The dominant influence when it came to the religious training of my youth was my maternal grandmother. She was born and bred a Catholic and it was her mission in life to make sure that the family toed the company line.
This was especially true after my mother and father were divorced. My mother gave up on the church when a priest told her she could no longer receive communion because she was a divorcee. Her response was that in the churches eyes it must have been better for her to remain with an irresponsible alcoholic who endangered their children through his actions just so she could continue to receive communion.
From that moment forward she turned her back on the church. She would attend for the special events. First communion, confirmation the occasional wedding or funeral but she to this day refuses to attend mass or receive communion.
So by default nana became my religious teacher. Everyday after school upon completing my homework she would break out the catechism and I would spend the next thirty to forty-five minutes reviewing the teachings of the church, answering questions and memorizing the standard prayers.
My religious education went on without a hitch until I began high school and coincidently began thinking a bit more for myself. It was not so much that my belief in God had faded. More that I began to question the black and white way in which nana viewed the world.
For instance: one of the first debates we had developed when I began to question who can enter the kingdom of heaven. My grandmother was hard-core and in her minds eye only good Catholics made it through the pearly gates. This was a belief that I was unable to wrap myself around. What sense did it make to punish people in some far off land who may have never even heard of the so-called one true church.
Nana would have none of that. The more I questioned this belief the more she fell back on the old standby that it was not man’s place to question God. What she really found disturbing though was when I asked if it was man’s place to speak for God?
Another debate concerned remaining loyal to the church, meaning that you should marry a Catholic and raise your children in the faith. I could never understand from a purely religious point of view how that made any sense. Love did not recognize the boundaries where one mans faith ended and another’s began.
It was not until much later in life that I understood that it was never really an issue of faith. The issue was preserving intact the marriage vows. A couple stands a much better chance of success when they share similar religious beliefs.
Finally though, for me the issue that led to my putting away the childlike faith of my youth and replacing it with my own understanding of God was the discovery that my grandmother and grandfather like anyone else had a history. One that nana never spoke of until I was fifteen or sixteen years old.
It turned out that not only did nana marry outside of the faith but also she married a divorced man and in a civil ceremony to boot. Now personally this had little or no effect on my life. I mean if she had not married my grandfather there would be no me. So obviously I had a vested interest. No, for me it was the hypocrisy of the whole thing. She had spent years teaching me the foundations of our faith and here I find that she herself had not followed a rigid line of obedience.
My grandfather, before he met and married my grandmother was briefly married to his second cousin. Apparently the marriage was over rather quickly and my grandfather divorced her. Oh and my grandfather was raised a Methodist and had never set foot inside a Catholic Church.
When my grandparents decided to marry they discussed a church ceremony with the priest in charge of the parish my grandmother attended. They were informed that a petition would have to be filed requesting the churches permission to marry. Being impatient, young and in love they did not want to wait for the formal permission so they went to Arizona and were married in a civil ceremony.
When the petition was granted they had a small ceremony in which their union was recognized by the church. On a side note in order to receive final approval for the wedding my grandfather had to sign away any official say in the religious upbringing of any children the union produced.
As tends to happen in life. My grandfather eventually converted to the Catholic church and was very active in his parish up until the time of his death.
From the vantage point of hard earned hindsight I can see that nana was just toeing the company/church line. Passing on the lessons she had learned without stepping outside the box to think for herself. Which is exactly how someone would have been raised in the church prior to the changes of Vatican II.
Happily as is wont to happen as one ages my grandmother softened around the edges and in later discussions even acknowledged that there might be room for non-Catholics in heaven after all. Go figure.
