This week we continue my journey back to the Catholic Church. I begin studying Scripture and learn how the Catholic approach seems much more common sense to me than the fundamentalist literalist approach we hear about so much. Next week, the last of our series on faith and then we returned to disability topics.

Hello, this is Chris Young. Welcome to episode 13 of Contemplating Life.

Last week, I promised that we would be wrapping up this series on faith but the script came out too long (as it often does) so I decided to split it into two episodes.

As always, I offer my standard disclaimer when talking about religion. I’m not trying to evangelize anyone. I just want to tell my story. If it happens to mean something significant to your own faith journey then that’s great. But if not, I hope you find it entertaining and informative.

In the last episode, I had just attended an Easter vigil ceremony where a group of adults was choosing to join the Catholic Church. Seeing these reasonable people choose to join the church, the warm welcoming atmosphere I felt that had been missing previously, and the acceptance of my doubts by my mom’s Bible study group started me on a journey back to the church.

That was in the spring of 1984. For my birthday in July, I asked for a Bible. I wanted the New American Standard edition which had the official Catholic-approved translation and footnotes. It’s the translation used in all Catholic liturgy. Mom got me a really nice one with a brown leather cover. Somewhere along the way I also got a Bible concordance. That’s a complete cross reference for Scripture. You can look up any word and it will tell you every chapter and verse where that word appears. Of course these days there are websites where you can search for any passage from a variety of translations. But in 1984 with no Internet, such a large reference book was valuable.

I figured I would start at the beginning. I only got as far as Genesis 2 before I started seeing contradictions. That wasn’t very encouraging. There are two different creation stories in Scripture. One of them is the traditional seven days of creation where God says let there be… whatever and it came into being. The other one in Genesis 2 talks about the garden where he created Adam. Then he creates all of the animals and brings them to Adam to see what he calls them. The order in which things are created is completely different between these two stories.

The footnotes say that these different creation stories came from different sources. Wait a minute… I thought Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible known as the Pentateuch. Of course, Moses dies part way through the fourth book but my understanding was that one of his followers finished it up for him.

I decided to bypass the Old Testament and spent some time with the New Testament but I still wasn’t getting much out of it. I could see that reading the Bible was going to cause me more problems than it solved.

By now, lots of parishioners had been through the CRHP renewal program and were hungry for more adult religious education. Lifelong Catholics began attending the RCIA classes to update their understanding of the faith. I started attending the classes in September along with Judy, and her husband Paul. They had enjoyed the experience so much that they wanted to go through it again and pick up some things they might not have appreciated the first time through. It also gave them the opportunity to become sponsors for non-Catholics who were going through the program. The classes were held every Thursday night from 7-9 p.m. with a break in the middle for refreshments. They were presented by our two priests. Our pastor, Father Paul, and our associate pastor Father Conrad.

Among the programs I attended was a series of lectures by a man named Jim Welter from Saint Monica Parrish. He called his lectures “The Ascending View”.

Jim explained how the Catholic approach to Scripture was much different than the literal “it means exactly what it says” approach of the fundamentalist Protestant. The Catholic Church, along with other mainstream Catholic-like Protestant denominations such as Lutheran, Methodist, and Episcopal use what is called the historical-critical method of Scripture analysis.

While we believe in the inspiration behind Scripture, we understand that it was written by human beings who are the product of their culture and times. The Bible is theology. It is not history or science. When we say that the Bible is inerrant and true, we don’t mean the details of exactly how many days it took exactly 6 days to create the entire universe and that the universe is only 6000 years old. It is the meaning behind the mythology that is true. What it says about us, God, our relationship with Him, and His plan for us is true.

Jim explained there are two ways to look at Scripture. The “descending view” is that Scripture is the result of divine dictation. The Word of God was handed down to the authors pretty much verbatim and they simply wrote down “what God intended.” This was that Book of Mormon model that we talked about a few episodes ago that seemed so ridiculous to me that it contributed to my leaving the Church. It is the same view that most fundamentalist or evangelical Christians believe even if it wasn’t found on some hidden metal plates dug up by some church leader.

In contrast, Jim describes the “ascending view”. People of faith experienced God in their lives. Some would see God in nature. Some had spiritual experiences that they could not explain otherwise. They saw events in history through a theological context.

