The Reach of Catholicism

A recent conversation with my friend Kevin turned to the topic of his visiting his sick mother in Cincinnati. It was a busy time for him, and he didn’t want to go even though he likes seeing her. I told him to go anyway because he would be performing one of the Seven Corporeal Works of Mercy, Visiting the Sick. (If you don’t remember or never heard of them, check them out on Wikipedia or elsewhere. There are also Seven Spiritual Works of Mercy.)

Huh, Works of Mercy? Kevin grew up with Catholic school but didn’t remember or never heard of the Works of Mercy. He hadn’t bought into Catholicism like I did; he realized even in grade school that a lot of what the Church was telling him didn’t make sense, and he basically ignored mostly everything it was trying to teach him.
This part of the conversation ended and we both agreed that the Works of Mercy were one of the valuable things the Church taught; I added that I wished I hadn’t considered them another large responsibility when I learned them in the third or fourth grade.

Religion was an important part of our growing up at 828. Catholicism was the central tenet of my childhood, the guidepost of my character and morals.

I became aware of the Catholic teachings/requirements/rules early in life; I don’t remember a time when I didn’t feel the influence of Catholicism. The concept of god was reinforced early on through bedtime prayers – ‘God bless Daddy and Mommy and Danny, et cetera.’ It was also reinforced by our often saying of the rosary, every night in May, every Sunday at church, and many nights during Lent and Advent. And at other times for which I never knew the reason. By early elementary school I had the basics tenets of Catholicism well integrated into my psyche. To me, they were:

God was above us in heaven, all-knowing and all-powerful.

He had his son live and die for us; he died, for our sins, for our disobedience to his laws. The son died in excruciating agony, hanging on a wooden cross.

In the Old Testament there were stories of god punishing his people by putting them to death. The priest and nuns said this was OK and was in god’s plan.

God had certain rules for us to follow, written in a book called the Baltimore Catechism or in the Ten Commandments. But there were additional rules; the priests and nuns knew them and told them to us.

God established the Catholic Church to tell us what his rules were and what would happen to us if we didn’t follow them.

If you broke the rules, you made Jesus’ pain and agony on the cross more intense; I visualized a grimace of pain on Jesus’ face when I thought about my lying or using words like ‘damn’ or ‘shit’. I understand now that this might not have been the Church’s teaching in the 1950s, but I thought it was.

If you broke the rules you could cause yourself dire consequences after you died. I thought this was the worst possible thing that could happen to a human.

 

This was how I perceived my moral/religious situation as a second-grader. It was scary stuff for an eight-year-old boy, and it was the main cause of my grim outlook on life. The effects of Catholicism left me seriously impaired well into adulthood, and only by reading and contemplation was I able to understand that it is important to not believe everything adults tell children.

Even today (at 67) I still feel the tug of Catholicism. But now it usually just makes me smile. And when I remember the good things about it, like the Works of Mercy or Liberation Theology, I’m proud of Catholicism.

--Bob