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

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.