Tales of Catholicism

this sounds a lot like my experience growing up as a methodist. except without the confession part, obv, which always sounded cool to me

he was raised a Ronan Catholic

I stopped believing when I was 12 but was made to keep going to church 'til I was about 16. Funnily enough my parents stopped going to church except very rarely about a year after they stopped making me go. When I've had to go to church since (funerals) I've remembered all the words and when to stand and when to kneel and etc. I do actually recite the lord's prayer despite not believing in any of it, which is strange.

jim that sounds almost exactly like my experience. i don't think either of my parents are particular "believers" (despite my father being an ordained methodist minister); i think the root cause of them making me go to church (until the age of 18) was guilt, or rather, fear of potential guilt - i'd been baptised and my father literally swore on a bible held by HIS methodist minister father than he would "raise me in the christian faith" etc.. so i guess it was either church for me or a lightning bolt for him (aka guilt)

Even as a 7 year old child I can remember thinking "why is God such a haughty asshole", or at least wondering why we have to treat ourselves as such lowly vile grubs.

Then there was confession, how fucking bizarre was that? So weird I think I'd forgotten about going until now. Am I the only one who made up a generic "sin" every time because it would feel so weird to tell the priest a real one in between him asking you what football team you support or how school is going?

haha, very OTM. I used to opt out of saying all the really self-effacing stuff, and then refused to do confession from about 10 onwards because they were all like, blatant spittle-flecked paedos. I pretty much escaped the influence of the Church fairly soon after that and ended up all (dead-eyed and cynical/completely well adjusted), huht

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/1912254.stm

This fucker was one of ours

i got into a fight with the priest that visited our primary school every week when i was 9. i think i wanted to know why protestants didn't have christmas or something but it degenerated very quickly.

i was made wear a pink suit to my communion.

my baby brother sneezed, hit his head off the seat in front and was knocked unconscious at my confirmation.

i haven't been to church since i was about thirteen, except for funerals and weddings. i miss scoping out the hotties in their sunday pigtails though.

I actually had alright experiences with the clergy. Still say hello to the monseigneur if I pass him in the street, liked the priest at my old parish because he did a really fast service if there was a Celtic game to get to after, school chaplain was a good laugh with good banter etc. My dad has had some bad experiences though. Priest initially refused to marry him and my mother because he was "a communist heretic" and my granddad had to go down and have a word with him. A now deceased high-heid yin in the Scottish church also once said something marginally racist about my dad.

I only went to confession two or three times. Could actually never think of anything that I'd done that was bad enough to confess so had to make things up.

This post is really dead on the mark in describing a lot of my experiences growing up in a very Catholic family and attending 12 years of Catholic school.

For me I think I stopped going to mass at around age 15... Sometimes I'd come home too early but I don't think my Mum cared at this point. In hindsight 15 seems quite old to have had a choice in the matter for the first time.

Wow, you were pretty lucky! I had no choice in the matter until my visits home during my first year at university, believe it or not. Sure, I could've refuse to go without actually being punished, but the extreme passive-aggressive coldness, disappointment, etc., I would get from my mom if I chose to skip just wasn't worth it. What made it worse was that (Though there were plenty of times when my siblings and I would say we were going to attend mass at a different time from my parents, grab a church bulletin to show proof that we were there, but actually get a bite to eat or go for a nice drive, etc.)

. Am I the only one who made up a generic "sin" every time because it would feel so weird to tell the priest a real one?

Haha! Hell no, you're not the only one. All my friends and I had a standard bank of totally innocuous sins that we would tell the priest -- "I disrespected my parents", "I fought with my brother", "I told a lie", etc., etc., all totally harmless stuff that no one would actually care about telling a priest. Though there was the danger of having a priest actually ask you about the real stuff you weren't supposed to do: smoking pot, whacking off, watching porn, etc. It never happened to me, thank christ, but it certainly did to many of my friends.

