My History with Religion
This is Part 2 of my blog mini-series, “Start Seeing Christian Nationalism.” I recommend you read Part 1 first.
Prior to diving into the meat of this series, I want to give you a taste of some of my personal background and relationship with religion and faith. I provide this here for context only, as I have written about my thoughts on religion and faith elsewhere, e.g., “Worth Thinking About!”, “Am I an Atheist or an Agnostic? Explain Please!”, “Are Religion and Science Compatible?”. I will try to make this as concise, as this series isn’t supposed to be about me.
I have not made it a secret that I have zero love for Christianity, a religion I am intimately familiar with. I have also stated the fact that I would fight to the death, if need be, to protect a person’s right to believe in whatever faith they choose. This series is not about me or Christianity in general.
Where else to begin, but at the beginning? No worries. I will try to keep this brief.
Like almost everyone who is reading this blog post, I was born into the religion of my parents, or in my case, my grandmother and my uncle, as they raised me from the age of three months. They too, were born into Christianity. None of us had any choice in the matter. In my case, the Christian flavor of the day was Catholicism. My grandmother was a staunch Irish Catholic. She went to church every Sunday for as long as she was able. She said the rosary every night. My uncle was more of a cultural Catholic. He went to church on big holy days, like Easter and Christmas.
I enjoyed going to mass on Sunday as a child. Back then in the 1950’s, going to Sunday mass was a production! The mass was said in Latin, a language that reeks of age and incense. The priest, wrapped in his priestly garb, mumbling words I could not understand, moving his hands in the sign of the cross over a golden chalice. It was like a magic show!
Sacred Heart Parish in Duluth in the 1950’s was a fairly close community. The priests were young, friendly, and genuine. I attended Sacred Heart grade school from kindergarten through 8th grade. Being a Catholic school, it was run by nuns. In our case, the nuns were Benedictine. Like most Catholic grade schools of that era, the nuns were a mixed bag of personalities and psychological disorders. I won’t go into that here. Let me just say that for the most part, with only three exceptions, I liked the nuns I knew. It’s easy to imagine the three nuns are roasting somewhere right now if I still believed such things.
I didn’t just enjoy mass on Sunday. I wanted to be a part of it! So, I became an altar boy as soon as I was old enough. I enjoyed the time I spent as an altar boy and did this activity for some years. I don’t remember how old I was when I first started this activity. Later, in 7th or 8th grade, I think, I started teaching younger altar boys. I memorized the Latin the priests would say during mass and knew all the appropriate gestures and genuflections. It was fun. I got a real kick out of it!
It was somewhere about this time that I felt I had “the calling.” If you’re not Catholic, “the calling” is what they name that feeling, that desire to become a priest or a nun. Surely such a feeling must come from God, right? This situation was somewhat exacerbated in Irish Catholic families, as each wanted to have at least one priest in the family. LOL! I can’t say for sure, but looking back I feel that I got some special attention by both the nuns and priests, due to my coming from what was then referred to as a “broken home,” with no mother and father in my picture. I think they felt sorry for me, and I don’t blame them for feeling that way. I can understand it, and I benefited somewhat from their attention.
As soon as I was old enough to read, I did so voraciously. Our library nun, Sister Benita, steered me to books about the saints, and I consumed them! I can’t remember how many books about the saints I read, but it was a bunch. My favorite was Saint Benedict. I loved that he blessed his cup of wine and the chalice then broke in half because it was poisoned. “Wow!” I thought. He was magical, like every saint we learned about! Thinking back now, those books should have been shelved in the fiction part of the library. Telling impressionable children that such stories are true is borderline criminal.
I think I was in 7th grade when I started being courted by the Maryknoll missionaries. The priests and nuns, behind the scenes, were always scouting for possible seminary candidates. At some point, I must have expressed interest in the Maryknolls, probably when one of them visited the parish. I remember they were hot on my tail, calling me at home. I think they were going to ship me out to one of their schools for further indoctrination, at their expense. While I liked the idea of being a missionary, being in 7th or 8th grade, I didn’t want to leave home. I also remember the Maryknoll missionary who last called me being quite angry with me for changing my mind.
This was also the time period for my confirmation, a pretty big deal in Catholic families. I think it was in 8th grade. Confirmation is the continuation of a journey all Catholics begin, starting with baptism. It’s actually looked at as the completion of baptism, a more mature commitment to the faith. As such, it is steeped in rituals and lots of mumbo-jumbo. Participants are taught to feel rather special, as the Holy Spirit is supposed to come down from heaven during the ceremony and visit each involved. I barely remember it. To me, the most memorable part of confirmation was that this is where I met a boy, Mike, who would later in high school become my best friend. In grade school, my best friend was another kid who was also an altar boy and together we trained the others. His name was also Mike. My life is full of Mikes. I am immensely pleased to say that both Mikes are still my best friends.
I went to Cathedral high school, where I got more serious about the priesthood. I say that, but it didn’t deter me from liking and pursuing girls on occasion and having girlfriends. Still an avid reader, I began consuming all of the books written by Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk. I also read a lot of Thomas Aquinas. I thought he was so brilliant! Was I wrong. Soon I felt I had a calling to be a monk-priest, like Merton. Funny how that happens.
