Those
fifteen friends . . . I should mention something about our religious backgrounds.
Religion
Eleven of
us came from families that were more or less Catholic. No one’s family seems to have taken religion
too seriously, though. I was the only
one that had attended Catholic schools.
Catholicism had never really taken root in any of us.
Of the
other four, one came from a nominally Lutheran family, one from a non-religious
family that had at one time been Eastern Orthodox, and two came from Jewish
families.
The
Lutheran family had been churchgoers when my friend was small, but he had
received little or no religious instruction, and his only supernatural interest
as a teenager was in the occult.
The Eastern
Orthodox family had long since abandoned any interest in religion at all. My friend’s parents had been born in the
Ukraine, and their experience of Soviet Communism, famine and war had been
rather intense. All of that had left
them with the firm opinion that we are on our own in this world, and they
sought no assistance from prayer. My
friend had, I believe, never heard a word about religion while growing up.
One of the
Jewish boys came from a mixed family.
Mixed in several ways, actually.
His dad was Jewish, but secular.
His mom was substantially black, from a family that was quite blended,
and generically Christian with Catholic overtones from Irish progenitors. He had hardly heard a word about Judaism
while growing up, and his attendance of Catholic grammar school was a matter of
geography and convenience. It was the
closest school to his home. By the time
that I met him he was vigorously anti-religious in the French style (he was
quite a Francophile). “Tax the church,”
etc. He had never received Jewish
instruction, and he had not been Bar mitzvah’d.
My other
Jewish friend came from a semi-secular family of Reformed Jews. He had received religious instruction as a
boy, from two religions in fact. The family
lived in Puerto Rico for several of his high school years and while there he
had attended a Catholic high school. He
did have a Bar mitzvah as a thirteen year old.
By the time that we were all hanging out, he was no longer interested,
if he ever had been.
All of this
was somewhat interesting to some of us; less so to others. My Reformed Jewish friend was interested in
Catholic practice, a holdover from his days in Puerto Rico. He was curious about confession, for
instance. I explained the process to him
and taught him the formulas, and he actually did show up for confession once or
twice. We came up with a few sins for
him to confess, and he recited the formulas and “confessed” those sins. He was particularly fascinated by his “penance,”
a list of prayers to recite. He also
took me and a couple of others to temple once or twice. We wore our borrowed yarmulkes and sat
respectfully. It was all very
interesting in a social science experiment kind of way. But not for us, we all agreed.
For the
friends that I am still in contact with, religion has remained a mystery best
left to others. It is possible that some
may have passed on their Catholicism to their children.
I am only
informed about one friend that found religion later on. At some point, my “Lutheran” friend chose to
become a Catholic. He was drawn in equal
parts by the ritual aspects of Catholicism and the writings of Catholic mystic Thomas Merton. I think it all gave him
some comfort, and I’d be happy about that.
He had pretty severe hereditary health issues that finally killed him a
little on the young side.
For my
part, I did not deliver my children to any particular religion, but neither did
I bad mouth religion in their presence.
I took them, as boys, to a variety of religious services, Catholic,
Protestant and Jewish. I was leaving the
decision to them, religion or not, up to you!
Neither of them has found a need to include religion in their lives. They are both married to Christian women (one
from Indonesia and one from Kenya), and we’ll see what happens with the
children. That one is too early to
call.
I remain
non-religious, bordering now on being anti-religious. I would tolerate it better if religion was
merely a harmless diversion for fearful, confused people. It certainly is that for most adherents, but
for many it is a fever that causes much mischief in the world. Many of the religions themselves have, over
the centuries, generated a lot of mischief and terror on their own motion. I find it all unforgivable and quite
unnecessary.
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