I can remember feeling misgivings about mass from a pretty early age

I hated mass growing up and to this day, in the rare event for Christmas or Easter, when I do attend with my family, I get that shitty feeling that just by being there I'm somehow compromising myself. (But again, the passive-aggressive coldness and sense of disappointment I'd get from my mom just wouldn't be worth it to make a fuss about going for these 2 holidays a year). It's also boring as hell, and even the smell of the church (and all Catholic churches smell the same) brings back memories of being bored, restless, frustrated that I had to be there.

Also I look at my parents sometimes and, when I think of the amount of Sundays that they spent cleaning or doing housework, I vow to bring my kids for ice cream or to the park or something every fucking Sunday!

OTM. I hated Sundays growing up. We'd go to mass, come home and have to do house chores, yard work, etc., and then I had to do the homework I put off all weekend. But since college, I have absolutely loved Sundays: sleeping in, brunch, catching a film, listening to records all day -- being totally and completely lazy. It's one of my favorite days of the week now.

I've also found it incredibly difficult to break away from thinking in concepts like heaven and hell, sin, an omnipotent/omniscient god watching every action I take, etc. Sure, I've become pretty agnostic and for the most part don't even think about god, spirituality, etc., but when I do come to these topics, it's funny how much Catholic doctrine informs my thinking -- even if I am strongly reacting against it (which I usually am.)

Thanks for the good post!

I think I might be the wrong person to ask, Catholicism to an Italian immigrant (maybe also to Polish and Irish ones as well) isn't so much an adherence to a religious system, but rather a desperate attempt to grab onto the old country, qf Pakistani teenagers being much stricter Muslims than their parents.

I do blame any aspect of self-loathing or deviancy in my soul on Catholicism, obviously.

I enjoy my guilt -- that's the Irish Catholic kind.

Best childhood tale: Sister Francis Mary slaps 9-yo boy sauntering up to Communion with "Fold your hands, YOU PROTESTANT!!"

Was anybody else made to watch the Silent Scream when they were about 14? I thought it was just me, but have since been told by other kids who went to catholic boys schools that they had the same experience.

i quite like the odd mass now and again, if you don't listen to the punishment stuff and try to take it positive. it's about the only time in the week i don't interrupt/argue with a person that's talking to me.

otm regards making up harmless sins for confessions. if i had stolen all the sweets i had claimed i'd be diabetic now.

silent scream? never heard of it.

"Fold your hands, YOU PROTESTANT!!"

The Belle and Sebastian album should have been called that.

heh

I find 'the punishment stuff' bracing -- if Bush & Cheney don't suffer everlasting torment, what's the point?

if punishment was really everlasting, it would start IMMEDIATELY.

then i might believe in god.

I do however, have very good memories of the Jesuits who ran my high school. Very intellectually engaging folk, totally willing to engage in question and debate about faith, politics, theology, etc., philosophically astute, passionate about the arts... I still look very fondly upon Jesuits.

Was anybody else made to watch the Silent Scream when they were about 14?

Silent Scream is the abortion film where they show you picture after picture of aborted fetuses. I definitely had to watch it, sophomore year, Catholic morality course. Pretty gross, eh?

i quite like the odd mass now and again, if you don't listen to the punishment stuff and try to take it positive

Funny, I still would take the Catholic mass (especially a Latin one) ANY day over the Protestant megachurch youth-group enthusiastic minister.

i didn't have jesuits, i had nuns (shudder).

I was also in a Jesuit school. And I agree, they actually made every effort to discuss any questions of theology, literally whatever you wanted to ask them, nor would they flinch when people tried to wind them up either.

I can remember people started asking about the Church's stance on homosexuality in a huge assembly with my entire year there, and someone would up the ante with each question and eventually, somehow, I ended up asking one of them how the Church felt about "men having g-spots in their anus", and the priest calmly gave a rational answer that today makes me ashamed of my childish question.

