You can take the girl out of the church . . .

[loracs]

but can you take the catholic out of the girl?

And is this a good thing or bad thing?


A question posed in firecat journal about religion got me to thinking about my own believes. I was raised in the Roman Catholic tradition. My mom made sure I went to mass on Sundays and took the required catechism classes to educated/indoctrinate me in all things catholic. I don’t remember ever being a pious little girl. I believed what they told me but none of it stopped me from sinning. Most weeks I had at least a time or two of disobeying my mom so I had something to confess to the priest.

Somewhere around 11 years old I started questioning and even testing the faith. I would sit in mass and make deals with God. “If you move the arm on the Jesus statue then I’ll know you’re real and I’ll dedicate my entire life to you.” When the arm didn’t move I’d change my tactic. “God, if you DON’T move Jesus’ arm I’ll know you’re real.” (Notice this deal did not include dedicating my life to him.) Then in a few weeks the 2nd deal went “If you DON”T move Jesus’ arm then I’ll just believe in you until next Sunday.” Eventually it went “if you don’t do something soon I’m not going to believe in you AT ALL!” Needless to say God never so much as moved Jesus’ little finger.

If I was going to have a God then it had to be one that would respond to me in a concrete way. I was 11 or 12 and the world revolved around me. It just seemed natural (and democratic) for me to test God since I was told time and time again that every tragic event was just God’s way of testing us. A baby died – it was a test. Grandma broke her hip – it was a test. Young people were dying in Vietnam – it was a test. Humans have been around thousands and thousands of years – ain’t we passed yet? I know, I know, free will and all gives us the ability to mess up eternally, one person at a time.

So, now I’m an adult and I don’t believe in God or agree with the Catholic Church. But there is still a nugget of this religion that is a part of me. The “do unto other” bit is strong in me, so that reduces my being mean/hurting people on purpose. I find myself making the sign of the cross almost as a reflex sometimes. I’ve been known to yearn for sitting (not the kneeling part) in church and listen to a mass. I sing bits and pieces of songs I remember from mass, this is over 35 years ago and even some of the Latin ones stick in my head. The tug to give my life’s problems up to a smarter more powerful entity is very enticing. I want to make tuna casserole on Fridays. I’m firmly pro-choice but sometimes a little voice in me asks, “Where’s the baby’s choice in all this?” I will talk to my mother and my aunt imagining they are in a “heaven” and can hear me.

Well, I’ve rambled all over and back again and I’m not sure I have a point to all this. I’m going to paraphrase an Anthropology professor I had many years ago in a Comparative Religions course.

“The issue of whether nor not a deity or deities exist is less important than the effect such believes have on the people. Religion is one of the earliest tools we used to codify community rules and modify behavior.”

Getting back to the question I posed in the beginning: Is it a good or bad thing if you can’t get out all the catholic in your psyche? And what great, enlightened thought has all this brought forward? It’s neither and both: a true contradiction reflective of humankind’s contradictory nature. On the bad side: there's plenty of weird guilt issues that surface when I least expect them. On the good side: I’m a member of a community and part of that community is based on the rules I learned in catechism. There are many paths to this place, and this is part of mine.

Comments

[auntysocial.livejournal.com]

When I was a (vaguely Protestant) child, Catholics fascinated me. Mass. Confession. Genuflecting. Making the sign of the cross. Their churches were beautiful and they had an intensity about religion that I didn't see in my fellow Protestants. A Catholic girl told me the "facts of life" as explained by her parents. I didn't know what she was talking about. She talked about Seed and I thought about oranges. Somehow her presentation was associated in my mind with her Catholicism. That's what I thought as a child about Catholic children.

As an adult, I've met people who feel very traumatized by their Catholic childhoods. You seem a little ambivalent, but not traumatized. That's good.

[loracs.livejournal.com]

No trauma really, more like a bunch of funny stories about the nuns and priests that lived in our little church. There were very strict rules requiring all females to wear some kind of covering on their head at mass. Every Sunday all the children met in the basement where we were divided into a row of girls and a row of boys. As the first hymn started upstairs signaling that all adults were seated, then we were marched upstairs to entire down the center isle like little brides and grooms. The boys split to one side, the girls to the other in the first few rows.

As we waited downstairs the nuns inspected our clothes. One Sunday I rushed out the house forgetting my little white hat. Oh NO, I knew what was coming. Sister Benjamina (a short fat nun) asked me where my hat was and I had to tell her the truth (after all she was a nun). Out comes her hand from one of those hidden pockets in her habit with a white hankie. And her other hand produced a bobby pin. In the blink of an eye she pinned that hankie to my head. I had to sit through the entire mass wondering if it was a clean or dirty hankie. Since she snatched it off my head as we descended back into the dark, damp basement for further instruction. I never found out what condition it was in but let me tell you I never, ever forgot my little white hat again.

[auntysocial.livejournal.com]

yes, that's another thing that made Catholics mysterious to me--those hats. I remember Mom taking me shopping for a hat to wear to a Catholic wedding--a kind of velvet covered hairband with a little bit of netting attached.

[auntysocial.livejournal.com]

yes, that's another thing that made Catholics mysterious to me--those hats. I remember Mom taking me shopping for a hat to wear to a Catholic wedding--a kind of velvet covered hairband with a little bit of netting attached.

memories

[tracytreefrog.livejournal.com]

Oh ya I remember having to have what looked like a round lace doily on my head in church and a little white purse with my white gloves and my nice clean white hankie. The only time the hankie came to good use was the Sunday Guy fell and cracked his head open my nice white hankie never was the same.

You can take the girl out of the church . . .

[dbubley.livejournal.com]

I was 12 when I put the test to Jesus. I asked for a sign and got none,so I started praying to Diana. I had just been baptized (dunked in the Baptist church) and was outraged that Jesus would have me wearing wet underwear. I was taught that Jesus was God's son, but not God. God seemed to remote, so I was rather pissed at Jesus instead.

After silence from Jesus I started praying to Diana. It wasn't because I believed more in Diana, but she was more what I wanted to believe. I wanted a goddess. I figured I might as well go for what I wanted.

Re: You can take the girl out of the church . . .

[auntysocial.livejournal.com]

Good for you!