In this week’s episode, we continue a multi-part series about my off-again, on-again relationship with God and the Catholic Church. I’m not trying to evangelize anyone or be a preacher. I’m just here to tell my story which I hope is entertaining and informative.

Hello, this is Chris Young, and welcome to episode #7 of “Contemplating Life”.

This week we are going to continue our multi-part series on my off-again, on-again relationship with God and the Catholic Church.

Let me reiterate my usual disclaimer when I discuss religion here. When I discuss religion, I’m not specifically trying to evangelize or proselytize anyone. I’m just sharing my views and experiences about faith. I hope that it is entertaining and informative. If by chance, you find it sparks something in your own faith journey that’s fine also.

When we left off last week, my mother was expressing her concerns that I might have to eat meat on Friday because the public schools didn’t follow the Catholic practice of abstinence. However, my recollection is that at some point we did get lots of fish sandwiches and grilled cheese on Friday so it eventually became a nonissue.

The question of the Friday lunch menu was not the only challenge Catholic kids faced going to public school. In 1962, a Supreme Court decision banned mandatory prayer in public schools. As a response to that, well-intentioned Christians developed something called “Weekday Religious Education” to try to put God back in our schools. Of course, they were not allowed to do any religious education on public school property. So they would send some sort of trailer or RV around to different public schools. The kids could be dismissed for one hour per week to go attend Bible classes.

I don’t know how they got the wheelchair kids into the trailer when it came to the special education school but for a brief time, my school did participate in Weekday Religious Education. That is, the Protestant kids did. It was a serious rule that Catholics could not participate in any non-Catholic religious activity. You even had to have special permission to be in the wedding party of a non-Catholic wedding. None of the Catholic parents would allow their kids to attend the program. Even though they claimed it was nondenominational, that was just code for generic Protestant. The whole idea of Catholic kids studying the Bible directly was unacceptable. We had to study the little blue book instead.

The end result was, the Catholic kids faced harassment and criticism for not attending Weekday Religious Education. This sort of harassment was exactly the kind of thing that the Supreme Court was trying to prevent when they outlawed mandatory school prayer. We have the separation of church and state for a reason. The First Commandment forbids us from worshiping other gods. The First Amendment protects us from being forced to violate the First Commandment by providing for total separation of Church and State.

While much of Protestant theology is identical to Catholic theology, the approach to Scripture is extremely different between Bible Belt Fundamentalist Christian denominations and the Catholic approach to Scripture. Even ordinary children’s hymns could be controversial.

I always thought the Catholic version of “Yes, Jesus loves me.” would go, “Jesus loves me this I know. For the Holy Roman Catholic Church, The Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, and the Baltimore Catechism tells me so.”

Among the other Vatican II reforms, they also admitted that the stories of some of the saints were just legends and were highly unlikely to be based on any historical fact. Among those demoted from historical fact to fairytale legends was my namesake and parish patron St. Christopher.

After First Confession and First Communion, the next sacrament in line was Confirmation. It is an anointing given by the Bishop or Archbishop. I’m not sure at what age it was typical for children to receive this sacrament. Currently, it is generally around 13-16 years of age. I think at the time, it might have been slightly younger than that. Each parish only had Confirmation every two years because they had to wait their turn for the Bishop or Archbishop to come around and confer the sacrament.

My parents had been advised by the doctors that I might not live very long. The doctors were clueless as to the nature of my disability. We will probably devote an entire episode to the question of my diagnosis at some later date. For our purposes, they didn’t think I had long to live and so mom rushed me through all of these childhood sacraments at an early age. She didn’t want to risk waiting two years for the Archbishop to come back around again in case I didn’t last that long.

I’m not sure how well I would have understood the Sacrament of Confirmation had I been given the full round of instructions at the appropriate age. But because I was rushed through at an early age, I was quite clueless as to what it was all about. I was told I would receive the Holy Spirit through anointing on my forehead and that it would make me a “Soldier of Christ.”

Somehow the idea of being a Christian Soldier made me think that I was somehow going to be in opposition to Roman Soldiers as I’d seen in movies. I also noted that the Romans were known to throw Christians to the lions. They had to reassure me that kind of thing didn’t happen anymore. I don’t know at what age I was Confirmed but I think it must’ve been extremely young and may have even been before my First Communion which would have been highly against protocol.

