As much as I hate to admit it, I am a cliché. I’m the most perfect example of a Catholic school student gone awry. When I entered into the Catholic school system, I was a young and impressionable kid. I had gone to mass every Sunday since birth and received all my sacraments at the appropriate times. When I wasn’t in Catholic school, I had to go to supplemental catechism classes. But I did all of these things without any option. I didn’t inherently enjoy religion or going to mass — except for the promise of Krispy Kreme’s afterwards. I only enjoyed church for the social aspect of dressing up and potentially running into friends. Clearly I was in it for the right reasons.
I was a kid though, I was young and naïve and valued glazed donuts more than the words that were being spoken to me. I didn’t really listen when I was at church and therefore had no need to question the things that I was told. But with age comes wisdom, or possibly just the need to rebel, but in middle school, things started to change.
Sitting in class, I would start to wonder a little more as to why I should believe in the teachings of the Church. I started to wonder why the Church could ostracize entire groups of people because of something as personal and irrelevant as sexual orientation. I began to think that women’s rights should be more heavily considered in regards to abortion and general stance in the Church. Like most students, I would be sitting in biology class, learning about evolution and wondering how I am not supposed to believe in the scientific evidence before us. Sure, I was allowed to voice my opinion, but by and large, teachers would just respond by reiterating the teachings of the catechism like robots.
Slowly but surely, I started to notice the hypocrisy of some of the teachings. Gradually over time, I found myself disconnected. I was even more uninterested, and this time, there were no donuts to keep me moderately attentive.
While I don’t think I can truthfully identify with the Catholic Church because of my uncertainty with what I can believe in, I do think that my experiences within it has shaped me. I still appreciate the fundamentals of Christianity, specifically the morals that I learned in Sunday school. The majority of my takeaways from religion pertain more to ethics than biblical teachings.
Another great aspect of forced religious upbringing is that I think it made me a more inquisitive person. I think that it could have either gone two ways: I could have just blindly believed in what I was being told, or I could have questioned it. Though my religion teachers might think that taking the questioning road may have been the worse of the two, I am proud that I can say that I have developed that curiosity and am not afraid to think for myself.
To me, religion can be a stifling environment, especially when your questions are not explored and explained but responded with a script provided by the catechism. I firmly believe that religion is not something that can be imposed but instead personally approached. I cannot say if I would be a more religious person today had I not gone to Catholic school or been forced to attend mass, but I think that the choice of religion is incredibly undervalued.
Despite the negative feelings that I may have towards my high school alma mater that does not mean that I have since burned the Charlotte Catholic memorabilia I purchased all those years ago. After all, just because I don’t agree with the Church itself, does not mean that my CCHS sweatpants are any less comfortable. Much like my sweatpants, Catholicism will always be there. I am just not sure if I want to embrace it at this point in time.