Nearly all of Scripture began as oral traditions handed down by word-of-mouth for generations before anyone ever put quill to parchment. Realizing the importance of these stories, they were eventually collected and written to be handled on faithfully to future generations.

These writings were in effect a letter to God saying, “This is what you revealed to me and I offer it up to you in recognition of its importance. We are handing them down to future generations to preserve your Word that you have revealed to us.”

When we say that a particular person was the author of a book of the Bible, it means that they compiled the oral traditions that had been handed down for generations. The community is the actual author and the person that we call the author is simply the one who put it in writing. In modern terms, we would call them the editor or anthologist rather than the author.

In some cases, like Moses dying before the work was complete, one individual may not have been the actual author. For example, there appear to be at least two different authors of the Gospel of John. That can be seen most easily in that there are two different endings. One was probably written by John the Evangelist himself and another ending was written by one of his disciples. In ancient times, to say that a particular person was the “author” of a work meant it was written under their authority. It represented their teachings. And those teachings were a compilation of oral traditions.

By the way, there are several people named John in the New Testament that you need to distinguish between. John the Baptist was a preacher who sort of paved the way for Jesus’ public ministry and was beheaded by King Herod. John the Apostle was one of the 12 chosen apostles. He probably was not the author of the Gospel of John. That person is generally called John the Evangelist. He not only wrote the gospel but also wrote three New Testament letters and the Book of Revelation. The Gospel of John was probably written somewhere around the year 100 so it’s unlikely it was written by John the Apostle.

Jim told a joke about a minister who had decided he would start using a more modern translation of the Bible rather than the traditional King James version. That version was written by a committee who were more interested in flowery language and pretty prose than creating an accurate translation. A little old lady went up to him after services when he announced the change and said, “If the King James version was good enough for Peter and Paul, it’s good enough for me.” Naturally, we know it wasn’t published until the early 1600s. But what you might not realize is that they didn’t walk around with the four Gospels tucked under their arm either.

The official Canon that decided what holy writings should or should not be in the New Testament was not made until the year 400. And as we previously explained, John’s Gospel wasn’t written until about 100.

Let’s re-examine those contradictory versions of the creation myth in Genesis 1 and 2.

The reason for the differences between the two creation stories is they were originally oral traditions by two different communities. We can learn a lot about those communities by looking at what they wrote.

In Genesis 1, what do we have? Light and dark, stars, the sun and moon, water water everywhere. The water is collected so that dry land can appear and only then do we have the creatures of the land and the sea and plants to feed them. These people were obviously sailors. They lived by the sea. Their life was connected to the sea. They saw God in the sea and the land and the sun and the moon and the stars.

Genesis 2 is the story of a garden. Man was created from clay. The animals were brought to him and none were suitable companions so God created woman out of man. The land came first. The water came up out of the land in the form of a spring to irrigate everything. Obviously, these people were farmers. It’s all about the land. Plants. Animals. And human beings’ relationship to all of that.

It was Moses, allegedly, who wove these two different oral traditions into the marginally continuous almost self-consistent narratives of the book of Genesis. In order to really understand Scripture, you have to understand the communities that created the oral traditions that were eventually be written down.

Let’s take one more brief example of how understanding the culture and times in which scripture was written helps us to understand it properly.

A rather controversial passage is from Paul’s letter to Ephesians 5:22-33. Depending on the translation, it says either, “Wives be subject to your husbands…” or “Wives submit to your husbands…” This passage has been used to justify the dominance of men over women. It does go on to say, “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the Church.” On the surface, it hardly seems a fair trade.

Today, we understand it to be a partnership between equals. Marriage is not a 50-50 proposition. It is a 100-100 proposition in which both partners are totally committed to one another in the relationship. But consider the times in which Paul wrote. He was saying the same thing. He was talking about total commitment. But the culture expressed total commitment differently than we do today. In Paul’s era, wives showed their commitment by submitting to their husbands. And to say that husbands should love their wives as Christ loved the Church, how did Christ show his commitment to the Church? He died for it. Men committed to their wives and children by working themselves to death and an early grave. The details of what Paul wrote are not pertinent to the world today. The message behind what he wrote is still true. It’s about total commitment. We simply express it differently in modern times.

Jim went on to explain various techniques that modern historical-critical scripture scholars use to get to the heart of the meaning behind the words. He also discussed ways that they try to reconcile various versions of the manuscripts that have been discovered. I won’t go into all of the details but it is a very common-sense approach.

