Religion and Me

I'm hoping this won't be an explosive topic but I can never be sure, so please... if you think you may be offended, please don't read this topic.

The main reason for this topic is to lay the groundwork for the next one. I plan to talk about Marriage Encounters, which is run by the Catholic Church but in order to see things from my point of view there, you probably need to understand the relationship I have with religion.

I was born and raised as a Catholic and like many catholics, I had very few problems accepting the Jesus stories (kids love stories) but lots of problems sitting still in church. My father never went to church with us, so it was always only my mother and my sister.

Early Church Behaviour

One issue that I was constantly reminded of was when we were sitting in a pew behind a larger woman and I was miming pinching her on the bum. I said "will I?" to my sister who was 2 years older than I, and she enthusiastically replied "Yes!". So of course, I did it. It caused quite a bit of embarrassment to my mother because it turned out that she knew the woman. Even worse, she turned out to be the school librarian when I started school a year later.

I grew up to be reasonably religious but since my father was Church of England and my mother was Catholic, religion was never "drummed into us". Funnily enough, my mother's parents had been that exact same mix - something that would have been particularly difficult for them in the 1920's when they were married. My father's mother had started off Catholic but some poor treatment by the church when she was just a girl resulted in her raising her boys as Church of England. Needless to say, religion was never very strong in our family.

Introduction to Dogma

When I was in about second grade at school, I was given a mass book for a first communion present. This was great because I had something that I could read and use to check on our progress... (how much longer the mass was going to last). It kept me quieter for a while, though I was disappointed that the homily. The part of the mass where the priest starts talking about his own experience and somehow trying to relate it back to our everyday lives - and to God, was not covered. Our priest was unintelligible - not simply because I was deaf - no, he really was unintelligible at the best of times.

I used to get so caught up in the dogma that when my mother lamented missing church on a Sunday, I'd hold a special mass for her in my room. She and my sister would attend but my mother was never interested in the communion (which was the cream scraped out of the middle of circular biscuits).

When I got to year four at school, I put my hand up to become an altar boy. It was a great time for me because then, at least, I had things to do during the mass. It meant that I wouldn't lose focus. This lasted for almost three years during which I had a great time fighting (gently) with the other altar boys over the bell, building wax bridges between the candles during the homily and having races to drink the leftover wine. I wasn't particularly bad - all the altar boys were like this.

Falling Out

It all ended when we moved house and went to a church with a really scary looking priest. I decided not to sign-up there. My mass behaviour went from bad to worse and eventually I stopped going. When my sister moved out of home to get married, my mother stopped going too - there was nobody for her to go with.

It was around about year nine at school that my religion started going bad. I started to rebel against the Catholic ways and against their teachings. Our school had recently converted to co-ed, the Christian brothers had fled at the thought of girls starting and I'd just had a particularly bad religion teacher. I began to delight in pointing out the mistakes and inconsistencies in the bible. I've still got that bible today, with highlighting all the way through it and scribbles in the margins saying that this contradicts that etc..

We also had a teacher called Mr Hampson, whom we called "hampster" and most of the pictures from Genesis through to Exodus have pictures of mice in them. The best one, and the one on which he caught me and sent me to the principle was in Exodus where the caption had been changed to read; "the princess peered through the reeds and noticed the hampster".

In my later school years, I chose a subject called "non-Christian religions". It was supposed to broaden our minds while keeping us focussed on Catholicism as "the only valid religion" and we had to do a presentation on a different religion. I chose Satanism - not because I thought it was good or because I was interested but simply because it was guaranteed to upset the teachers. I got an "A" much to the disappointment of my friends, some of whom were extremely religious.

Maturing? Beliefs

A lot of time has passed since then and I've thought long and hard on religion. I've also got friends in lots of other religions and I respect both them and their beliefs. For me personally, I don't have any problems believing in Jesus. There was enough evidence in James Cameron's "Lost Tomb of Jesus" to convince me anyway. Similarly, I don't have any problems with the teaching of Buddha - not only does it make sense but it's all good advice too.

I'm happy with the concept of "God" but I'm not convinced that we matter to him. I have little faith in the Catholic Church itself. I don't find its dogma appealing and I don't like their treatment of others - particularly people of different faiths. I don't accept the concept that one religion is right and all others are wrong beliveing instead that all are right and all are wrong to some extent.

I still send my children to a Catholic school because I feel that children aren't ready for such weighty concepts and that they need to discover things on their own. I'm keen for my kids to discover other religions at their own pace but right now, the morality offered by most religions is sufficient for them. Catholicism is probably the most appropriate place to start since it's the religion that I can give them the most insight into.

Today, I mostly describe my religion as "theo-apathetic". I don't dis-believe anything but I really don't care either. If I don't get a reward after I die because I've lived a good and just life according to my conscience, then I'll be content to exist with the millions of others in the same predicament. Life is too short for me to worry about rituals when I have a conscience to tell me what to do. If God is as good and as knowledgable as we are told, then he knows that I'm essentially a good person.

In census, I've described my religion as Jedi on the basis that I think about Star Wars far more often than I think about God. The opening paragraph on the Jedi faith page probably describes me better than catholicism anyway... "The Jedi Church believes that there is one all powerful force that binds all things in the universe together. The Jedi religion is something innate inside everone of us, the Jedi Church believes that our sense of morailty is innate."

It's interesting that aspies come from all faiths and that we have varying intensity of faith. I don't think that there is anything specifically defining about aspies and religion. Some are intense, some don't care and some are just resistant to change.

I hope I haven't offended anyone too much with this post.