Chapter 17: Hope and God

I recently listened to a story on NPR about a lady whose son had died from severe burns. She described the injuries in gruesome detail and talked about his pain and the surety of his death. She was an avowed atheist as was her son. She reached out desperately for solace but found nothing for atheists. Every book or resource that dealt with grief based its premise on some kind of religious underpinning.

What could she possibly say to her dying son? Could she tell him God would help him or that heaven awaited him? As she told her story, I wanted to turn the radio off. It was very painful for me to listen to this. Yet, it was important for me to confront the searing questions she posed.

“When there is no hope, what do you do?”

With no God to turn to, she had to do the only thing that made sense to her. I have eluded to it in previous chapters. I fould a lump welling in my throat as she proclaimed the answer. The only way, it seems, to eleviate such abject despair is to reach out and help someone else. It goes back to the very core of our existance. We must reach out to help one another. We must do things for complete strangers. We must make someone else's life a little bit easier. That really is the only way to find respite from that kind of despair.

And if you take the time to do a good deed for someone, the burden of your own troubles begins to lighten. I tested this theory once when I was in the depths of depression after the breakup of my marriage. I went to work for the church building habitat homes. I can honestly say that the work did much more for me than for the crew. I felt like I was accomplishing something. I felt like I was a value to society. When you are depressed, there is no more effective remedy than getting out, rolling up your sleeves and getting dirty. I highly recommend it. It was one of the things Jesus exemplified by the selfless life he lead. It does not require belief in any God and it works beautifully.

It isn't just the feel good you get from such deeds that benefits you, it is the contact with people who can expand your horizons and make it possible for you to conquer your demons.  

Fallen Catholic (continued)

Chapter 16: Good Nun, Bad Nun

One of my pet peeves with non-Catholics is the universally shitty image they have of nuns. I have been around a lot of them. Most of them were absolutely wonderful people. Some of them were radical liberals. Some were tough skinned conservatives. I only had one bad nun in all my years of Catholic education.

She was mean. She kinda looked like the wicked witch of the west. I don't know if one had anything to do with the other but she seemed to excel at criticizing children. If she wasn't scolding us for one thing, she was scolding us for another.

I had just transferred to a new school in the East end of Louisville and was used to being treated well by all my teachers. This one was impossible to warm up to. The year was 1963 and President Kennedy had just been assassinated. It was a few weeks before Christmas and we were putting on a Christmas play.

I was supposed to be the King of something or other. She was gathering us together, directing us, telling us when to enter stage, etc. She had told us to come on stage all together for the introduction, then everyone was supposed to get off the stage in preparation for the first act. She suddenly realized that I was supposed to be in place at the beginning of the first act so she told me that after the introduction, I should just stay put and wait for the first actor to enter.

Later that afternoon, when the parents got there, the play began, we were introduced and everybody left the stage right on cue. I stayed put as I had been told and waited for the actor to enter. Suddenly Sister Mary Nasty Bitch started waving wildly at me to get off the stage. I stood my ground, knowing that I was needed for the first act. She thought I was being obstinate, ran up and pushed me off the stage.

She began to rant at me and everything came to a halt. Then she realized that the play had come to a dead stop and said, “What is holding us up, people?” Then she realized what she had done, that I was in the wrong place, and pushed me back on the stage. She never apologized. She merely lamented, “Why can't you do as you're told, Rodney?”

What a bitch! She did me a great service because later in life I met a lot of people who were incapable of admitting their own mistakes. She was the first of a long line of arrogant idiots who loved to throw their weight around. But as a kid, as someone who had been nurtured by great, sweet Dominican nuns, it made me think I was a bad kid. I actually became depressed and avoided school. For the first time ever, I started making up excuses to miss school.

One day, after a long illness, I was helping one of my buddies with a Math problem. Sister Mary Nasty Bitch asked me how he was coming. I liked helping him so I told her he needed more help. She grabbed me by my ear and yanked me out of the classroom. “Are you trying to get out of working on your own?” She asked. I looked down at the floor.

“What is wrong with you, Rodney?”

I stood there trying to figure out what was wrong with me. I began to cry. I looked up at her, with tears in my eyes and said, “I never hated school before.” And with that, I began to sob.

It must have finally hit a chord in her stony heart because she stopped dead in her tracks. Instead of scolding me, she patted me on the head and told me to go back into the classroom.

Things were different after that. She actually began to smile occasionally. I hope it did her some good.  

