In my mind, in the way I interpret them, I still live by them today. I believed in the basic Church teachings because I thought they were correct, not because God wanted me to. At some point the reality of God was no longer present in my mind.
I no longer lost any sleep over the questions of God and infinity.
If a priest did that today, he would be arrested, but no priest or nun ever treated me with other than love and care. I was maybe nine or ten When we got back to the sacristy, I burst into tears and Father McGinn took me on his lap and comforted me and said God knew I had done my best. One morning early in my service I got confused and didn't have the water and wine where they were required. In those days parents thought nothing of a grade school kid riding his bike all over town. Even in the dead of winter I rode my bike to church to serve at the early morning mass. Patrick's, who had given two, as if she were a lottery winner. "Every Catholic mother hopes she can give a son to the priesthood," she said, and spoke of one mother at St. You should "pray for your vocation." My mother prayed for mine she wanted me to become a priest. The sisters didn't especially seem to think that a woman's place was in the home, as theirs certainly was not. A good government should help make sure everyone has a roof over their head, a job, and three meals a day. The Ten Commandments, which we studied at length, except for adultery, "which you children don't have to worry about." A fair day's work for a fair day's wage. Do onto others as you would have them do onto you. For many years I visualized the Soviet Union as a land where the sun never came out, and enslaved Catholic peasants labored under lowering skies for their godless rulers.īut our theology was often very practical: All men are created equal. People in the USSR could be thrown in jail just for going to church, and there was brave Cardinal Menzenti, who was tortured by the Hungarian atheists. Of course they were fervently anti-communist. Roosevelt had achieved a species of secular sainthood. I have the impression that all of my Dominican teachers were New Deal Democrats, and that for them Franklin D. I remember one night a kid asked, "But what would happen if you played with yourself?" We told him, "Just don't ever try it!" "Then how do you know anything would happen?" We decided you were allowed just one time, to find out. Some of my classmates and I would lie on our backs in the front yard, ponder the stars, and ask ourselves, if some kid started to play with himself but he didn't know what would happen, would that be his fault? Only if he did it again, we concluded. But Sister, is it a sin if you didn't know it was? Think of it: A sin you didn't intend to commit. Everest, and couldn't get back down? We were exposed to the concepts of sins of omission, sins of commission, intentional sins and, the trickiest of all, unintentional sins. To think that you might sin by accident, and be damned before you could get to Confession in time! What if you had an impure thought at the top of Mt.
Looking back, I realize religion class began the day with theoretical thinking and applied reasoning, and was excellent training. We were drilled in memorizing entries from the Baltimore Catechism, which was a bore, but more interesting were the theoretical discussions about what qualified as a sin, what you have to do to get to Heaven, and "Sister, what would happen if." Those words always introduced a hypothetical situation which led the unsuspecting Catholic perilously close to the fires of Hell. Mary's with an hour of religion, and it was my favorite subject. I bought the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church lock, stock and barrel, apart from the God problem. Most of my neighborhood friends were Protestants who were not interested in theories about God, apart from the fact that of course he existed. They didn't come from my school or my family. These logical puzzles seemed to be generated spontaneously within my mind. That seemed to leave me suspended between two questions. Pray for faith." Then I lay awake wondering how I could pray for faith to a God I could not believe in without faith. "Roger," she said, "that is just something you have to believe. I took it up with a favorite nun, Sister Marie Donald, who led our rhythm band and was our basketball coach. When I was in first or second grade and had just been introduced by the nuns to the concept of a limitless God, I lay awake at night driving myself nuts by repeating over and over, But how could God have no beginning? And how could he have no end? And then I thought of all the stars in the sky: But how could there be a last one? Wouldn't there always have to be one more? Many years later I know the answer to the second question, but I still don't know the answer to the first one.
0 kommentar(er)
