Posted by Placenta Jones at dpsnet.detpub.k12.mi.us on November 22, 1999 at 15:59:46:
In Reply to: My Catholic Education posted by Kitty-Kat on November 22, 1999 at 15:04:47:
[WARNING: This is a rant about Catholic Education that loosely ties back to Dogma. Danger! I will be making broad generalizations. When I refer to "most Catholics", I'm referring to the Catholic community I was raised in and that I'm familiar with. If you take any offense to this...well... you can kiss my pucker.]
After reading the above post, I got to thinking about Catholic education and the effect it has on young people. Hell, I went through 13 years of Catholic Ed myself.
(My mom used to be a nun and get this...my dad proposed to her while she was STILL a nun. I love the fact that my dad apparently makes a better husband than Jesus. I guess ol' JC just wasn't meeting my mom's "needs".)
The amazing thing about kids who go to Catholic School is that you will never, EVER find people who take religion less seriously. Catholicism is just a way of life for those of us who were forced to wear a matching tie and slacks. We dealt with it in the same way that people in Arizona deal with the heat. We suffered through it and tried to ignore the effects it had on our lives. There's a reason why you'll never see an after-school Bible group (which you'll find in most urban high schools) in a Catholic school. Most Catholics I was raised with didn't care about the exact wording in the Bible. Those of us who have been forced to study Catholism and who accompany their parents to Mass on Easter and X-Mas are all pretty sure that we've got the "GIST" of the Bible and that's enough.
Why is that? Maybe it's the educated Catholic's way of dealing with all of the bullshit and contradictions you come across when you really study Catholic law. I once saw two teachers almost get into a fist fight over Vatican II and whether there were actually 7 sacraments. I sat through countless classes, listening to teachers hem and haw, trying to explain where exactly the Bible says "premartial sex is bad." I've never, ever seen church doctrine applied in any way that actually helped a person or (for that matter) did any good at all. Dogma (in my experience) is a rigid, restrictive, and useless creation of the Church.
Most practicing Catholics that I grew up with tried not to sweat the details. Why? I think because if you pay enough attention to those nit-picky human predjudices, those kind of things can destroy your faith. Do ALL Catholics believe in ALL of Jesus' teachings? Well, no. They believe in a lot of them, but then again, most of them are just standard moral codes. Do ALL Catholics believe in transubstantion, the physical transformation of body and blood? No, a lot of them just think it's a wheat wafer and the cheapest, nastiest wine the Church could buy. Do ALL Catholics believe in the moral infallibility of the Pope? To be honest, I've never met one single Catholic who does.
I once heard a religion teacher tell a class that if you didn't believe all of the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church, then you weren't really a Catholic. If that's true, then I know no true Catholics. My favorite part of "Dogma" was when Rock talked about the value of ideas over beliefs. Most Catholics I've met practice this and they don't even know it. No one I know BELIEVES that that the bread and wine is the body and blood of Christ, but a lot of people I know find the IDEA of that kind of sacrifice to be a vastly spiritual experience.
Sure, there are the born-agains and the fundamentalists, but the Catholics I know are scavengers. Picking up an idea here and there. Building their belief system off of the things that Jesus said that made sense to them and trying to ignore the things that didn't. However, I fully acknowledge that not everyone has lived my life, so your experiences may be different.
BUT in those quick lines from Chris Rock (who, Lord help me, looked like he was waiting to deliver a punchline the entire flick), I think Kevin touched upon one of the MAJOR sources of strength for the modern Catholic. I don't believe in the Catholic Church at all, but it sure has given me a few good ideas.
Take care,
Placenta
PS - I also agree that going to Catholic school helped me catch more references in "Dogma" than my heathen wife was able to. On the other hand, my extensive reading of "Thor" also helped me clean up on the "Norse Mythology" category on "Jeopardy" the other night, so...
PPS - Sorry this is so damn long.