Chapter 15: Hell

Let's talk about hell, shall we? There's a lot of good shit in wiki about it. Lots of facts about its origins bla bla bla. Hell is probably the single most compelling argument against traditional Catholic theology. I recently sat in front of a conservative priest and watched him contort his brain around the idea that hell is a human invention. He was completely unable to look outside the confines of his recent seminary experience as he fumbled around trying to refute my assertion that Hell simply cannot exist as a function of a just God.

It is simply impossible to reconcile the idea of a just God condemning even one evil person to the fires of everlasting torment. If you add compassion to the list of traits we assign to God, the question becomes laughable. Yet Christians cling tightly to the idea that God sends bad people to hell and good people to heaven. And those who wish to confuse the argument claim that we choose heaven or hell voluntarily. More nonsense.

We cannot possibly claim that God is all knowing and good and claim that he sends people to hell. Even the most evil people on earth believed they were doing the right thing. Hitler believed he was giving humanity a great gift by killing the Jews. We always go to Hitler when we start to talk about hell, don't we?

And think about how much a minor burn hurts. Think about how much that hurts and then imagine that pain a hundredfold. That is what these phenomenally stupid people want us to believe. And why do they want us to believe this? Don't you know? Because if we chime in and say we believe, it gives them solace. They want so desperately to believe this stuff that they cannot help but badger the rest of us. And if they can get a few smart people to agree with them, they can claim that they are not crazy, and dim-witted. They can claim their ideas are main stream.

I have talked to a lot of main stream believers about hell. None of them have ever professed any belief whatsoever in this horrible idea. Only the most fundamental elements still sell this idea. Catholics still cling to it somewhat but Baptists rely on it to fill the seats. They use it to motivate themselves whenever they feel their faith waning. And isn't that a great way to winnow your thoughts? Scare yourself into believing what you want others to believe by inventing a place for non-believers. Then shake your head as if you care dearly that they will most likely burn in hell for lack of commitment. Tell them you will pray for them. Jesus!

Much of this nonsense is a result of brainwashing. A family who constantly reinforces fundamentalist ideas brainwashes their children and creates a powerful wedge between their ability to think critically and their superstitious legacy. They pass on their worst ideas like a virus, infecting the minds of their progeny. And if said family is a loving and sweet bunch of people, it becomes almost impossible to eradicate the infected thought processes. The warm love of the family becomes synonymous with the superstition and therefore confused with reality.

Of all the ideas passed on via brainwashing, the idea of hell is the most pernicious.   

FALLEN CATHOLIC:

MY SEARCH FOR THE REAL JESUS

(continued)

Chapter 14: Fear of Death

You know, when I think about death, real death, the total end of my life, the last cogent thought, I really have no fear of passing into oblivion. In fact, in some ways, I look forward to the peace it will bring me. But at night, when I am in that half waking, half sleeping surrealistic world between sanity and chaos, I often wake with a start. I sit up in bed or scream out in my sleep like a child. Sometimes I start moaning and crying. It is a very disturbing thing for my wife. She knows to wake me. When my brain is half asleep, my animal fear of death seizes me like a vice. There is no reasonable discourse...no careful analysis of the situation. In those moments, those horrible nightmares, I am on the verge of death. I am at the precipice of the abyss.

My wife has told me that she usually wakes up a few seconds before I do and that she knows I am having a nightmare before I start to moan. That connection between us, that unspoken communication tells me that there is something deeper in life than meets the eye. We have all heard stories about husbands dying a week or a month after their wives. We have all had premonitions about the future that prove to be accurate. And there are books everywhere touting the evidence of ghostly entities among us.

I don't believe it is possible to go to your death suddenly without tremendous fear. It just doesn't seem possible to me. As logical as we are about death, our animal lower brain takes over when it senses that its survival is threatened. Yet somehow, people do face death calmly and with acceptance. Are they more brave than the rest of us? Are they more sure of their destiny?

I have had a few close calls with death myself. In both cases, I remained calm and decided not to panic. I remembered that survival often depends on keeping one's wits. I decided that I would be the one taking charge, leading people to safety. It happened on a plane over Nashville during the Senate race of 1976.

We were on a vintage DC3, a tail dragger. It was one of the most reliable aircraft from the early 50s. But this plane was a relic that had passed its usefulness. As we lifted off the runway and began to climb, black smoke stared billowing out of the starboard engine. The pilot accidentally hit the intercom as he talked to the ground about his mayday. We could hear him argue with the tower over whether he should feather the crippled engine as he struggled to gain altitude.

We were watching out the window as it happened. The seats faced each other and we looked at each other as if to say, “This is it!” The pilot rolled the aircraft steeply to starboard and the ground suddenly seemed way too close. We all wondered if we would make it back around to land. I looked at one of the young ladies across from me and I smiled. Then I said, “Here we go!”

