Thoughts and Prayers

When you tell people you have a potentially serious illness, they’re understandably concerned. When you describe yourself as “not religious” in the very same post, there’s bound to be some confusion about how to proceed. Do I say I’ll pray for her? Or should I just say I’ll be thinking of her really hard… but also reverently… and most likely while kneeling with my hands pressed together? This is particularly true of family members, like my sister, who grew up going to church with me and who was compelled to ask, “But you do believe in God… right?”

I grew up Catholic, because my parents were Catholic and because most of their family on all sides was also Catholic. I went to Catholic school from preschool through sixth grade--because my mom was Irish Catholic from New York City and that’s just what you did; and because my dad’s mom, whom we lived with growing up, was French. Not French like she grew up near Canada or had a maiden name that was fourteen letters and the last 5 were silent. Like, from France, French. Baptized my dad in the cathedral where Joan of Arc crowned Charles X, French. While Ireland is probably more well-known for its Catholic-ness, France is an intensely Catholic country in its own right. So, any way you look at it, the Catholic Church and Catholic school have been a big part of my heritage for a very long time.

Catholic school in The South is, apparently, very different from its Northern and perhaps, Midwestern counterparts. In the South, especially 35 years ago in North Carolina, they were just so excited to have you, they seemed willing to forgo the more traumatizing things people often associate with Catholic School. The scary, belligerent nuns mercilessly beating people with rulers were reserved for colder climates, where anger and wrath were necessary to keep the Sisters warm in their mid-calf wool skirts. 

Our school had only 3 nuns, in fact: a stone-faced 5th grade math teacher, a blunt, 400-year-old librarian, and the principal. Two of these 3 positions were occupied by “Sister Theresa”s, which is apparently the “John Smith” of nun names. The principal position was held by two different sisters during my 8 years there. Both ladies were kind, soft-spoken, extremely short-haired women who made peanut butter sandwiches on hot dog buns for kids who forgot to bring their lunches to school. Nobody wore a habit. Nobody beat anybody or publicly shamed anyone. 

I went to church every Sunday with my family, but the whole school went to mass in the gym every Friday as well. Different classes would take turns helping with the service, with kids singing the songs, doing the readings, and making signs to hold up like cheerleaders during the responsorial psalms. It was always a full mass--meaning communion host and wine were always served--unless a priest was for whatever reason unavailable. In that case, it was led by one of the nuns, did not include communion or all the extraneous songs, and was referred to as a “prayer service”. Blessing of communion, you see, was above the nuns' pay-grade. Even though they knew all the right words and believed all the right things. This didn’t bother me at the time, though. I had never seen anything different.

I started public school in seventh grade, because my Catholic School didn’t go up any farther at the time. I went from a setting where almost everyone was Catholic, to an environment where most people were not. Meanwhile, in history, I had already learned about the Great Schism, how and why the various Protestant denominations broke away from the Catholic Church. Catholic, as you may know, means “universal” because it was once the biggest (if not the only) game in town. Many Protestant creeds retain the word “catholic” with a lowercase “C” for that reason. If memory serves, the Lutherans were the first to break off in the 1500s, after Martin Luther nailed his grievances to the church door. I can’t say I blame him for taking issue; the Catholic Church had been doing a lot of messed up things--like monopolizing land and wealth, letting priests run amok, abusing and manipulating the trust of their parishioners. There was corruption everywhere. People who knew better demanded reform, and from there the various “protesting” factions spun off into the different Protestant denominations: Lutherans, Episcopalians, Baptist, Methodists, and so on.

One of the things, beside corruption, that people didn’t like was the idea that Catholicism had added a bunch of Sacraments, seven in all, that not everyone felt were supported by biblical text. Protestants recognized only baptism and communion as sacraments because they were referenced directly in stories from the Bible. The other point where beliefs varied was in what happens during communion. Does the bread and wine truly become the body and blood, as Jesus’s words said? Or did he mean that symbolically? These all seemed like fair questions to ask of one’s religion and it made me really interested in what the other denominations believed. I started to think that maybe my beliefs didn’t really fit with the religion I was raised on.

