The primary thing to understand about Catholicism is that it doesn’t trust the parishioner to deal with 'god' one on one. We were strongly advised (ordered) to never read the Bible for ourselves as we – as lay people - couldn’t be trusted to interpret properly what we read without expert guidance. The Bible was never used in religion class at school or in Sunday school, as I recall. We, each, had a copy of the St. Joseph Sunday Missal, a book which contained the prescribed prayers, chants, and instructions for the celebration of Mass in the Roman Catholic Church; much of it extracted from the Bible; much of it invented by the Church.
Having a personal relationship with ‘the Lord’ was never discussed or stressed, either, as it was in Protestant sects. The priest was the only acceptable conduit to god. Prayer was a formal activity (saying the Rosary, for example) and usually directed through an intercessory; a patron saint or the Blessed Virgin Mary. Speaking directly to god the Father was sternly discouraged as both presumptuous and blasphemous. Speaking directly to god the son was only done through an intercessor (e.g. the priest, or St. Mary).
After three years at St Rose, my family moved again. We transferred to the parish of St Patrick and its parochial school. I did not choose to serve at the altar or join the choir there. I don’t recall any sustained pressure from my parents or peers to take up those duties. I think I simply had had enough of 'duty'. I recall long, silly discussions in class about baptism in which alternatives to holy water might be used in an emergency christening such as juice from canned peaches, saliva, rain-water, river water, salt water and even blood!
I recall tales being told of miraculous happenings like the body of a virgin girl floating on the river with fresh roses growing from her chest! This was presented in all seriousness as evidence of ‘god’. One memory was that the stories being told in Catholic school and in the Church strained my youthful credulity. My grandfather’s ghost stories with satanic locomotives and spooky adventures in graveyards were nearly indistinguishable from the nun’s tales of spirits and souls, for they also had heavy dollops of religiosity ladled in.
After graduating 8th grade, I enrolled at Bishop McNamara High School. Bishop Mac had been an all-male school until the year I attended as a freshman. That year, it became co-ed but was segregated; girls in one building and boys in the other. This clumsy half step was meant to avoid the mingling of genders and the inevitable teen romances that might result - all those teen hormones!.
(Purity of mind and soul don’t you know?)
However, the gym, the cafeteria and the library were used by both girls and boys. Oi! Between classes, boys would congregate to watch the girls pass from their building to the cafeteria for lunch. Consequently, rules had to be put into place with hopes of maintaining purity of mind, body and soul. ‘No ogling!’ was the short-hand for these rules. (Nothing to see here. Move along!) The priests would shepherd the boys from their places of observation and dole out demerits for ‘ogling’ (and the concomitant ‘impure thoughts’.) 5 demerits sent you to detention after school.
At Bishop Mac, one episode stands out in my mind; it regarded the disciplinarian, Father Mayer, for whom I had served Mass at St Rose, incidentally. The episode took place in Spanish class when the teacher was absent and no substitute was assigned to maintain order. As can be imagined, 13-year-old boys can be rather rambunctious. Sitting near me in class were two boys, pals, Rick and Bobby, who took liberties with the teacher-less situation. However, as we were expecting a substitute teacher to eventually lead the class, most of us, including Rick and Bobby, were still at our desks.
Rick was turned ‘round in his seat to joke with Bobby when the door was thrown open and in rushed Father Mayer who leaped a row of desks, picking up a textbook as he leaped and, in an astounding manner, took the book in both hands, legs spread, and struck the unsuspecting Rick on the back of head with the full force of his weight and the inertia of the forward leap. Rick was knocked to the floor, stunned. Fr Mayer then tossed the textbook to the teacher’s desk and assumed a calm, stern demeanor of authority as Rick clambered shakily to his feet and was awarded 5 demerits for his suspected delinquency.
Such was the authoritarian stance at Bishop McNamara.
Go, Irish!
Another aspect of Catholicism and Christianity that I found disturbing - apart from the glorified gore and the authoritarianism - was the medieval, feudal language of the Church. ‘The Lord’s Prayer’? ‘The Lord is my shepherd’? ‘The Lord, thy god’? ‘Lord and Savior’? All the palaver about Kings and Kingdoms should be seriously off-putting to anyone who rejects the ‘divine right of kings’ and the concept of noble blood-lines. The incessant invocation to submit to a ‘Lord’ was distasteful to a kid raised in a democracy which guaranteed individual rights, by a Constitution written in the wake of the Enlightenment. As a Catholic – as a Christian - I was expected to submit to a world of the Dark Ages; a world of feudal lords and serfdom in which I was a sheep to be shepherded by the ‘Good Shepherd’? Talk that Jesus, the ‘Lamb of god’, ‘Lord and Savior’ will return and establish his Kingdom on Earth is about as appealing as gangrene. Christendom? Really? The Kingdom of Christ on Earth? Really?
Forget that.
Deep within, my ego recoiled. My sense of self, my ego, was at least palpable; perhaps not as substantive as the world but it was at least of this world. What I was expected to submit to was the authority that purported to represent a non-substantive chimera – ever changing, without definite form – which was both within the world and outside of time/space. And outside understanding or comprehension.
Egalitarianism, people! If not that, how ‘bout something sensible? Catholicism was not a good fit with democracy or republicanism.
Sorry, (not sorry) but I’m a republican in the way that folks who are not ‘royalists’ are ‘republicans’. The thought of a king or royalty offends me. Never mind a king who is professed to be divine.
After three years in a public high school, quite ironically, I returned to religious education when I attended North Central College to study music. NCC is affiliated with the United Methodist Church and all students were required to attend a weekly ‘convocation’, which was a presentation of an up-lifting, Christian nature; sometimes by lecture, sometimes by musical performance.
Furthering the irony, I next attended a Catholic institution; Springfield College in Illinois (SCI) for my next phase of musical instruction. Sister Bernardas was the Head of the music department. She interviewed me personally, asking why I wanted to study music. I forthrightly told her that I wanted to be a musician. Her reply was without a trace of condescension or dismissal; ‘We shall see’.
My instructors – both cleric and lay – were all people of Faith. The priests were Viatorians; the Clerics of Saint Viator, an order I’d encountered in high school. The nuns were Ursaline; Order of Saint Ursula. I mention their orders purely for the amusement of any Catholic or former Catholic readers.
(As it happened, SCI closed and became Benedictine University at Springfield in 2020.)
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