I attended Shrine of the Little Flower Elementary School at 12 Mile and Woodward in Royal Oak, Michigan, until I was 12. I wore the school uniform of navy pants, a white shirt and a clip-on navy tie. The principal and most of the teachers were nuns, the kind who dressed up like the Flying Nun with starched habits and dark robes, although a few women who dressed normally had managed to join the faculty.
I can’t remember if there were any male teachers, although I remember the priests at the beautiful round church across the street. The church, which included a massive tower featuring a 28-foot-tall figure of Jesus on the cross – a cross “the Ku Klux Klan couldn’t burn,” people said – had been the site of Father Charles Coughlin’s famous and controversial radio broadcasts back in the 1930s.
I was an average student but I could sing so I joined the choir and performed in all of the fundraising talent shows. (And I regularly sang along to my mom’s “Jesus Christ Superstar” album after school instead of doing homework.) I was an altar boy, too, which didn’t stop me from being paddled by Sister Patricia Marie, the principal, for misbehaving. My parents were married at that church, I think, although that marriage ended when I was 11 or so.
After sixth grade, we moved to Birmingham and I stopped going to Catholic Church. I attended Unitarian-Universalist churches for a while, and then pretty much only sat in pews for weddings and funerals and the occasional Christmas Eve mass.
I didn’t wake up one morning and decide I was no longer a believer; it was a gradual process. (I still remember being moved by Mel Gibson’s 2004 movie, “The Passion of the Christ.”) I couldn’t embrace the idea that women couldn’t be priests and needed to be subservient to their husbands. I was repulsed by the widespread sexual abuse of children and the cover-ups by church leaders. I couldn’t understand why there was so much suffering and pain and hardship and evil in the world if there was a loving, omnipotent, omniscient god floating on a cloud somewhere. I was turned off by hypocritical, politically-active preachers and congregants who didn’t pay taxes but wanted to tell me what could be done with mine and who urged me to be faithful to my marital vows even as they violated theirs with other women, men and children.
Then I heard that church leaders had moved to suppress the discovery of the Gospel of St. Thomas back in 1945 in Egypt. I was told that these were the words of Jesus himself and because they contradicted church teachings, the Big Dogs tried to squelch the discovery.
That was probably when my straying from the flock became complete.
I’m not comfortable saying I don’t believe in God. I am comfortable saying there’s a lot to suggest he was created by man and not the other way around.
The last time I was in Shrine of the Little Flower was in 2005. I attended Christmas Eve mass with my ultra-religious second wife, Alessandra. In keeping with family tradition, we subsequently divorced too.
I, too gave up on the idea of a supreme invisible man in the sky, probably beginning in my teen years. I grew up Episcopalian (Catholic Lite). Over all the years I went to church, as well as listening to just about everyone I knew, I never could swallow completely what I was being told. We weren't looney Creationist, thankfully, more like...scientific apologists if you will.
ReplyDeleteAs I began taking more science classes, both in high school, and in college (MSU!), the less the idea of any type of god appealed to me.
About 15 years ago, I was seriously involved with a girl, who grew up in a fundy-Lutheran family, but was all about not acting that way. We lived together, in sin of course, for 3 years. One night, after several beers, she and I got into a religious argument...she professed that the Bible was true, because it's the Bible, and nothing was changing her mind. I still believed in God at the time, just not the Bible...made no sense to me whatsoever. We broke up a week later and I was devastated.
I started to question my own beliefs, reading and researching Christian books, re-reading the Bible, and came to the realization that I didn't believe in God anymore, but I kept it more or less a secret until I met my wife, a PhD. in organic chemistry and atheist. She made me feel absolutely safe and confident in my atheism. Now, I'm open about it.
Thanks, Patrick. Only misinformed bigots think atheists are bad people, but history has shown how evil and corrupt and immoral religious people can be.