Ultimately, the Catholic Church instituted some reforms to root out corruption and settled on the idea of using both scripture and “tradition” in response to the question of rationale for what’s considered a Sacrament. “Tradition” basically means that by ritualizing an act over generations, it becomes sacred in itself and is therefore, a sacrament to those that believe in it. They agreed the whole Church would still be overseen by The Pope, and that the priest was still a major gateway to God (also major sticking points for Protestants who rejected the need for a “middle man” in accessing their Creator). It was enough to keep a lot of Catholics Catholic, but they continued to subtly tweak the formula over the next several hundred years, right through the present day. Protestant denominations continued to grow and now many of them have pretty much forgotten that they have any relationship to Catholicism at all. 

So basically, Christianity started out as one particular thing, that was then refined and/or reshuffled into assorted subgroups of the same belief system. I've thought a lot about it over the years and tried on a few options. But the end result has been that I just don't care for organized religion. At its best, it's a comfort and a catalyst for good in the world. At its worst, its an excuse to shame people, cover-up wrong-doing, justify discrimination, exclude people who are different, and perpetuate hate through the manipulation of words written thousands of years ago. I can't be Catholic, because they continuously fail to protect children from abuse, neglect the rights of women, and alienate people who don't fit their mold. But I don't really see myself as anything else either.

I believe that religion is man-made and bound to be as imperfect as the human beings who embrace it. If God is God, then God continues to be God even in the absence of our words, our books, our rituals, and our places of worship. Our prayers are all directed to the same place, regardless of what we call ourselves while we pray. I’ve felt for a long time that all the major world religions--Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hindu--are different interpretations of the same connection to a higher power; that religion is different from faith.

Some scriptures tell us that we were created in God’s image. I tend to think we created an image of God that’s too much like us. That God is bigger and more nebulous than we have the capacity to understand. Less of a being and more feeling that illuminates our connection to each other, that tangible presence that fills us with peace and gratitude, and lets us feel we are not alone in the world. Religion is something we do religiously according to a predetermined set of guidelines. Faith is what you feel. I believe you can have faith in the absence of religion.

When people ask if I’m a Christian, I do hesitate to say yes. Unfortunately, “being a Christian” has become loaded for me with increasingly negative connotations. I know that Christians are supposed to be kind, forgiving, patient, and welcoming--and some people really do try to live out those beliefs. Others seem to put on a big show of being Christians without acting Christian at all. If, like it says in James, “faith without good works is dead”, then the simple act of going to church doesn’t absolve you from being a miserable person every other hour of the week.

I consider myself a Christian in the cultural sense, since I grew up celebrating Christian holidays and was steeped in stories and beliefs that go along with that. I try to treat others like I want to be treated. I believe in honesty and forgiveness. I believe that we may hurt each other sometimes, but that we should try not to do it on purpose. I believe jealousy and hate are poisonous to the soul. I believe that turning the other cheek sometimes makes you a victim, but that peacefully standing up for what you believe in is always right. I believe we should let people be who they are if it’s not hurting anyone else; that people should love whom they want. And I believe that I am happiest and most fulfilled when I’m trying to be the best version of myself. I’ve read a lot of the bible, it’s just not the only thing I base my belief structure on. I  used to tell everyone how I felt after a few glasses of wine, but these days, I generally keep these things to myself. I know that faith is personal and I try not to push my beliefs on others. If your religion helps you feel connected to God, then it's doing its job in your life.

While I’m not religious at all, I do believe that prayer is powerful. When it’s genuine, and heart-felt, and seeks to embrace that connection between people that I experience as God. Not so much when it’s used as a substitute for action, like when people offer “thoughts and prayers” in place of responsible gun control. But if you’re praying for me and you mean it, I profoundly appreciate it. Even if you what you believe doesn’t completely line up with everything I just laid out, I know that your prayers come from a good place and that somebody out there is listening.