Part of the process of Confirmation is that you take on a confirmation name. Typically kids are told to choose the name of a saint that is meaningful to them. I chose Paul for three reasons: my instructor was Fr. Paul, newly elected Pope Paul VI, and Paul McCartney.

You are supposed to have an adult sponsor to stand up with you at the ceremony during your anointing. I chose my Uncle John, my mother’s sister’s husband. He was my closest male Catholic relative.

I remember we had a party for me at my house after one or both of these sacraments of initiation. I got lots of religious presents such as rosaries, statues, crucifixes, prayer books, and I don’t recall what else. I recall I had two versions of a statue known as Infant Jesus of Prague. It’s a bizarre figure showing a child wearing a royal robe, and a crown, holding a golden globe in one hand and giving some sort of two-finger salute with the other hand. Google it. They sat on my dresser for many years and I had to try to explain to my friends what they were.

In my 30s, I became a catechist who taught the Catholic faith to adults who wanted to become Catholic. I would pick and choose which topics I felt comfortable teaching. I always told the priest, “Don’t make me teach the Sacrament of Confirmation. They messed me up when I had the sacrament too early and even though I’ve studied the bizarre theology behind it, I don’t trust myself to get it right.”

The names of the Sacraments changed during my early years. At first, your sins were forgiven in the Sacrament of Confession because the emphasis was on confessing your sins to God in the presence of the priest. Then they changed it to the Sacrament of Penance. After you confess your sins, the priest gives you a penance. It’s something to do to express your sorrow for your sins and to practice doing better. Traditionally you would get prayers such as a certain number of Our Fathers and a certain number of Hail Marys. Sometimes your penance was designed to make up for what you did. So if you are mean to your kid sister, you had to be nice to her for a whole week. “Really father? A whole week!?”

Calling it “Penance” was theologically questionable because it implied that the point of the exercise was to somehow make up for what we had done wrong. To pay for our sins. Through the sacrifice and death of Jesus, our sins are paid for. There is nothing you yourself can do to bridge the unbridgeable gap between you and God that is created by sin. Only God can do that.

They finally settled on calling it the Sacrament of Reconciliation. This name puts the emphasis on the proper part of the process. You are being reconciled to God. There is still penance given as part of the process. While it sometimes includes prayer, these days it’s usually not some sort of formula such as a certain number of Hail Marys. Perhaps you will be assigned to pray a Psalm or read a scripture passage about forgiveness. There is still the possibility that your penance is to make some sort of reparation if you have harmed someone. It’s not that you’re paying for your sin but you are righting the wrong you created.

The other sacrament which was renamed is a sacrament that the general public referred to as “Last Rites”. The technical name for that was Extreme Unction. With a bizarre name like that, no wonder people made up their own name Last Rites. An “unction” is an anointing for healing. The word “extreme” emphasized that it was only used when you are on the verge of death.

It had become common practice to avoid calling a priest for someone who was only mildly ill for fear they would believe it meant they were dying. The Church decided that this sacrament should not be reserved exclusively for extreme circumstances. To remedy this, it was renamed Anointing of the Sick. It is still used at the time of one’s death, but not always. Anytime someone is chronically ill or is perhaps facing a major surgery they can receive the Sacrament of the Sick. By the way, if the priest doesn’t get there in time, he can’t give the Sacrament to you after you are dead. The most he can do is pray for your soul.

The Anointing of the Sick is for spiritual healing as well as physical healing. It has the same effect on your soul as Reconciliation. Most people who receive the anointing when they are dying will also confess their sins. It’s your cliché deathbed confession. But technically, it’s not necessary. When I was in the hospital in December 2016 with severe pneumonia and on a ventilator, I typed out a message on my iPhone asking to have the priest anoint me. Even though I was aware of the theology behind the sacrament, I wanted to unburden myself of a thing or two and I typed out a confession on my iPhone notes app and showed it to the priest. He dismissed it saying, “Don’t worry about that. The Anointing takes care of all that.”

I have been anointed several times when I was hospitalized even though I wasn’t critically ill. My parish also routinely has one day a year where we have a group anointing after Mass. Anyone who is facing any ongoing illness is invited to come forward and be anointed. When my mom was in charge of the Liturgy Committee at Saint Gabriel’s, she would arrange special transportation for people who were homebound or in nursing homes so that they could attend the service.

