother so that he could take care of his family and take care of me. When I look at my brother's children, I see G-d in the purest, most wonderful ways. It is incredible.

But as I grew closer to G-d, I grew further from the Church. I couldn't help but to despise the hypocrisy I saw and felt. I felt it from the people in the parish I grew up in and I saw it in the history of the Church. Why was the church always butting heads with science? To me, science and math can show us the nature of G-d. Why does the Church think and act in the opposite way? The oppression that has occurred at the hands of the Catholic Church is, to me, the greatest disappointment. I know from the stories I grew up hearing about Jesus, that he wouldn't approve of the behavior I saw and read about.

While all these things I've written here today are the truth, I don't think I've quite conveyed the frustration I felt during high school. I fought with my parents a lot, especially about religion. I didn't want us to call ourselves Catholics. No one even went to church. Why does Jesus hang on our walls when we don't act like him or ever ask ourselves WWJD? And then when I'd get really upset, I'd yell "What good did Jesus even do this world? What were we saved from? Terrible things still happen. Wars still happen and people still suffer." When I was around 16 is when I'd really had it. In one of these fights with my parents, I ran into my room to get away from them, but they followed me. In a complete rage, I went to my wall, picked up the Precious Moments cross and threw it across the room. It broke in half, and no one ever fixed it.

The cross has never gone back up.

Reconciliation & Rebellion

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.