In my studies, I also learned about another major difference between the Catholic and Protestant approaches to Scripture. Nearly all Protestant denominations, not just the fundamentalists, believe in a doctrine known as sola scriptura which means, “Scripture alone.” In a nutshell, if it’s not in the Bible, you don’t have to believe it. There are historical reasons why the Protestant Reformation adopted this stance that I won’t go into right now.

I heard the story of Presbyterian theologian Scott Hahn who was asked by one of his theology students, “Where in Scripture does it say that Scripture is the sole authority?” The professor cited various passages that talk about how Scripture is inspired by God and how important it is. But nowhere in Scripture does it actually say that Scripture is the sole authority. So if sola scriptura isn’t in the Bible… Then we don’t have to believe it!

I won’t go into all of the other logical inconsistencies of the doctrine but there are several. Long story short… Professor Hahn converted to Catholicism and has made it his life work to explain why sola scriptura doesn’t hold water.

The Catholic approach is that divine revelation is handed on in two forms. Sacred Scripture and sacred tradition. The explanation of this is in a Vatican II document called the “Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation.” While Catholics have often over-emphasized tradition and underemphasized Scripture, Vatican II calls for a balance. I linked the document in the description.

The Church also has published a monitoring document called the “Catechism of the Catholic Church” which is not a bunch of memorized questions for first-graders but rather a detailed explanation of the church’s teachings on a variety of topics. I’ve also linked to an online version of that book. It too is much more common sense even though I can’t say I agree 100% with everything in there.

All of this commonsense approach to Scripture and a precise explanation of church doctrine in the modern Catechism solved the major stumbling blocks for me. I could now contemplate Catholic theology from the point of view of an adult and begin to see some of the logic behind it.

There was just one more problem… Is there a God?

That is the topic we will tackle next week and then I promise we will go back to disability issues the following week. No more stretching it out.

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

In this episode, we continue the story of my faith journey. I attended the Easter Vigil in 1984 which had a profound effect on me. It was the start of my journey back to the Catholic Church. We will wrap up this section of my faith journey next week and the following week will return to disability topics.

Hello, this is Chris Young. Welcome to episode 12 of Contemplating Life.

This week we are going to continue the story of my faith journey. Usual disclaimer, I’m not trying to evangelize anyone. I’m just telling my story. I hope you find it interesting and if it does anything for your own faith journey then that’s okay too.

When we last left off, I had been away from the Catholic Church for about nine years. I had immersed myself in secular volunteer activities but occasionally would help out by using my computer skills to help out Saint Gabriel Church because my mother was still very active there. In recent months, she had been even more active than usual because of a new program called Christ Renews His Parish abbreviated as CRHP pronounced “chirp”.

It’s the night before Easter 1984 and our friend Judy Chapman has invited us to the Easter Vigil service where her husband Paul would be initiated into the Catholic Church. It was the final step in the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults or RCIA. Paul and a half-dozen others had been attending weekly classes in the Catholic faith since September and were now ready for the sacraments of initiation: Baptism, First Communion, and Confirmation.

The ceremony begins outdoors around a fire known as “the new fire”. In our case, it’s an ordinary charcoal grill. Instead of charcoal, it is piled about a foot high with sticks and small branches. A parishioner who is an Eagle Scout leader prepares this mini campfire each year for the ceremony.

The priest has a large candle about 3 feet tall and perhaps 4 inches in diameter decorated with various religious symbols. This Easter candle, also known as the Paschal candle, is described in the prayers as representing the light of Christ. The congregation gathers around the fire and the ceremony begins. He offers prayers and places four wax nails into holes on a cross on the candle. Each parishioner carries a small candle that they light from the Easter candle.

Usually, the entire congregation gathers around this fire and enters the church in a procession. But I believe on this particular occasion it was raining. Most of the congregation, myself included, sat in the church which was totally dark. I was sitting in the aisle about the second row back from the front. The priest carried the candle in the door at the back of the church and as he slowly processed up the center aisle, he would repeatedly chant, “Light of Christ” to which the people would respond, “Thanks be to God”. As he entered, everyone would light their small candle off of the Easter candle. The person on the end of the row would pass the light down the pew.

I had my back to all of this as I was sitting in the front. All that I could see was that the church was gradually being illuminated brighter and brighter by these candles. It was a very effective symbol that the darkness was being swallowed by the light of God.

