Catholic School blues

I am a Catholic school survivor. Yes, I went to Catholic school from 1st thru 7th grade, and I made it out, skirt and socks intact. I had a few good friends there, and for most part, my experience was a good one, but there were things I could have done without. Like church. Church, for me, was a boring, humbling, and sometimes humiliating experience. We had to go to church every first Friday of the month. When I was a younger kid, church was fun. We got to sit together and sing songs, pray and read from the missle, which I liked to volunteer to do whenever I got the chance. However, the older I got, the more jaded I got about church. I started to see just how things worked in the Catholic church, and I didn't like what I was seeing.

You see, I was never baptized. My family sent me to Catholic school because they wanted me to have a better education than I could have gotten from a public school. They thought that being in a private school would shield me from some of the bad stuff that went on in public schools. And I thank them for wanting to give me the best they could. But church....I don't think that was the best thing for me. My church experience consisted of me sitting in the pew while everyone else went to communion, and having to sit while everyone else went to confession. All the other kids would point at me and tell me that I was going to go to hell because I could not confess my sins. Even the teachers would tell me that I could never get into heaven because I was not baptized. That was not exactly encouraging to hear. To me, it just seemed like God would not disallow someone into heaven solely on the basis that he/she was not baptized. That just seemed to contradict everything we learned about God in school. We were taught, and I have always believed, that God is compassionate and loving and kind and loves all of us unconditionally. So why would He not let someone who was good into heaven just because he/she was not baptized? Doesn't that seem contradictory, or is that just me?

I think that when I started to think this way was when I really got turned off to churches and organized religion in general. All religions and churches have their own sets of rules and regulations, and all of the churches want you to give them so much of your income. When I was a kid, the teachers would make the kids who couldn't give very much feel guilty. In fact, I felt so guilty that I could not give more, that I went into my dad's coin collection and took some of his buffalo nickels to put into the coffer. Seems kind of funny that I had to resort to stealing just to appease my teachers. Of course, then I had more guilt because I took my dad's coins!

It just seems like church caused me more problems than it helped me. It made me feel guilty, it made me steal, and I was told that I would never get into heaven. It also caused me humiliation by having to sit and watch all the other "heaven-bound" kids take communion and go to confession. It was then that I decided to have a one-on-one relationship with God, and to let no one ever make me feel inferior just because I didn't have some water splashed on my forehead. I talk to God, I believe in God, and I thank God everyday for my life. Just because I don't go to church does not make me a heathen, and I think that God would agree with me there.