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Thursday, February 4, 2010

catholics and Byron Katie-agogo


okay. so, when I was picking out a college, way way back when I didn't have a single idea in my head about where to go or what I might want from higher education, I picked my school based on the idea that sometime I could take my dad to a basketball game in their arena.


yes, i did.


and because i am so willful, nobody stood in my path, shouting 'holy hell, batman'... I ended up going to Boston College, home of one beautiful basketball arena. I went to ONE game. ONE. during four years of school (3 if you count a year abroad) and my dad never set foot in it. ever.
eyep.

BUT

now I have more Byron Katie fodder... and I was looking around for some history to re-assess...of the ridiculous and mundane sort. really.

so, when I was there I developed a hellaciously judgemental feeling about Catholics and their wildly hypocritical behavior vs. their compulsion for church attendance. For example, no matter how drunk, stupid, violent, vomitous, etc... they managed to get to mass. granted, the later one. No matter how devout the virgins, deflowered by the end of the first semester. no matter... but still. I guess I never forgave them and have always assumed young Catholics to be liars, for that reason. (For whatever crazy reason, I never applied the idea to the adults I grew up with, they were some of the coolest neighbors/teachers/parents ever.)

Somehow I escaped my own judgemental laser pointer- maybe I'd done it all by the time highschool was through so I wasn't so crazy to 'explode' in college? catholic repression ? I grew up surrounded by Roman Catholics and felt like a foreigner for my protestant ways...

SOOO- if 'it didn't happen the way I think it did'... then maybe it is possible that they were struggling with history, familial responsibility and faith, just like me, except that they went to church and I didn't. ok, i did, but i was hiding in the catholics, skipping the wine... because they kept telling me i couldn't have it... dirty protestant... dirty... maybe the individuals were just creatures of habit and took comfort in something that reminded them of their parents? but maybe, they weren't hypocrites, anymore than I was. so, maybe they were'nt lying scum.

MAYBE it was really all about ME and my feeling of exclusion. the feeling that I wasn't good enough for their wine/blood... was missing out on some fundamental knowledge that they all were given in CCD. (catechism) hm.

how's that for deep thinking and progress?

5 comments:

Jen said...

Mr. Handsome and I went to Catholic high school. Mr. Handsome is not Catholic, I was born into it. No choice for me. Needless to say, I started telling people I was Jewish. It works better for me. But the point of this, Mr. Handsome always took communion during our Friday High School Mass. He didn't care that he wasn't "supposed" to participate. That's why I married him. He's such a rebel and he's probably going to Hell.

Viv said...

I am Catholic, and I always give it up for Lent, sometimes I forget to pick it up again though. *ahem, blushes* I avoid church like the Pope himself is there to assign my 'Hail Marys' mostly because Catholic churches are not known for that wonderful concept of Sunday School, so that parents can do something other than glare and silently plead with their children to behave, like listen to the mass. My six children are too much for me to attempt church with. I am pretty sure God understands, perhaps not the Pope, but, I can live with that.

As far as CCD, well, I um, had some fun with that as a kid. Like asking how we knew our beliefs about God weren't going to be the 'next' mythology studies. Maybe I pushed the envelope a little when I forced my CCD teacher to admit that sex outside of marriage isn't a sin (at least not if you're Catholic) and so we need not mention anything like that in our confessions.

I have looked far and wide for a church that was more accepting of my views, a liberal, pro-choice Catholic, is sort of an oxymoron. Finally, I decided that maybe I didn't love everything about the Catholic church, maybe I didn't accept 'confession' or flaunted certain doctrine, but, I decided that I could take my chances with God, because nothing says beauty and home to me like a traditional Catholic mass.

Jen said...

I have nothing to add but I am enjoying and reading and am thinking along these lines too.

urban craft said...

I haven't heard anyone call it CCD in ages. And yes, I am catholic, but I like to think that I have progressed religiously though since I don't attend church. Although, I have gone through the sacraments, was married in the catholic church and will always take communion whenever I go (mostly weddings and funerals and the occasional christening.) I'm a god mother too! Anyway, that may be hypocritical but I don't think that not going to church is a sin. And I don't think that many of the sins besides killing and that kind of stuff is a sin. I just think that I am more a buddist or something and what about all that time in Jesus's life that is missing from the bible? He supposedly went to india and the east to study the other religions. So I think people can incorporate the best of all religions to make religion fit them and not the other way around.

Anyway, what about all the other hypocrites who are baptist, christian, born again whatever. They hate gays and pornography etc but are the ones that are caught in homosexual relationships, have extramarital affairs or worse, little kids!
Not that I am religious at all, but us catholics (especially the non-practicing kind) are totally inclusive. Kids are just cruel.
sorry 4 the novel.

Kate Hall said...

one of the most beautiful, sense-ational things I have ever seen/heard/vibrated through was the mass in latin, complete with incense... i felt i was in some sort of god-cave, it was incredible. I love me some Catholic rituals, I tell you.. and I know that some of my Catholics are very radical in their belief patterns... I like it all.