Then by candlelight, the priest, in this case, the associate pastor Father Conrad, chants a long prayer called the “Exsultet”. It recounts some of salvation history including how God saved the Chosen People from slavery in Egypt. How He led them by a pillar of fire to escape through the Red Sea. It talks about how Christ conquered death. Naturally, this being a celebration of the Resurrection, this was a major theme throughout the service.

For me, the most interesting part of the prayer was the idea that it was a good thing that Adam had sinned because if human beings had not sinned, we wouldn’t have needed redemption. It says, “O truly necessary sin of Adam, destroyed completely by the Death of Christ! O happy fault that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!” The phrase “happy fault” in Latin is “felix culpa” where felix could be translated not only as “happy” but as “lucky” or “blessed”. Happy fault. Lucky fault. A blessed fault that we had fallen from grace.

The idea that the human flaw of sin turned out to be a good thing because we were eventually redeemed seemed pretty bizarre to me. Then again, looking at my own life, I had discovered that there were positive things about having a lifelong disability. So maybe it isn’t that crazy after all. Perhaps my disability is a felix culpa. A happy, lucky, blessed fault.

After this lengthy prayer, we eventually turn on the lights and extinguish our candles. The ceremony then proceeds with the Liturgy of the Word. This is the first portion of the traditional rite of the Catholic mass. On a usual Sunday, it consists of an Old Testament reading (or sometimes reading from one of the New Testament letters), a psalm in which the congregation repeats the refrain, and then a gospel reading followed by the priest’s homily. A homily is a kind of sermon that is a reflection on the Scripture readings we have just heard. Because the Easter vigil is such a big deal, there can be as many as seven Old Testament readings, each followed by a responsorial Psalm. This is followed by a reading from the Letter to the Romans. Then the gospel which was followed by the homily.

Fortunately, St. Gabriel chooses to only do about five of the seven Old Testament readings. It begins with Genesis, “In the beginning…” and recounts the entire seven days of creation. It always includes the Exodus story of the parting of the Red Sea. There is a parallel to be made that in the same way that God rescued the Chosen People from the slavery of Egypt by passing through the waters of the Red Sea, we too are saved from the slavery of sin by passing through the waters of Baptism.

When it came time for the reading from Romans, a woman named Barbara Dean walked up to the pulpit. Barbara was one of the women who had attended the CRHP weekend retreat with my mother and Judy along with other women of the parish. Barbara was struggling with the effects of lupus and had spent the past few months in the hospital. Although people with lupus experience serious bouts with possibly long periods of remission in between, many people were very worried about her. She had been going through a very bad spell. She had been released so that she could attend the service. Her husband Leonard was among those to be baptized and initiated into the church. She read Romans 6:3-11 which reads in part…

The reading goes on to talk more about death, resurrection, and new life in Christ.

I was totally weirded out by the experience. Here was this woman who had one foot in the grave and the other foot on a banana peel. Yet you would never know it by looking at her. She looked like a million bucks. She stood up there in front of everybody and talked about death as if it was no big deal.

What I haven’t told you is that during that point in my life, I was scared to death of death. I would frequently have panic attacks where I would think about nothing except my pending demise. Sometimes in the middle of the night, I would want to just scream. The only relief I could get was to keep my mind occupied with other thoughts so I wouldn’t be able to think about death. In previous episodes, I already told about losing a good friend to his disability. There are other stories about losing friends and an early age that I will tell later. I mentioned that my parents rushed me through the early sacraments of the church because they didn’t think I would live long enough to get through them. I was facing mortality at an age much younger than people typically worry about such things.

I couldn’t understand how she could stand up there and talk so calmly about something that would often freeze me in terror. The fact that she was there at all was amazing given her condition but then again, I imagine wild horses couldn’t have kept her from seeing her husband initiated into the church. But that still didn’t explain how she could read that reading without breaking down and crying.

There are other parts of the Easter vigil service that I grew to greatly enjoy in the many times I attended after that but I won’t bother to detail them here because they aren’t part of this particular story.

In addition to Paul Chapman and Leonard Dean, there were probably five other adults being initiated that night. One of them was a young man named Tom something who was about my age. While one might cynically suppose that Paul and Leonard were doing this at the encouragement or for the benefit of their wives, Tom was single. He had no excuse or reason to do this except that he wanted to. And after I got to know Paul, I was confident that he was there of his own choice, and presumably so was Leonard. But I had no way of knowing that at the time.

