Autohagiography 2

  My family was nominally Catholic, and I went through the normal process of initiation into the American Church; Baptism, C.C.D. (Confraternity of Christian Doctrine) classes till 8^thGrade, the accompanying sacraments of Confession (Lately re-named with the politically correct and less threatening title of “Reconciliation”), First Communion and Confirmation. Aside from attending Mass on most Sundays my family wasn't actively involved in parish life of a religious nature. I felt very much like a foreigner when I was at church. After Confirmation (around 14, I think) I wasn't forced to go to church anymore, so I didn't..

  I recall that, during that time in the late 60s, we still had a few nuns teaching C.C.D. Mostly I was bored in the classes. The Catholic religion, with its moral and physical limitations was the last thing a growing boy wanted to hear about. And on the rare occasions that I did have a difficult question for the teacher it was treated as a mortal insult and went unanswered. Nobody ever bothered to reason with us or to prove that God even existed. We were to take it on authority alone. Maybe nobody ever considered the possibility that we wouldn’t. We never cracked a Bible (Happily this has changed! When I taught P.S.R., today's C.C.D., each class had a shelf of Bibles and we made sure to use them.). Aside from the Ten Commandments I retained little.  Whether it was the fault of my own inattention or the methods, I didn't learn much.

  As a result of my unanswered questions and the prevailing secularism of Sixties society I concluded that the Catholic faith had neither the answers nor the truth. One of the few lasting memories from C.C.D. is of a young nun in a habit, a rarity these days, singing Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” and strumming on her folk guitar. A sign of things to come for the Catholic Church!