Also the Jesuit education in my case was full of this "men for others" philosophical stuff, basically encouraging and facilitating charity work and St Vincent De Paul societies in the school etc. I don't know many schools who offer that kind of opportunity or actively encourage kids to do that kind of work. (and I accept it is an opportunity)

So yeah I do actually look back at Jesuit secondary school as something very distinct from Catholicism and Catholic mass. The Jesuits were all good orators too, and placed a high value on that skill which the rest of the Church could learn a lot from.

my dad left the priesthood in the late 60s to marry my mother. he's still a faithful catholic, but my siblings and i were never confirmed, as my parents left the decision up to us. i think in many ways i'm very catholic, but also not catholic at all, sacramentally speaking. reading thomas merton in high school and college and the catholic worker movement have managed to keep me hovering around the fringe of the church.

i just want to point out that protestants also believe in christmas.

reading thomas merton in high school and college and the catholic worker movement have managed to keep me hovering around the fringe of the church.

That's interesting -- I think there is this one side of the church that is very motivated by the desire for social justice, like Catholic liberation theology, the Jesuits, too, etc... These aspects of the church prevent me from totally rejecting it all together, though of course this is contrasted with very bigoted and downright silly stances on homosexuality, women's rights, contraception, etc. It's tough because there are things that I can't stand about the Church but then you have people like Thomas Merton and the Jesuits who give it a different face.

i'm not sure how much my Catholic upbringing affected me, since i don't ever remember a time where i really believed in any of it with any seriousness. i guess i sort of did, but really church was just a boring place i was forced to go to every Sunday. my parents were really inconsistent and wishy-washy about the religion (yet oddly devout and superstitious nonetheless), and i never really got clearly explained everything that Catholicism entails, even in the CCD classes i was forced to take. it was all "just go to church every Sunday and shut up and you'll be fine".

also moving to a Bible Belt state where the Southern Baptist majority think Catholics are a Mary-worshipping voodoo cult didn't help with my opinion of the whole "religion" business. by 12 i was just "fuck it" and i started refusing to go church. needless to say i was never confirmed.

now my parents don't even go very often because they are too tired and/or busy.

i just want to point out that protestants also believe in christmas.

"Do They Know It's Christmas?"

i just want to point out that protestants also believe in christmas

yeah, i know that now

I grew up super catholic, my mother is very conservative catholic - socially conservative I mean.. but I have the sense that social justice/liberation theology played an important role when she was growing up whereas for me, we didn't get a lot of that, nor was there much spirit of openness either at school or at home as far as asking any questions about theology or anything else.

As for confession I always made up the usual stuff ie argued with parents, fought with my brother, didn't clean my room.

I was also raised Catholic and went to an all girls Catholic high school. We went to church every Sunday until I was about 15 which is also around when I chose to stop receiving communion at school mass. To be honest, I'm not sure that I ever really believed any of it. I can't ever remeber a time when I actually believed in any of the doctorine. I do always feel guilty though so there might be some influence there.

I am, like almost everyone in Ireland, ethnically Catholic. I went to a school where I was taught by nuns and brothers and they were all very nice people and treated us well. In primary school, my brothers were altar boys in the local church and were also treated well, with the priests making sure everyone got their fair share of the money and turns at serving weddings and other high-earning Masses and nobody, to the best of my knowledge, was fucked or fondled by anybody.

Like almost every other Irish person on this thread, I also stopped going to Mass when I was a teenager, and my parents also stopped going (in fact my father had never gone).

The most pointless thing I ever had to do in my post-Catholic life was write some prayers of the faithful to offer up at my cousin's funeral a few years ago. He killed himself when he was two weeks shy of his 19th birthday, and I had to write some "nice" prayers for people to say. What the hell do you say? Especially when you're not allowed to just look all his friends square in the face and say "please don't do this. Your family will never be the same again if you do", because that wouldn't be seemly.

i just want to point out that protestants also believe in christmas

I think that there is a lingering feeling right down deep in the heart of Irish Catholicism that Protestanism=Puritanism, or at the very least, Ulster Presbyterianism. Blame Ian Paisley.

I was an altar boy. It was great actually, god chose you for "special tasks" and you'd stay in the shower all day when you got home trying to wash the dirt off.