Okay, I'm going to do another serious post. And I'm not proceeding with caution, so if I offend anyone, I'm sorry in advance.
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I was raised Catholic. I went to two years of private Catholic school. When my mom decided to put me in public school, she put me in CCD, which for non-Catholics is a religious education class one night a week. We attended Catholic mass every Saturday at 5pm and every holy day of obligation until I moved out of the house. I was confirmed as a Catholic when I was 16, and I was married in the Catholic church. The only way I could have been more immersed into Catholicism is if my mother had enrolled me in private Catholic school for the whole 12 years, instead of just 2 of those years.
Yet I have a confession. I know nearly nothing about Catholicism. Yes, I can tell you the sequence of a Catholic mass, when to sit and stand and kneel. But if you were to ask what the difference between Catholicism and Protestantism is, I'd shrug my shoulders. It might have something to do with the Holy Ghost...maybe. But it's not like I could tell you what the Holy Ghost is. My Biblical knowledge is nil. I've never read it. I know colloquialisms that came from the Bible...Moses and parting of the sea, Jonah and the whale, Noah and the ark, David and Goliath, but I have no real grasp of these stories other than the very basic surface concepts.
It's really an abomination. There were attempts at giving me a religious education, but I purposefully tuned it all out. During mass I never paid much attention, as I was forced to be there. Same thing for CCD.
Confirmation was a slightly different story. The vast majority of us who signed up for confirmation class when we were in our teens were forced to be there by our parents. There were a few that were gung ho about it. The rest of us just slumped there and whispered during every weekly session. Then we heard that the confirmation class was going away for the weekend. What do I (and probably most of the other kids there) think? First thought: we're going away with the boys for a whole weekend with limited adult supervision! Sign me up. From the adult chaperone perspective, all of us kids were a complete mess that weekend. We teens were treating it like a weekend long party. "Lights out" at 9pm meant let's pull out all the stuff we probably shouldn't have brought to church camp, and let's go mingle with the guys. Of course I was found in the guys' cabin at 1am along with a few other girls. The next day the youth minister gave us all a huge speech about how we need to be confirmed to be closer with God and if we don't want that commitment, perhaps we shouldn't choose to get confirmed now. I completely agreed with the youth minister. I didn't feel that I was ready to be confirmed to a religion that I didn't have much knowledge of or was invested in. But if I didn't go through with this confirmation thing, my mom would kill me. Other people were in that same position, which kind of sucked, because free will was not involved even though we were old enough to have free will.
So I got confirmed because there was no other legitimate choice. Anytime church confirmation comes up in conversation with anyone, I immediately think back to that party weekend that was supposed to be anything but. Confirmation was a sacrament, and one that I didn't take seriously. In my defense, I didn't have a choice whether or not to go through with it.
My husband is Catholic. If you put him on a scale of Catholic-ness, he's probably a 6 or 7, and I'm probably a 1 or 2. I was honest when we got together and said I was "raised Catholic." He knew my views contradicted the church in many respects. Hey, I was upfront with him. I'm not going to pretend I'm something I'm not. His previous girlfriend thought the Catholic religion was Satanic, so at least I was ahead of her. What's interesting is that he's not confirmed because of living overseas. His mother is very passionate about him getting confirmed. Of course I have to laugh at the confirmation thing because I just went through the motions with confirmation, and completely half-hearted at that.
When we took the baptism class for Julia (husband insisted that she be baptized Catholic), there were about 12 of us in that room taking the class. Of all of those people, guess who had the most official sacraments? ME! Yes, me. 12 Catholic people, and I was the most "official" of all of them, even having more sacraments than my husband.
What was I thinking when I realized I of all people had the most sacraments in that room? "This is completely effed up. I know almost nothing about Catholicism, and if you get all technical, I have the most likelihood of all these people to get into heaven? This does not make any sense." I stand by that. It's completely ridiculous.
And here I sit, working my way through the Dewey project and the religion section (200s, if you're keeping track of the Dewey decimal system). This is a perfect opportunity for me to actually read about Catholicism. Maybe I'll understand it if I actually read a book about it. Hmmm, but then I think most books about it will already assume you have a basic knowledge of it (which I don't). Maybe there's a Cliff Notes version for those people who have all of their sacraments thus far but have no freaking idea what they signed up for. Ya think?
Julia's daycare is Quaker, which I didn't find out about until a year ago. "Friends" churches are Quaker, just in case you didn't know either. At first I was really hesitant, but I've warmed up to the concept in the past year. They are rather evangelical, lots of Bible quotes and "God will provide"-isms. But I've found that they are very good people and not quite as ...ummm...fervent as some other Christian religions.
I wish I was more passionate about religion and had more indication of its place in the grand scheme of life. Please, don't try to recruit me into any religion. It's something I have to figure out for myself, but I have almost no desire to figure it out. Not particularly caring about religion is what I'm most disappointed in. I wish I did have that desire to find a religion that I do connect with.
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