Trappists, at the time, slept on boards in rooms they called cells. They were only allowed to speak in prayer or hymns, otherwise they had a vow of silence. Their focus, like other contemplative orders, was all about their personal relationship with God. To support themselves, they ran a large farm. Like I said, I was really into it!
My buddy Mike and I even visited the Trappist monastery in Iowa. Mike was there for my support. I later went back on my own for another visit, this time for evaluation as a possible entrant. I was interviewed by several monks, including the abbot himself. The abbot told me that they all believed I had “the calling.” He also said that he was willing to give me a draft deferment, which would be the first deferment the Trappist order had given since WWII. This was in 1969 and Vietnam was still raging.
I remember the last night of my visit at New Melleray abbey. A monk-priest named Father Xavier made a pass at me in my room. Well, it wasn’t a pass so much, rather he gave me a very uncomfortably long hug, after which he said he’d come in his pants. I was a bit freaked out and disgusted, to say the least. I had the feeling this wasn’t the first time he’d done this to a new recruit. It was sad, really. He had been such a nice guy. Friendly and funny. In the end, he seriously creeped me out. I went home and never contacted the abbey again. I never told anyone about this. I didn’t even tell my buddy, Mike, until just a few years ago. I wonder how many kids were abused under his care. I should have said something, but back then you just didn’t. Who would have believed me? I checked a few years ago and found that he is still a monk at New Melleray.
One monk-priest who had been my primary contact at the abbey wrote to me afterwards, wanting to know what was going on. Thinking back, I now suspect he had some idea that something like that might have happened, as he seemed quite concerned. But, I was done with my Trappist dream at that point, as you might imagine. I didn’t tell him about the episode with Father Xavier, and instead told him that I decided I needed to find something more about the world before I made such a lifelong commitment. It was true, but not the entire story.
It’s difficult to say whether this was the point in my life where I started looking at Catholicism as something nefarious, but it could have been. Certainly, it had an effect and probably opened the door for me to at least begin doing that which every Catholic child is taught never, ever to do: question your faith. LOL. There is a good reason they do that. Priests twist the words of Christ into statements about how we are supposed to be like little children, meaning accept everything we are told without question, when in fact, Christ was talking about being humble. You have to read a good bible scholar to discover this. Very different. Intentionally so.
In high school I started reading philosophy. One of my teachers was a philosophy major in college and I enjoyed his classes. I soon fell in love with philosophy and wanted to study it, but my home situation would not allow me to go to college. We couldn’t afford it. So, I decided to enlist in the Army. In 1969, the tracking system, as it was called, was still being used at Cathedral. This is a system the state education board used to funnel lower income kids into trade schools and upper income kids into college. Our so-called school counselor told me that I wasn’t cut out for college and thought my going into the Army was a good idea. In 1969, that could have been a death sentence. I suspect he’s roasting in hell next to the three nuns.
Damn. I wanted to keep this short, but here I go, on and on, falling down the memory hole. Please bear with me. I’ll try and wrap this history lesson up.
Fast forward to 19 months in Vietnam and after Vietnam I went to college Ion the GI Bill) where I was reintroduced to philosophy. I got A’s in philosophy. I hope my school councilor is roasting. Basically, my life to to this point led me to a place where I was finally open to not only question what I’d been told my entire life, but really look at it, really try to understand. The conclusion was, of course, that I’d been lied to. Repeatedly, from the time I was a little boy. The people telling me these lies may or may not have realized they were lies. I’ll never know and I don’t really care.
In college I honed my skills in logic and worked hard to not just understand the lies I’d been told, but also tried to help others see the light, if you will. I studied religion deeply, not just Christianity, but many different religions. I read the bible. Hell, I, together with a good friend of mine, burned a bible! It was so damn liberating! Seriously! Another student and I (damn, I sure wish I could remember his name) used to go to St. Scholastica, a Catholic college in Duluth, and debate the religion class there. It was fun. I remember the nun coming up to the front of the classroom after one of our debates, stating, “Well, what do you think? Lions 10, Christians nothing?” LOL! One thing I learned then and it’s still true, atheists on average know more about religion than Christians do, especially Catholics. I’ll admit to still studying the bible these days on occasion, although I now rely on scholars to do the heavy lifting. Bart Ehrman comes to mind. He’s a well-known scholar and every Christian should read what he has to say about the bible. He’s where I learned about Christ’s words being misinterpreted. But they won’t.
So, the bottom line is that I do have a history with religion and yes, I am an atheist, which is NOT a belief system, contrary to some believer’s notions. You too are an atheist, whether you realize it or not. “What?” you say! Yes. It’s true. Do you believe in Odin, Thor, Apollo? No? Well, then you are an atheist with regard to these gods. In fact, there have been tens of thousands of gods invented over the years, and you are, no doubt, an atheist to all of them. I just happen to not believe in one more god than you do.
Be assured that my atheism will not get in the way of my analysis of Christian Nationalism. If anything, I think it will help. However, I will not be doing a deep dive into arguments against God. That’s a different subject entirely. To be honest, I am really bored with the subject. For me, it is so yesterday’s news.
Christian Nationalism, however, is today’s news and potentially tomorrow’s headline story, so we’d better prepare. The first thing we have to do is be able to identify it and start seeing Christian Nationalism. It’s spreading like a disease.
As always – thoughtful, insightful and so easy to understand.