Dun dun dun...
Enjoy this for now. You can hear about the mundane and boring details of my life sometime in the next two days.
I remember the day that my faith started to wither. I was working at the St. Peter’s rectory on another dreary Monday night. The bell rang, and I answered it to find a disheveled man standing there. He asked to see Fr. Walsh, so I let him in. They talked quietly in the other room, but I heard the man ask Fr. Walsh for money. He dispensed ten dollars and led him out the door. When the man was scarcely off the porch, Fr. Walsh quickly locked the door, somberly turned to me, and spoke words I will never forget: “If that black homeless man comes back, keep the door locked.” He left for bed, but those words remained, hanging in the room and in my mind. How could a priest say such a thing? Until this moment, Fr. Walsh had been impervious to the barbs of the world, an unwavering standard-bearer of all that was right with Catholicism. Now, my eyes saw his flaws for the first time. That ugly, backwards exchange had caught me off guard, and I lacked any response to the situation.
Looking back, I consider that Monday evening at the rectory the first of many moments to steer me away from Catholicism. Perhaps it started even earlier. At the age of nine, I attended a Seder at my neighbor Dan’s house. Dan and his family went through their rituals while I tried to follow, unsure of how my beliefs fit into the whole ceremony. When it was done, my parents explained the differences between Catholicism and Judaism to me. When I told Dan what I had learned from my parents, the two of us didn’t know what to think. We pondered the infallible truths presented to us by our parents. Eventually, we arrived at the most direct conclusion, and the one most likely to terrify a young child: one of us was wrong.
After Fr. Walsh had opened my eyes to the true humanity of the priesthood, my brush with Judaism played over and over again in my head. Several questions lingered in my mind, slowly eroding away at years of accumulated dogma. If I had been born into Dan’s family, would I be Jewish too? Would I too laugh at the idea of receiving the Body and Blood of Christ every week? All the people I turned to gave me cursory, blunt responses that essentially amounted to “because that’s the way things are”. That response was adequate for me, and I redoubled my efforts to become the best Catholic I could be.
My background in the Catholic education system is quite extensive, having attended a Catholic school since the age of five. My parents, devout Catholics that they are, wanted me to be raised in an intellectually friendly environment where my faith was part of the learning process. It was a choice they made in my best interest, and I don’t fault them for it. The education was superb, and turned me into the articulate, learned person (in my own mind, at least) that I am today. However, the irony of the situation was that Catholic education, for all its benefits, finally severed my ties with Christianity. Fr. Walsh’s display had not left my mind. As I grew older and entered high school, the answers given to me proved less and less satisfactory. “That’s the way things are” didn’t mean that it was the way things should be. I turned to my religion teachers in 9th and 10th grade, but Mr. Dooley and Fr. Arens failed to help me. Much of their advice involved my turning to the Bible for inspiration. But why turn to the Bible when I doubt the validity of the Bible in the first place? And could a book so old, with so much of its advice relegated to the darkness of centuries past, actually help me? As time passed by, I grew less and less sure of myself as a Christian.
Finally, the inevitable happened in my junior-year religion class. I had a teacher, named Mr. Bowe, who reached new levels of incompetence. He constantly put his foot in his mouth, echoing words of wisdom such as “Running a marathon is morally wrong” that supposedly had their moral backing in Christianity. However, despite Mr. Bowe’s idiocy, he was not the one to drive me from the religion. Instead, it was a man who millions love for his children’s books, and whom I hate for his religious work: C.S. Lewis. His works, which were fed to us all year long in our “Morals and Ethics” class, taught that moral absolutism was the only correct way to live one’s life. Those who were relativists, who looked at shades of gray, were wrong. He wanted people to look at things purely in black and white. This was the antithesis of my world view. Without knowing context, without a deeper knowledge of the situation, one should never judge someone for their actions. Shades of gray were essential to living. And yet Lewis advocated this all-or-nothing approach, which was utter nonsense to me. At that moment, when I realized that Lewis and a large portion of the Catholic faith believed this, I broke away. I wanted no part of the Catholic morality any more. I wanted to take charge of my destiny, rather than listening to the Church. I wanted to lead rather than be led. And that day, the goggles of Catholicism were removed from me forever.
When you first wake up from a nap, the entire world is a different place than it was two hours ago. Everything looks fuzzy at first, without definition, without boundaries. In the half-haze of sleep, differentiating between what you know and what you think can be hard. And when I awoke from my Catholic slumber, the entire world was blurry, a vast, stretching world without definition, without the guidelines I used to have. Everything was different because of one decision. Now that I had made my decision, I looked at the world in a different view, and saw things I had never seen before.
