Growing up Catholic

As a young boy I actually enjoyed going to mass several times a week.  I grew up in a typical American suburb with a good Catholic family.  I didn’t have a choice but to go to a Catholic school in grade school, but I really didn’t mind.  I liked the uniforms, or more accurately, I liked bending the uniform rules as much as possible without stepping across that line.  I liked the religion classes.  Religion and discussion of religion always fascinated me.  The concept of an all knowing and powerful entity somewhere out there that nobody could even prove if he, she or it even existed dazzled me.  And yes, I liked attending mass.  I liked kneeling in a quiet church and talking to God.  When I was young I knew that he heard me.  When I was young I felt answers.  When I was young I had no doubt.  

When most think of Catholicism they think of the Pope or ‘catholic guilt,’ but upon reflection I think many Catholic kids see the Church as just some rules that they don’t care to follow.  When I closed my eyes and prayed at mass I felt a divine connection.  As I got older I felt self-conscious that other kids were watching me or making fun of me as most kids rolled their eyes each time that it was announced we were off to mass.  I didn’t like it.  I couldn’t understand how others wouldn’t want to talk to God and feel his presence.  I couldn’t understand why a person would ignore such a loving and powerful being.  Eventually I got it.  It was the structure they didn’t like.  It wasn’t God they were rebelling against, it was the shit in their lives that they couldn’t understand that seemed it could be God’s fault, or that there must be no God because he wouldn’t let this or that happen.  

What the apathy toward God is really about then is the structure and unquestioning nature of a Catholic grade school and the shit kids realize about themselves, their parents, their family and the world as the curtain gets pulled back on life.  Most kids come to realize that life sucks.  I never thought that when I was young.  I loved life.  Not until I hit my teenage years did I realize that life sucked and that it didn’t appear God was doing much about it.  It just so happens many kids beat me to that realization.  

People don’t like responsibility.  Nobody would ever admit that, but deep down we all would like things to be a bit easier and not have to worry about this or that or have to live up to some ideal we have imagined ourselves to be.  To the best of my reckoning it seems God has given us free will.  With that free will comes a lot of things that we do not want, most poignantly, the truth about our world.  At some point we all realize that nobody is perfect and the world is full of really crap stuff that seems to happen to so many undeserving people.  Yet the catch is that we all feel that we are just a bit better than most other people.  We think, “I’m not Hitler, I didn’t kill anybody,” but we also fail to realize that this world is made up of 6 billion other people all making as many choices as we are at the speed of light and that those choices can have a butterfly effect that we may never see.  

Throughout much of its history the Catholic Church chose (maybe correctly) to limit the choices of its followers.  What I mean by this is that the Church decided what was “true” and as a Catholic you were and are obligated to believe it or else.  The or else part was always intriguing to me.  This or else happened to be the threat of excommunication or not being allowed to be part of the community.  One who was excommunicated was not allowed and is not allowed to participate in the most important practices of the church.  The root of that word is community.  In essence the Church is banning you from participating in their community.  Something that you said or did was so grave that you are now shunned from God’s bride on Earth.  

This flabbergasted me.  That an organization could essentially ban someone from heaven because they disagreed on a particular issue seemed like something God could never endorse.  I remember that when I first learned about excommunication I started having my first doubts about the Church, not God, but doubts about the Church.  It just didn’t add up to me.   

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Growing up Catholic in a fervently Evangelical suburb which is in the Guinness book of world records for most churches per capita wasn’t easy.  Having said that, it was nothing like growing up black in Jim Crow south, but a week rarely went by when I was told that I was going to hell or that i wasn’t a “real Christian.”  Once I was even called a Papist (totally kidding).  

I grew up in Wheaton, home of Wheaton College where Billy Graham went to college.  Until I was 17 I didn’t even realize it was a real college, I didn’t know what it was or how highly rated of a school it was.  In all honesty I had no clue who Billy Graham was.  When one of my childhood friends found that out he couldn’t believe it.  I slowly started realizing that there was this other religion (now I know there are 100’s) out there that was similar to Catholicism, but yet very different.  I couldn’t tell how it was different yet, but the overwhelming similarity was Jesus.  The belief that he was and is God and that he came to Earth lovingly to release all of us from the bondage of all those awful and silly choices we have made, are making and will make.  

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Jesus always seemed so radical to me.  When I forgot the spin around him and just read and listened to what he said I was shocked.  I always saw him as the ultimate human being.  He would close himself off to nobody and love everyone.  He could party, he could discuss, he could heal, he was the most amazing person ever.  I have studied history and I teach history and I have never seen anyone like him.  If the accounts in the Gospels are true, then he is unique.  This analysis made me believe that he was God.  But where is he now?  I would give anything for a one hour conversation with that guy over coffee, a beer or a mountain hike.  Even though that has always been my number one dream, I know (deep down) that will never happen, just like I know (deep down) that he is always there for me.  

I can’t rationally or scientifically prove this of course.  When I say that I know he is there for me, it’s a bit different than when I say I know the world is round.  Jesus has proven himself to me (though I still have frequent doubts), but that proof was for me, it is not empirical data for others.  Therefore, I feel a tug.  I love thinking and discussing, but to be able to do that you have to master the liberal arts skills, yet those won’t help too much in proving to myself that God is out there.  It is the classic battle of head versus heart.  But I’ve learned that maybe it’s not a battle.  Maybe just maybe the two go together better than I or many think.