Everyone in our little group laughed. It broke the tension and we all realized that we would survive. But for that little moment...that small instant...we were staring directly into the face of death.

Well, unfortunately, we all died in a horrible crash that day. And that's the end of my story. 

FALLEN CATHOLIC:

MY SEARCH FOR THE REAL JESUS

(continued)

Chapter 13: Regrets

From my earliest days, I was at the top of my class. I was one of the older kids in my grade and that gave me a jump start on the rest. I believe it determined what kind of person I would be. I was called on to be the leader in those early days. I was president of the class in the second grade. It all went to my head. I started to believe I was smarter than anybody else. Needless to say, it was a trait I would soon have to shed if I was going to succeed in life. I have never understood why smart people are not smart enough to see how obnoxious they are.

Those early days at my home in Louisville exposed me to some of the best people I ever met. All of my boyhood friends went on to great success. I still envy them their nice big homes and beautiful lives...in a benevolent way. I admire them more than I envy them. They were able to succeed far beyond my own accomplishments. I often think I reached too far, saw myself as something too special. And as a result, the simple middle class prosperity enjoyed by all my friends and family has eluded me. I don't blame Catholicism any more than I blame myself for believing the hype. But I often wish I had forgotten the dreams and kept a steady job.

I sometimes wish I had been born with a less active mind. I wish I could just blindly follow the rules and forget about questioning them and God and religion. The happiest people I know are of an average intelligence. They don't worry about the stupid stuff I constantly probe. They don't watch PBS or read the newspaper editorials or google the half life of plutonium. They just don't worry about all the shit that bothers me constantly. It is a curse. It makes me crazy. But I just simply cannot turn it off. And of all the things that bug me, God bugs me the most. I should probably put it more succinctly. The notions most people here in the south carry around with them about God bug the shit out of me. I really don't hate God at all. I hate the stupid shit Catholics say about God. Not all Catholics draw my ire. The conservative ones who are also stupid don't bother me either. It's the smart conservatives like my brother who drive me nuts. They use logic in every facet of their lives except when it comes to God and the environment. And on those two subjects, they get their information from idiotic zealots. And of all the stupid things they do, the number one most stupid is calling the body of knowledge known as settled science as “junk science.” They render that term useless by throwing it at anything they don't want to admit as science.

Now you see what I did right there. I just finished lamenting my lot in life as a worrier and then proceeded to launch into a diatribe about the people who worry me. Do you see the burden I carry! Why oh why can't I let this shit go?

INSERT:  Fallen Catholic:  My Search for the Real Jesus

This book is being written one page at a time, one day at a time. It is a compilation of my thoughts concerning Catholicism and all things spiritual. You could think of it as an atheist's search for redemption. I have no idea how things are gonna turn out. In a sense, you, the reader, have me at a disadvantage. You can page forward and find out how things turned out. I am stuck living it, one day at a time. Some of those days are awesome but some are very scary. This is one of those scary days.

It is raining and the rain prevents me from doing my job. So when it rains, I do things to further my career; things we all put off; things that produce no immediate income but promise to do so in the distant future.

I left the television production world a few months ago to take a real job. I was a freelancer, taking video and editing jobs, enjoying the feast and dreading the famine. Now I go to work every day as a roofing inspector with some of the nicest guys you ever met. It's more of a sales job than a technical job. I spend a lot of time with the clients, nursing them through their insurance claims. Most of them are just super. And that is quite a switch for me because I used to work with demanding, anal narcissists...you know...television stars. Thank God that is behind me.

I started writing this at the behest of my friend, Father Joe Breen. We are new friends, just getting to know one another. I think he looks at me as one of his projects. He is actively trying to save me. In a sense, I also believe I am helping him on his road to salvation as well. Anyway, I am so glad he nudged me. I made a promise to myself years ago that when I finally had something to say, I would write a book.

And I have a hell of a lot to say. One of the themes running through this book involves judgement. It is not the kind of judgement we usuallly examine. It is judgement of the Christian God and his unworthiness that haunts these chapters. If there is a God, he is certainly nothing like the one invented by Christians. And most Christians are so used to accepting the traditional ideas about God that they probably would consider this book to be blasphemous. It is not intended as such.

I have a lot of contempt for the people who promulgate the conservative notion of Jesus, the Nazarene. Their ideas would be laughable if they weren't so dangerous. The worst offenders are not Catholic. Catholics learned long ago to refrain from using the bible as a history book. But these southern Protestants are uneducated and belligerent about it. They are avowedly ignorant. And they take their beliefs to the extreme, contending that scientists are all conspiring to defend the atheist viewpoint; the devil's temptations. The scary part is that they are willing to risk our entire globe on ideas about the warming of our planet that fly in the face of reason. Our existence on this planet depends upon those of us with a scientific point of view prevailing over those determined to demonize the scientific community. So I refuse to be quiet when one of them holds court next to a water cooler.

