# 44 TAKING THE EASY WAY OUT

I was raised in a seriously religious home. As a child, I thought it was too tough. Couldn’t play ball on a Sunday, couldn’t attend card parties, couldn’t wear jeans, couldn’t wear make-up, couldn’t attend a movie or go to a dance, couldn’t play cards, or read "True Confession" magazines. And when I’d complain, and believe me I did a lot of that, my Mother used to say that although we are ‘in’ this world, we must not to be ‘of’ the world. She always emphasized that religion is about redemption of our souls after death, not redemption of our good time here.

But that wasn’t all. As a child, I can’t begin to tell you how many times I was blasted by a hell-and-brimstone preacher with the threat of immediate death in a car crash upon leaving the church if I did not soak up everything he said. Under those circumstances, I would dash to the altar, pray diligently with renewed remorsefulness for forgiveness of my sins, before I could steady myself enough to step out into the street and walk to my parents’ car. And then, after that, if a car struck me, so what? After all, faith is not about our good time here, it is about our good time in the hereafter. (Strikes me right at this moment these thoughts are vaguely similar to a suicide-bomber mentality).

But I digress. What I really wanted to do here is flesh out the memories of my difficulties in following my Mother’s religious agenda. Social restrictions were difficult, explaining these restrictions to classmates was equally difficult, but the worst thing of all was that repentance was not enough. In order to save my wretched soul from a burning lake of fire, I must tell others about God and explain to them how they could be like me. And why was that so difficult? Well first of all, talking about such things was embarrassing to the extreme. And secondly, now that I think about it, what could I possibly use for bait for anyone to want to be like me? Dirt poor, obliged to go to church all the time, no personal liberties, etc. Obviously, with all these problems with Fundamentalist beliefs, even as a very young child, I promised myself that one of my goals in life would be to search for another "easier" religion.

Now, in those days, I didn’t know a lot about other religions but I could see, even as a child, that the Unitarians had a good thing going. Lots of personal liberties. They could smoke, drink, play cards, go to movies, attend ballgames on Sundays, etc.

The Catholics too, had a good thing going. They had all these liberties as well. They also had a wide encompassing kind of tolerance, or so it seemed to me. Their congregation covered a wide spectrum. There were practicing Catholics, non-practicing Catholics, those who regularly attended mass, and those who never attended but insisted beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were Catholic. That was pretty impressive. And the only hard and fast rule that I was aware of certainly didn’t impact on their personal and social life. Baptism in the church and fish for supper on Fridays was about as regimented as it got, as far as I was able to comprehend. Obviously being a Catholic is much easier than being what my mother expected me to be. Besides I like fish. Fish, instead of moose or goat meat every Friday would be really nice.

And furthermore, I noted that if the RC’s committed any sins, they could just go to confession and get that all cleaned up. Right? No one was constantly reciting to them the fearsome phrase, "my spirit will not always strive with man" which I had been led to believe is that by committing a sin, even unwittingly, one could find themselves eternally banned from any further communication with God. You could weep, you could cry, you could plead, but it would be all to no avail. Shut out. Eternally shut out.

And furthermore, when RC’s died, with no chance to beg forgiveness, someone else took over to do it for them with something called ‘last rites’. And failing all that they even had a stopping off place between the joys of heaven and the horrors of hell called purgatory. Nice.

So from my perspective, it seemed a whole lot easier for a child who had stolen cookies from the jar, or Christmas oranges from the stash under the cupboard, to be forgiven in a Catholic confessional rather than having to go to bed each night worried sick about being cast into a lake of fire. A real risk and possibility in my mind after reciting my prayers. i.e. ‘If I should die before I wake’.

And, in truth, it seemed so much better to me having a living breathing real person behind a wall in a confessional box telling me that my sins were forgiven rather than just hoping they were. It's difficult for a child to cope with the intangible absolution of Fundamentalists. Theirs is a process of seeking absolution through an invisible cosmic connection that always left me worried, particularly during my teen and adolescent years, that I might be too wicked to get absolution because of the occasional pornographic thoughts, and because of the stash of "True Confession" magazines and the sinful tube of lipstick hidden under my mattress.

I was well aware the Seven-Day Adventists had a good thing going as well. After death for the sinful, absolute nothingness. Heaven for the righteous; for the unrighteous just a big whole lot of nothing. That sounded really attractive to me. Comforting. Very comforting indeed.

But going back to RC’s, today I am wondering why a religion that was so liberty-minded, tangible, tolerant, comforting, and easy to follow, when I was a child, could be such a problem for adults. Particularly since nothing in that religion has changed since I was a kid. But what a hue and cry there is from adults in the Catholic Church for reform. They find everything about the church too difficult. Since the death of Pope Jean Paul, and the installation of a new pope, the media has been saturated with articles about RC declining membership and specific issues such as birth control, women in the priesthood, and priests rights to marry.

Now it would seem to me, the common sense approach to all these concerns would be the same common sense approach I had as a child. Particularly since the Catholic Church lays claim to being the original Christian church, and because (and this is stated in doctrine), the church and the Pope are infallible. That being the case, change cannot happen. Change will turn what was once fact into fiction. True and infallible beliefs cannot be altered to fit social and political conditions. To change anything now would be to say the Pope is fallible, the church is fallible and say that historically they have been wrong throughout all of history. That crashes and burns the infallibility and first-church-basis that has always been their best selling point.

So, it would seem to me, that the thing to do is to find an easier religion that has beliefs that are in agreement with one’s personal and social preferences. That would seem more acceptable than deviously pretending to be devoted to a particular sect, while at the same time rejecting a big chunk of the churches' doctrine.

NOTE: In the writing of this blog, I did no research to verify the accuracy of my perceptions of the various sects mentioned. If I have written anything that is an untrue assumption, please feel free to correct that assumption for the benefit of any who may read this rant.