From outside the box

I spent the first 18 years of my life as a catholic and the last 40 years trying to undue the psychological damage. I did 3 years hard time in catholic school, 10 years of Saturday catechism, and a couple of years as an alter boy. I think I am about 99% cleansed. Maybe writing about being catholic will purge the last 1% of guilt, shame, and fear that was pounded into my brain during those formative years. Or maybe catholic is just a part of who I am and always will be. That might be OK because there were some good values taught along with all the ridiculous crap, and those values are also a part of who I am.

I was never molested by a priest and I don't think that any other catholic boy I knew ever was either. Most of the priests were chain smoking alcoholics who screamed a lot, pretty common behaviors in those times. My abuse and torture came at the hands of nuns. The nuns that I knew of in the fifties and sixties were not spiritual, loving, or kind. They were terrifying. I can remember kneeling for 6 hours on a concrete floor because I shot a rubber band in class. Sometimes they would draw a circle on the black board that was eye level and make you put your nose in it. You had to stand on your tip toes to do this and you had to do it until you were ready to drop. They were never too hard on the girls. I think they just hated males. These holy women of God oozed of unresolved issues.

It was always understood that in catholic school you were given a better education than you could get at public schools. I guess. Our higher education included learning things like everybody who was not catholic would go to hell when they died. This included communists, protestants, Jews, and, well....everybody. It even included us Catholics. If we committed a mortal sin and died before Saturday confession, we were on our way to hell. The problem was that most of what I did was a mortal sin! I remember what a relief it was after Saturday evening confession to know that I was cleansed and that if I died, I would not be spending eternity burning. However, this only lasted about a day. By Sunday afternoon I had probably said "God Damn" at least once, had an impure thought, ate less than 3 hours before communion, or let the communion host touch my teeth. Now I was on my way to hell again and had to live with the stress and fear until next Saturday evening. I still remember my Dad telling me on my 7th birthday that I was now of the "age of reason", meaning that as a catholic, I was now capable of sinning. He was warning me that now I could go to hell! I have a theory that ex Catholics don't scare very easy. After facing the prospect of hell for 18 years, what is there to be afraid of in the real world?

I was always the inquisitive type which is probably why I eventually dropped the church. I think that if there is one thing that all ex Catholics have in common, it would be the fact that we had simple questions that nobody in the church could answer. Institutions and governments that seek to control do not like inquisitive types. I used to wonder about things like....Wasn't it better to die young, before you had the ability to sin, so you could go to heaven? Is holy water still holy after it evaporates and when it evaporates does that make the clouds part holy? If God demanded worship didn't that mean God was an ego maniac? If God was perfect, why did He get angry so easy? How could our sins hurt Him? Why was God a He? OK, I'm starting to feel like an idiot for even remembering these stupid questions. They sound childish and silly, but the sad part is, the adults weren't asking these questions! And many still don't! Amazing stuff.

But like I said, there was a lot of good that came out of those childhood experiences. The beautiful haunting melodies the choir sang at Novena and high mass had a strong influence later in life on my song writing. I learned a lot of good values, even though they were taught from fear rather than from love. Values like not stealing, not killing, and uh....Ok, well I never stole and I never killed anybody, and I do credit the church for that. Actually I did steal something out of a grocery store one time in high school. It was more out of curiosity, I just wanted to see what it felt like to steal. Of course I became overwhelmed with guilt and confessed my terrible sin in confession the next Saturday. The priest told me to pay the value of the thing I stole into the church collection the next day at Mass. I always wondered why he didn't tell me to pay it back to the store I stole it from.

I do not regret being raised Catholic because I have learned that every experience in our life has led us to be who we are right now and if you take any of those experiences away, then you would not be who you are today. When you are happy with who you are, there is never any regret over anything.

I do believe that the past is ours to learn from, the present is our opportunity to demonstrate who we are by applying what we've learned, and the future is an open book, it is our book to write our story in, whatever story we choose to write. On a positive note I can honestly say that I learned and grew and became a better person because of the church. But then again, do we not learn and grow from every experience in our lives?

I believe that every action we do in life, everything we put out, is coming from either love or power. Love gives and power takes. This is the yin and yang of life. Thru love we give, we release, we set free, and we uplift. Love seeks to bring out the highest aspects of who we are in each other. Thru power we take, we need, we hold onto, we oppress, we create fear. Power seeks to control others for ones own purposes or is demonstrated out of ones own insecurities, or fears. Nothing is completely neutral and nothing stands still. Everything you do, every action, every word, and every thought you put out, no matter how subtle, is a demonstration of love or power. That is how we learn and grow from everybody and every situation. When love is demonstrated, we learn what works and we copy that. When power or fear is demonstrated, there is usually some kind of pain involved and we learn what does not work. Sometimes my parents used love and sometimes they used violence. I choose to learn from both. I imitated their love with my own children because I learned that it worked. I vowed never to use violence on my children because I learned that it does not work. The church, like my parents, demonstrated love and power. So in this respect I learned and grew from the church.

One last thought I would like to convey. I am not educated in psychology and it is not my intention to sound like a professional. I have been accused of writing in a way that sounds like I am preaching to others. Most of the things I write about come from my own life's experiences, so I am really talking about things that work for me, or my own truth (check out my first posting called "Truth versus Viewpoint"). There are many great writers on this blog site who research and write their articles as well as any professional journalist (actually, some of them are). I am not one of them. I am just sharing ideas and experiences. I am too lazy for research, I just do this for fun (and maybe a little self therapy). If you appreciate that, then I appreciate you. If you do not, then I have to wonder....why are you still reading this?