The afterlife was one of my first concerns after leaving the Church. I held fast to the promise of Heaven, of my grandmother, of my old dog, of all those who had been cruelly taken from me before I could appreciate them. But with the guiding light of Catholicism extinguished, I was left to ponder this alone. Trying to understand a world which nobody has seen, and may even not exist, is like Columbus explaining his vision of China to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. Anything was possible, and I left my mind open to such. Eventually, I decided that it was more likely that nothing existed, rather than something. For there to be something out there in another realm is possible, but all things are possible. Few things are likely, and the sad realization that death truly is the end was what I found. The sobering moment when you realize that your soul has 60 years left on its clock, and not eternal life, creates a feeling of pure and utter helplessness.
Art was different too. People using religion in their works went from inspired artists to pathetic scam artists cashing in on a shared weakness. Creed became insufferable for their message, not their lack of talent. Mel Gibson was an anti-Semite who exploited a 2,000 year old conflict to the tune of $300 million. Madonna was a flighty idiot who wanted to be whatever was cutting-edge, rather than searching for truth and meaning. Religion was no longer an inspiration, it was a resource to be tirelessly and shamelessly exploited by people who didn’t care about its true values.
But some things didn’t sour. Christmas became a much more beautiful thing to me. Before, I had been a slave to presents while occasionally stopping to pay lip service to Jesus. But now, things were different. Christmas is indeed all about the presents. However, the spirit behind the holiday powerfully stirs human emotion. People may ignore the religious affiliation of the holiday, and they might not care about the birth of Jesus, but the Catholic doctrine of charity for those less fortunate is one still seen on Christmas. Charities do their best business between Thanksgiving and Christmas. People, looking through the goggles of consumerism, realize that those less fortunate than themselves will have no presents this Christmas without assistance. So the greed of the human spirit is what saves Christmas for millions of poor people every year. This must be what the angels saw when they looked into the future of Christmas. Even Ebenezer Scrooge learned how to celebrate Christmas. Maybe that religious theme is a little stronger than we think after all.
That was the oddest thing about leaving Catholicism. My views on everything changed, and one that benefited the most was Catholicism itself. My freedom allowed me to look more objectively at the faith and realize what it was capable of doing. No longer did my hatred for the institution dominate my beliefs towards them. It still bothered me, but with less power, less vitriol than before. Instead, it was pushed to the side. I saw the hope that Catholicism inspired in hundreds of millions across the globe. I recognized its charity, its tireless efforts to help those in need wherever they may be. And most importantly, I recognized that although this was no longer my faith, it was still one worthy of respect. It was foolish to pass Catholicism off as a great evil on the world. Instead, it was time to recognize it for what it was: a mixed blessing. I had done everything I had hated. Catholicism, like everything else in the world, was not a black and white issue. Without shades of gray, it became too easy to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Shades of gray, the belief that had separated me from Catholicism, helped reconcile me to it.
I remember the day that my faith started to wither. I was working at the St. Peter’s rectory on another dreary Monday night. The bell rang, and I answered it to find a disheveled man standing there. He asked to see Fr. Walsh, so I let him in. They talked quietly in the other room, but I heard the man ask Fr. Walsh for money. He dispensed ten dollars and led him out the door. When the man was scarcely off the porch, Fr. Walsh quickly locked the door, somberly turned to me, and spoke words I will never forget: “If that black homeless man comes back, keep the door locked.” He left for bed, but those words remained, hanging in the room and in my mind. How could a priest say such a thing? Until this moment, Fr. Walsh had been impervious to the barbs of the world, an unwavering standard-bearer of all that was right with Catholicism. Now, my eyes saw his flaws for the first time. That ugly, backwards exchange had caught me off guard, and I lacked any response to the situation.
Looking back, I consider that Monday evening at the rectory the first of many moments to steer me away from Catholicism. Perhaps it started even earlier. At the age of nine, I attended a Seder at my neighbor Dan’s house. Dan and his family went through their rituals while I tried to follow, unsure of how my beliefs fit into the whole ceremony. When it was done, my parents explained the differences between Catholicism and Judaism to me. When I told Dan what I had learned from my parents, the two of us didn’t know what to think. We pondered the infallible truths presented to us by our parents. Eventually, we arrived at the most direct conclusion, and the one most likely to terrify a young child: one of us was wrong.
After Fr. Walsh had opened my eyes to the true humanity of the priesthood, my brush with Judaism played over and over again in my head. Several questions lingered in my mind, slowly eroding away at years of accumulated dogma. If I had been born into Dan’s family, would I be Jewish too? Would I too laugh at the idea of receiving the Body and Blood of Christ every week? All the people I turned to gave me cursory, blunt responses that essentially amounted to “because that’s the way things are”. That response was adequate for me, and I redoubled my efforts to become the best Catholic I could be.
My background in the Catholic education system is quite extensive, having attended a Catholic school since the age of five. My parents, devout Catholics that they are, wanted me to be raised in an intellectually friendly environment where my faith was part of the learning process. It was a choice they made in my best interest, and I don’t fault them for it. The education was superb, and turned me into the articulate, learned person (in my own mind, at least) that I am today. However, the irony of the situation was that Catholic education, for all its benefits, finally severed my ties with Christianity. Fr. Walsh’s display had not left my mind. As I grew older and entered high school, the answers given to me proved less and less satisfactory. “That’s the way things are” didn’t mean that it was the way things should be. I turned to my religion teachers in 9th and 10th grade, but Mr. Dooley and Fr. Arens failed to help me. Much of their advice involved my turning to the Bible for inspiration. But why turn to the Bible when I doubt the validity of the Bible in the first place? And could a book so old, with so much of its advice relegated to the darkness of centuries past, actually help me? As time passed by, I grew less and less sure of myself as a Christian.