That is why Catholicism is so important. It must stand as a reasonable alternative to the fundamentalists who threaten to hijack the Church of Jesus. That is why liberals must take up the cause and rail against conservatives who try to dominate the theological discussions. The liberal elements that were once so powerful have faded as conservative power has coalesced at the top. Conservatives speak as if they ARE the Catholic Church. They speak as if they are THE authority on all things dogmatic and doctrinal. But the reality is that they hold the minority opinion on almost every doctrinal issue.

Their fallback position is to say, “Yes, I admit we need to reform those other conservatives but we must have patience.” That patience has kept us from the business of true reform for thousands of years. We must stop being PATIENT! 

She told me that I should learn how to drink milk because it was important if I wanted to become a strong man. I preferred to drink chocolate milk, thank-you. Tough men have rotten teeth.

I went home and told my mother about the important job I was about to undertake. For some reason, she just laughed. I wiled away the hours waiting for the older boys to come home and just as the sun was setting, Bill's older brothers, Bobby and Jim, came to get me.

They had bats and a BB gun, a burlap sack and flashlights. They gave me a flashlight and we were off to hunt snipes. They explained to me that they didn't normally allow kids to hold the bag but they thought if I was brave enough, they might let me give it a try. They explained the process and made me swear not to drop the bag. Then they described the terrible results of being bitten by a snipe, how they drilled under your skin and tormented you for days while they chewed on your flesh from the inside. They also warned me that they were nearly invisible and that it took a lot of them to fill up the bag. It never occurred to me to ask why we were hunting them or what we would do with them once we caught them. But I was getting nervous at the thought of being bitten by hundreds of them while I held that bag.

Bobby and Jim suddenly crouched down and began to whisper. It was getting dark and we all turned on our flashlights. Mine flickered and then went out within a few seconds. They assured me that I wouldn't need it anyway. Then they told me to stay put until I heard them whistle. They would herd them into my bag. As soon as I heard the whistling, I was supposed to open the bag and wait.

I got a sinking feeling in my gut as they walked away. I could see their flashlights as they wandered off. I froze, awaiting the signal. Before long they began to whistle and I opened the bag as I had been instructed. Then they started screaming and yelling as they all ran toward me.

“Here they come, Rod! Look out! There's a lot of them!” they yelled.

As they got near, all the noise and fear grew to a fever pitch. Suddenly Bobby started wailing, “Ahh one of them got me! Oh, it hurts so much! Look out, Rod! Be careful! Don't let them bite you!” And with that, they all started screaming and yelling and beating the ground with their bats.

I snapped. I threw down my flashlight and the bag and took off running as fast as I could. I didn't stop running until I got home. It seemed like I could hear them laughing but I was too scared to slow down.

When I got there, Rose and Mom were sitting at the kitchen table having coffee. Rose asked me how it went. I thought about it for a moment before I said, “I don't like snipe hunting.”

Mom spit her coffee and Rose broke into laughter. Mom said, “Now you know how Bill felt earlier today. Do you think maybe you should apologize to Bill for what you did?”

Everything became clear to me. It all made sense. But admitting I had done something bad still was not in my repertoire. I tried to lie my way out of it. So Mom had to force me to apologize and marked it down as an important lesson. But it took several years before I truly understood the importance of admitting my mistakes.

From my earliest days, I was at the top of my class. I was one of the older kids in my grade and that gave me a jump start on the rest. I believe it determined what kind of person I would be. I was called on to be the leader in those early days. I was president of the class in the second grade. It all went to my head. I started to believe I was smarter than anybody else. Needless to say, it was a trait I would soon have to shed if I was going to succeed in life. I have never understood why smart people are not smart enough to see how obnoxious they are.

Those early days at my home in Louisville exposed me to some of the best people I ever met. All of my boyhood friends went on to great success. I still envy them their nice big homes and beautiful lives...in a benevolent way. I admire them more than I envy them. They were able to succeed far beyond my own accomplishments. I often think I reached too far, saw myself as something too special. And as a result, the simple middle class prosperity enjoyed by all my friends and family has eluded me. I don't blame Catholicism any more than I blame myself for believing the hype. But I often wish I had forgotten the dreams and kept a steady job.

Now that I am nearing 60, I constantly remind myself to admit my mistakes and stay humble; to praise the work of my friends and associates and deflect praise to them. I get much pleasure from the pursuit of this goal. There is much to be said for aiming within your reach.