By the way, if you recall the story from an earlier episode, I was hesitant to have people pray over me because of my disability but I have never had any qualms about being prayed for when I was ill. I never hesitate to pray for other people who are ill either physically, emotionally, or mentally.

I think I only took private instruction from Fr. Paul for about two years. Then St. Michael’s Parish, the second closest parish to me, started up a small CCD program for special education kids. This was because the only good Catholics who didn’t send their kids to Catholic school were those who had to send their kids to the public special education school. Despite being especially for special ed kids, it was located a half-flight of steps down in the basement. I had to be carried down in my wheelchair. I seem to recall there were perhaps four or five of us at the time. A couple of us were in wheelchairs, one with cerebral palsy who could walk with difficulty, and a girl with Down syndrome. We were all different ages and each of us had a layperson who had volunteered to teach us. Mom and I continued to attend Mass at St. Christopher’s.

By the way, Fr. Paul Rehart left parish ministry to become a chaplain in the Navy. Decades later when I told the story of how I used to ask Fr. Rehart all of those goofy questions, Fr. Larry Crawford laughed hysterically and said, “Now I understand why he left parish ministry. He would rather face war in Vietnam than deal with kids like you.”

Shortly thereafter, the archdiocese built a new church. St. Gabriel the Archangel Parish opened at 6000 W. 34th St. They had an elementary school that was originally just grades 1-6 but later expanded up to 8. The population of the area was exploding and churches began recognizing that parents were not sending their kids to Catholic schools. The schools were pretty full. St. Gabriel established Sunday morning CCD classes for public school kids.

The first year, they had to carry me up a half flight of stairs to get to the classroom. The next year, the school was expanded with a new wing that included downstairs classrooms.
Up until about seventh grade, my CCD experience at St. Gabriel was a positive one. It was the first time I was ever in a classroom with able students. That was quite significant for me.
My seventh-grade CCD class was held in the seventh-grade classroom which was also where they taught junior high science throughout the week.

The idea that the parochial grade school had nuns teaching science amazed and impressed me. I think it was in fourth grade that I first discovered science and I began reading science fiction in fifth grade. I learned that scientists were people with lots of tough questions as well but they sought their answers through experimentation instead of just taking someone’s word for it.

Eighth-grade CCD was a disaster. We had some 20-year-old college student teaching the class. He gave us a quiz and discovered that we didn’t know what he considered to be fundamental Catholic stuff. While it was unfortunate that some of the kids could not name all seven Sacraments, he expected us to know the 15 mysteries of the rosary and a bunch of more obscure Catholic prayers that most people never used. If I recall correctly, I convinced my mom that it was a waste of time and she allowed me to quit going.

At about that time, they started some sort of youth ministry program as part of the CYO. I was about 13 or 14. We would get together, play music, have guest speakers such as a guy who worked with homeless people, and talk about things that were relevant to teenagers such as drug abuse. Again, this was a positive experience for me because it allowed me to hang with able kids.

They later established a CCD class for high school age that was held in someone’s home. It also included discussions about relevant topics such as race and drugs and an especially interesting discussion of the newly released album Jesus Christ Superstar. I think that only lasted one year.

The combination of the priest’s inability to provide satisfactory answers to my trick questions, the massive reforms that the church underwent in the 1960s, the lack of relevance of some of my CCD experiences, my growing obsession with science, and ordinary teenage rebellion against established authority in the light of the early 70s political atmosphere, all combined to erode my confidence that the church had all the answers and was an oracle of truth. If I was as talented as Roger Waters of Pink Floyd, I could have written a song with the lyrics, “All in all they were just another brick in the wall between me and God.”

I found myself feeling hypocritical about going to Mass each Sunday. During Mass, we recite the Nicene Creed – a statement of fundamental Christian beliefs dating back to the fourth-century Council of Nicaea. I began leaving out certain phrases of the prayer because I couldn’t honestly say that I believed it.

Finally, at age 19, I realized the only reason I was going to church was to avoid family arguments and to set an example for my younger sisters. I anticipated stuff like, “Why do I have to go to church and Chris doesn’t?” I finally got the courage to discuss it with my mom, and much to my surprise she said, “If you don’t want to go to church, don’t go. You are an adult.”

So I quit.

In upcoming episodes, I will discuss my time away from the Church, my journey back, and where I am at today.

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I will see you next week as we continue contemplating life. Until then, fly safe.