Finally, the inevitable happened in my junior-year religion class. I had a teacher, named Mr. Bowe, who reached new levels of incompetence. He constantly put his foot in his mouth, echoing words of wisdom such as “Running a marathon is morally wrong” that supposedly had their moral backing in Christianity. However, despite Mr. Bowe’s idiocy, he was not the one to drive me from the religion. Instead, it was a man who millions love for his children’s books, and whom I hate for his religious work: C.S. Lewis. His works, which were fed to us all year long in our “Morals and Ethics” class, taught that moral absolutism was the only correct way to live one’s life. Those who were relativists, who looked at shades of gray, were wrong. He wanted people to look at things purely in black and white. This was the antithesis of my world view. Without knowing context, without a deeper knowledge of the situation, one should never judge someone for their actions. Shades of gray were essential to living. And yet Lewis advocated this all-or-nothing approach, which was utter nonsense to me. At that moment, when I realized that Lewis and a large portion of the Catholic faith believed this, I broke away. I wanted no part of the Catholic morality any more. I wanted to take charge of my destiny, rather than listening to the Church. I wanted to lead rather than be led. And that day, the goggles of Catholicism were removed from me forever.
When you first wake up from a nap, the entire world is a different place than it was two hours ago. Everything looks fuzzy at first, without definition, without boundaries. In the half-haze of sleep, differentiating between what you know and what you think can be hard. And when I awoke from my Catholic slumber, the entire world was blurry, a vast, stretching world without definition, without the guidelines I used to have. Everything was different because of one decision. Now that I had made my decision, I looked at the world in a different view, and saw things I had never seen before.
The afterlife was one of my first concerns after leaving the Church. I held fast to the promise of Heaven, of my grandmother, of my old dog, of all those who had been cruelly taken from me before I could appreciate them. But with the guiding light of Catholicism extinguished, I was left to ponder this alone. Trying to understand a world which nobody has seen, and may even not exist, is like Columbus explaining his vision of China to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. Anything was possible, and I left my mind open to such. Eventually, I decided that it was more likely that nothing existed, rather than something. For there to be something out there in another realm is possible, but all things are possible. Few things are likely, and the sad realization that death truly is the end was what I found. The sobering moment when you realize that your soul has 60 years left on its clock, and not eternal life, creates a feeling of pure and utter helplessness.
Art was different too. People using religion in their works went from inspired artists to pathetic scam artists cashing in on a shared weakness. Creed became insufferable for their message, not their lack of talent. Mel Gibson was an anti-Semite who exploited a 2,000 year old conflict to the tune of $300 million. Madonna was a flighty idiot who wanted to be whatever was cutting-edge, rather than searching for truth and meaning. Religion was no longer an inspiration, it was a resource to be tirelessly and shamelessly exploited by people who didn’t care about its true values.
But some things didn’t sour. Christmas became a much more beautiful thing to me. Before, I had been a slave to presents while occasionally stopping to pay lip service to Jesus. But now, things were different. Christmas is indeed all about the presents. However, the spirit behind the holiday powerfully stirs human emotion. People may ignore the religious affiliation of the holiday, and they might not care about the birth of Jesus, but the Catholic doctrine of charity for those less fortunate is one still seen on Christmas. Charities do their best business between Thanksgiving and Christmas. People, looking through the goggles of consumerism, realize that those less fortunate than themselves will have no presents this Christmas without assistance. So the greed of the human spirit is what saves Christmas for millions of poor people every year. This must be what the angels saw when they looked into the future of Christmas. Even Ebenezer Scrooge learned how to celebrate Christmas. Maybe that religious theme is a little stronger than we think after all.
That was the oddest thing about leaving Catholicism. My views on everything changed, and one that benefited the most was Catholicism itself. My freedom allowed me to look more objectively at the faith and realize what it was capable of doing. No longer did my hatred for the institution dominate my beliefs towards them. It still bothered me, but with less power, less vitriol than before. Instead, it was pushed to the side. I saw the hope that Catholicism inspired in hundreds of millions across the globe. I recognized its charity, its tireless efforts to help those in need wherever they may be. And most importantly, I recognized that although this was no longer my faith, it was still one worthy of respect. It was foolish to pass Catholicism off as a great evil on the world. Instead, it was time to recognize it for what it was: a mixed blessing. I had done everything I had hated. Catholicism, like everything else in the world, was not a black and white issue. Without shades of gray, it became too easy to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Shades of gray, the belief that had separated me from Catholicism, helped reconcile me to it.