Growing up Catholic
I was raised in a pretty typical American Catholic home. The only atypical thing was that my father was in the Air Force and we moved all over the globe throughout my youth. Our family of eight went to church services (“Mass” as the Catholics call it) every Sunday and on big holidays. My earliest memory as a Catholic was my First Communion service as an 8-year-old; a rite of passage when one first participates in the Eucharist, or Lord’s Supper. I vaguely remember wearing a white dress shirt, tie, and slacks walking down the center church aisle holding a white candle with writing on it.
Other events over the next 8 years are scattered throughout my memory. Shortly after participating in my first communion, I recall going to some church event where giant tents were littered throughout a big yard space and each one had different cultural displays of Jewish/Hebrew culture of “biblical times.” I remember spinning a dreidel, touching tapestries, and listening to the hymn, “King of Kings and Lord of Lords.”
Over the years, our family habitually attended mass but it never had much of a spiritual effect on me; it simply served as something we “did.” I understood and believed that there was a God and that Jesus died for my sins but that was about it. My experience inside the church, specifically, left much to be desired.
Mass always felt fussy, overly formal, and void of anything that felt authentically “spiritual.” My observations and experiences throughout the years were that people were just rotely reciting the same prayers, creeds, calls and responses, genuflections, etc. People would literally “go through the motions” and then we’d come back next week to do the same. I never felt that people around me really understood or believed the things they were saying and doing.
When I was 10 or so, I remember being so disinterested in services that I started taking our family’s picture Bible to church. I would sit at the bottom of the pew by my family’s feet and read through the stories and pictures to pass the time.
The one constant throughout my Catholic upbringing was “CCD.” This is the Catholic’s “Sunday School,” officially known as the “Confraternity of Christian Doctrine.” Unfortunately, my memories of it are a blur, consisting of images of Jesus’ “Golden Rule,” the Ten Commandments, learning to pray the rosary, and watching Ben Hur. I don’t ever recall reading or studying the bible, learning about what it looks like to live well in this world, or care for the people around me.
I also remember one specific event when I was 15. I went to some after-school church club where a visiting man showed us a slideshow of images and videos and explained how media & advertising used subliminal and sexually charged messaging to sell things and influence their audience. I just remember walking away thinking, “that was weird and came out of nowhere…”
Looking back on my Catholic youth, my experiences in the church didn’t have a significant spiritual effect on me. I was thankful that it introduced me to a God who loved me, and a Jesus who died for me, but all the rest was very rigid and seemingly too focused on aesthetics. I remember a church of rules, do’s & don’ts, palm branches, candles, insense, holy water, ashy foreheads, not eating meat on Fridays, and giving up something for Lent because “it’s what we do.” In short, it was an experience of strict tradition; a what without the why, and that always felt lacking to me.
My faith started and ended with God and Jesus, but that’s it. I never felt comfortable or at home in the Catholic church. I always felt a disconnect with the way they practiced their religion and how it stood in stark contrast to the world outside the walls of the church; the world that I and everyone else inhabited. Thankfully, all that changed as a Junior in High School, when I was first introduced to Protestantism…