Fallen Catholic (continued)



My Grandmother used to make me kneel down on her hardwood floor in her bedroom to say the rosary.  She must’ve had me pegged for a real hard case.  Grandmother was the most saintly woman you ever met.  Not the pain in the ass, holier than thou kind.  A really good person loved by everybody who knew her.  It always amazed me that the most decent sweet woman I knew was so afraid of going to Purgatory that she made a habit of praying the whole rosary at least once a week.  

The Rosary is a long string of prayers rattled of by rote while keeping count on beads.  There are three basic prayers.  The “Our Father,” the “Hail Mary” and the “Glory Be.”  Any of these prayers is sufficiently long by itself.  But when you say a Rosary, you better make sure you have a lot of time and lots of callouses on your knees.  It’s over 50 “Hail Marys”and a pile of the other prayers.  If you want to know the details just google, “How to Pray the Rosary.”  Even now they promise special spiritual benefits for droning out these prayers.  Stunning that people in this day and age still do this.  I have no idea why God would want us to bore him with prayers like this over and over and over and over again.  I can only guess that there must be a lot of obsessive compulsive Catholics.  

Anyway, this is a good example of the kind of magic that breaks you out of Purgatory.  Going to Mass every Friday for a year is a big special deal.  Or it used to be when I was a kid.  They had one called a Plenary Indulgence.  That was a string of things you do that takes a long time to do.  And if you do all of the prayers and things on the list, you are guaranteed a place in heaven.  Pass go, collect two hundred dollars and wowwy wow wow, you just hit the jackpot.  Now don’t get me wrong.  I don’t wanna say that the folks who came up with these rules are morons.  Oh, wait a minute.  I was wrong.  Yes.  Yes, I do want to say the people who came up with these rules are morons.  This is the stupidest thing I ever heard of.  And any Catholic over 50 will tell you it’s true.  Not only that, but in the Middle Ages, you could buy...that’s right... BUY indulgences.  Stunning isn’t it?  

Oh and here’s the kicker.  A few years ago they decided that the whole idea of Purgatory was false.  “Okay all you sinners.  You can leave now.  Purgatory is closing.  You can go on to heaven.  Everybody but this guy.  You go to hell.  Just kidding.  Sorry about the burns.  Last one out turn off the lights will ya?  Anybody want the sign?”

Somehow I can imagine Jesus smacking himself in the forehead when he heard about it.  But I am getting ahead of myself.

Of all the magic acts in the Catholic Church, the very best was the magic of Communion.  You are gonna slap me and call me a liar.  But get this.  In the Catholic Church, to this day, the wafer thin bread that is used as the host is actually and undeniably turned into the actual body and blood of Jesus H. Christ.  It is not a representation or a commemoration of Christ.  It is the real, actual, body and blood of Jesus only it still looks, smells and tastes like bread.  It really is.  No shit.  Grown adults discuss this as if there was something philosophically relevant.  They give it a fancy name; transubstantiation.  Here is a brief excerpt from Wiki on the subject:

The earliest known use of the term "transubstantiation" to describe the change from bread and wine to body and blood of Christ that was believed to occur in the Eucharist was by Hildebert de Lavardin, Archbishop of Tours (died 1133), in the eleventh century and by the end of the twelfth century the term was in widespread use.[5] TheFourth Council of the Lateran, which convened beginning November 11, 1215,[6] spoke of the bread and wine as "transubstantiated" into the body and blood of Christ: "His body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the forms of bread and wine, the bread and wine having been transubstantiated, by God's power, into his body and blood".[7]

My utter belief in this doctrine and my subsequent salvation from childhood brainwashing has tainted my judgement of all things Catholic.  I strongly believe that the above mentioned Arch Bishop of Tours should be burned in effigy for this blatantly idiotic idea.  Yet millions of Catholics worldwide defend it.  If you polled Catholics on what they actually think about this, my guess is that you would find a large minority who find it to be problematic.  I’m being generous here.  

So the moment of transubstantiation is the central focus of the Mass.  Nothing is more important to the Mass than the climax of the big show.  And this is definitely the climax.  

As a child, I used to stare up at the host as it was hoisted above all and marvel at how it glowed.  I was convinced that when I got my first Communion that I would experience a heavenly transformation.  I had dreams about the event in anticipation.  Finally, when the magic day finally came halfway through the second grade, I was shaking with excitement.  I was worried that I would somehow bite down, accidentally on Jesus.  I remembered the advice given me by Sister Cornelia Marie to leave it on my tongue until it dissolved enough to swallow.  But when the ecstatic moment came, alas, there were no Angels or horns or tinkling bells or delicious flavor.  In fact, the dry little wafer immediately stuck to the roof of my mouth prompting me to claw at it desperately with my tongue.  I began to panic as my efforts proved fruitless.  My meditation on holy thoughts was completely overshadowed by my increasingly futile efforts to swallow our Lord and Savior.  All I could think about was how stupid I had been.  

Knowing that it was a mortal sin to touch it, I looked around to see if anybody else was struggling with the mechanics.  It seemed to me that most of the other kids were praying reverently with their eyes closed.  I peeked at Sister Cornelia Maria and realized she was in line to get served.  So I went for it.  I bent my head down and hid my hands and pulled the bread off the roof on my mouth using my fingernail.  Then I immediately looked around to see if I had escaped being caught.  My heart raced as I imagined being hoisted by my hair and thrown out of church.  But nothing happened.  The bread got stuck again at the back of my throat but after repeatedly gulping, I was able to send Jesus to his resting place in my gut.