“Well, Maria, you’re a CEO now”, my cousin, Robert, leans over to inform me. We’re sitting in the church basement, munching on pastries and sipping coffee while we celebrate my Confirmation.
“CEO?” I look at him questioningly.
“Christmas and Easter only”, he responds with a grin.
Growing up in a small town, church was a thing I did with my family on holidays and Sunday mornings, a tradition passed down by my grandparents (well, mostly my Grandpa). It seemed like there were two main choices when it came to religion - Catholic or Baptist. And since my family had a few “CEOs” in our bunch, I suspect the significant hours the Baptists spent at church most nights of the week made the Catholic’s hour-long commitment to Sunday morning mass seem like an easy yes.
Religion was just another part of my life as a kid, something that provided a sense of familiarity and comfort that I appreciate more now as an adult. I remember the strong smell of incense, the fronds on Palm Sunday, Grandma’s big, white furry jacket that she always wore to Christmas Eve mass. While my Grandpa was alive, we went to mass fairly regularly on Sundays. Summertime was the exception since we spent most of our weekends up at the lake. My sister used to tell people that church was closed in the summer.
There were some odd rituals - dabbing water on ourselves upon entering the church, rubbing black ash on our foreheads during Ash Wednesday, the endless dance of stand, sit, kneel, repeat. As a first grader at my First Communion, I was terrified about eating the body and blood of Jesus. Did the bread taste like human skin? Would the wine really turn to blood? Would it stain my white dress? Discovering that wafers tasted like stale Kix cereal, and the wine like bitter grape juice was almost a bit of a letdown.
In elementary school, the Catholic kids left school for an hour to attend catechism where we memorized the Our Fathers, Hail Marys, and Glory Bes. Once we reached middle school, classes switched to Wednesday nights where we’d spend our evenings sitting in folding chairs in the church basement listening to our teachers talk about Jesus dying for our sins and why we should remain abstinent until marriage. I remember a particularly awkward evening during my seventh-grade year where our teacher cried quietly while she shared her regrets about not saving the very special gift of her virginity for her husband. As a thirteen-year-old still uncomfortable with my rapidly changing body, listening to sex being described with regret by an old person was mortifying and made me want to cover my ears and crawl under the table.
And yet, confession was the most terrifying part of my Catholic upbringing. For weeks, we prepared for the sacrament of reconciliation, reviewing the scripts and many steps involved.
First, we were to examine our conscience and pray that Jesus would help us make a good confession. Once in the confessional, we’d greet the priest, confess our sins, accept our penance, and recite the Act of Contrition.
I felt like I’d landed the starring role in the school play that I was clearly not cut out for. I was scared that I’d get in front of the priest and forget everything I was supposed to say. For weeks, I’d practice reciting my lines:
“Dear God, I am sorry for my sins with all my heart. In choosing to do wrong and failing to do good, I have sinned against you whom I should love above all things. I firmly intend with Your help, to do penance, to sin no more, and to avoid whatever leads me to sin.”
On top of stressing about the script, I felt the need to be on my best behavior. What if I forgot something and didn’t confess all of my sins? Did I have to go back?
Finally, the day arrived. As we sat in the pews, quietly waiting our turn to confess our sins, I obsessively ran through my lines, not at all comforted by the fact that our teacher said we could take our scripts in the confessional with us. As I watched my classmates enter the little booths, a red light would flick on above the door, indicating someone was inside, confessing their sins. I watched the red-light flick on and off, on and off, until my turn finally arrived.
I entered the booth and made the sign of the cross, sneaking a quick glance at the priest through the mesh screen.
“Bless me Father for I have sinned. This is my first confession”.
I quickly ran through my list of offenses.
Not listening to my parents.
Fighting with my sister.
Being mean to a friend.
The priest was quiet, saying nothing. I became certain my list was too small. He must have thought I was holding back. I frantically racked my brain for something more to say.
“And I swore!” I blurted out. “I said the word shit”.
Waves of panic washed over me. I said shit in front of a priest. I didn’t know if I’d actually said the word recently. I’m sure I did at some point prior to the confession, but without 100% certainty, I wondered if I should add lying to a priest to the list.
My heart thudded hard against my chest. I felt moments away from being banished from the confessional.
The priest chuckled quietly and proceeded to respond to my ridiculous confession with words of advice, assigning me three Hail Marys and ten Our Fathers as my act of contrition.
“I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”
“Amen!”, I shouted and bolted out of the confessional, running straight to the pew and kneeling in relief, dutifully repeating my Hail Marys and Our Fathers as directed.
Up until that point I hadn’t done a whole lot of formal praying. I’d mostly lay in bed at night, mentally checking off the list of family members that I would ask God to watch over so they would stay safe using my prayers as assurance that nothing bad would happen to them. Occasionally as I was drifting off, a forgotten family member would pop into my mind, and I’d start the list all over again, fearful that if I didn’t list all of them in one straight shot, then something terrible would result and it would be all of my fault. But that ritual tapered off after my Grandpa died. I’d prayed for him every night, and he still got cancer and died. It felt grossly unfair, and I started to doubt that God was even listening.
By the time I’d completed Confirmation, I was skeptical about Catholicism in general. I’d spent those months of preparation being forced to sign my name in a book to prove I attended mass. And since my family didn’t attend church in the summer (cabin season), my name was conspicuously absent for the months of June, July, and August. I tried to pass it off as forgetfulness, but the church wasn’t having it. To call my bluff, my mom had to write a letter to the bishop explaining that her daughter was clearly a nitwit who couldn’t even remember to do a simple thing like sign a book, and golly wasn’t the church lucky to have a nincompoop like this joining their ranks. I’m not sure what act of contrition is required when one lies to a bishop but being that my parents are very much rule followers, I appreciated this small act of disobedience on my behalf.
After confirmation, I fully embraced my role as CEO, attending church on Christmas and Easter out of a sense of duty and obligation. I increasingly found myself at odds with the church's views, tuning out the sermons and peering at the clock every few minutes, anxiously awaiting the end of mass. As stories surfaced in the news of Catholic priests who abused their power to commit revolting crimes against children began to surface along with the long history of church officials who swept this kind of abuse under the rug, I could no longer reconcile the safe, comforting church I’d attended as kid to an institution that had allowed such horror to occur with little to no accountability.
I suppose part of growing up is realizing that the world can be a complex and scary place and that the idealized images we carried around in our heads as kids don’t always translate to the reality of adulthood.
Of course, it wasn’t all bad. Religion did bring a sense of structure to my life and the desire to be a kind person. As I transitioned away from Catholicism, I was able to hold on to the vestiges of whatever faith I had left and approach a relationship with God on my own terms. It turned out that there were a lot of different places telling stories about love, kindness, and hope. Places that sought to build community, to grow and care for others. As I continue to adjust to this contemporary world of ours, I find myself still learning. Maybe that’s just part of the journey. Have a little faith.
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