Here were reasonably intelligent, adult human beings, standing up in front of God and everybody saying, “I want to be part of this.” This was in contrast to my feelings that I’d been tricked into a life of faith when I was a little kid and didn’t know any better. All of this was a challenge to my assumptions that there was nothing here for me.

I’ve always enjoyed the pomp and circumstance, the smells and bells of Catholic liturgy. At the Easter vigil, they pull out all the stops. The ceremony was moving and inspiring. The example set by the catechumens and candidates joining the church challenged my beliefs. The music from the choir was awesome.

When the service was finally over, I began to realize the changes that had happened to the congregation since the introduction of the CRHP renewal program. It was a much warmer and friendlier place than it had been when I had last attended.

People hugged one another.

I’m not just talking about the people who were happy that their family members had joined the church. The whole place had changed.

Among the highlights was I also got to meet Judy’s stepdaughter Deborah who was in her early 20s and her daughter Anne about age 7-8 both of who would later become good friends to me.
This was a case where my natural curiosity actually drew me toward the church. There was a mystery to be solved. I had a lot to think about.

The next Sunday, I decided to tag along with mom not only to go to Mass but to attend her Sunday morning Bible study class. As we previously explained, Catholics are not known for their interest in or knowledge of Scripture the way the Protestants are. We were not raised memorizing Bible verses rather we were memorizing questions and answers from the Baltimore Catechism.
One of the reforms of Vatican II was a renewed emphasis on Scripture. Also, the CRHP program was designed to instill a deeper appreciation of Scripture.

There was a group of about a dozen people who would gather in the cafeteria Sunday morning before Mass to read the Scripture readings that would be used that day. They had a small booklet that would have discussion questions based on those readings. You would talk about what that particular passage meant to you or how you might apply it to your personal life.

The gospel reading on the first Sunday after Easter is always from the Gospel of John 20:19-31. It describes the post-resurrection encounter that the apostles had with Jesus when he appeared in their midst while they were locked in the upper room. Thomas was not with them at the time and when he was later told about the incident, he said that unless he saw Jesus with his own eyes and can probe the nail marks in his hands or the wound in his side he would not believe it. The next time Jesus appeared, Tom was on hand and having seen, professed his faith.

The Scripture says, “Jesus said to him, ‘Have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.’”

The supplemental material provided an explanation I had heard before. The name Thomas means “twin” with the implication being that we are Thomas’ twin when we doubt. This is the origin of the phrase “a doubting Thomas.”

At an appropriate point in the discussion, I spoke up and said that this was true. I strongly identified with Thomas. My curious, scientific mind often demanded proof, and just because Jesus said it’s better to believe without proof that didn’t cut it for me. I said to them, “There’s a lot about the church that I admire and respect and could say that I believe in. But I got to be honest with you people. A lot of this stuff (I resisted the urge to say crap) I just don’t believe. And I don’t know that I ever will believe it.”

I fully expected them to say something like, “Then what the hell are you doing here? Get your heathen ass out the door.” or something more polite like, “Well maybe then the church isn’t for you.”, or some sort of argument about how wrong I was to reject the gospel message.

That’s not what I got.

Instead, they said, “That’s okay. We all have our doubts at times. You just can’t let those doubts drag you down. Focus on the things you do believe and don’t get bogged down in your doubts.”

Wow. Just wow.

Without being critical of me or trying to “change my mind” they had made a perfectly reasonable suggestion of how to proceed. The most powerful part of the argument was that it was a strategy that I had been employing my entire life in regard to my disability. I had seen too many people who sat around and felt sorry for themselves and became consumed by their disabilities. By focusing on the things that they could not do, they ended up being a basket case. I believed that it had contributed to the death of my friend Terry Johnson.

The way I was able to cope with my lifelong disability was to focus on the things that I could do and not get bogged down by the things I couldn’t do. Perhaps I could find some relevance in Christianity and the Catholic Church by applying the same strategy. Don’t let your disbelief stand in the way of expressing things you do believe, among people who believe in the same things.
That wasn’t sufficient to say, “Yes I’m fully back. Count me all in on this Catholic thing.” I still had a lot of issues to deal with but it was the first step back.

While my mother was naturally pleased to see me exploring the church, she didn’t overdo it by jumping for joy at least that I could see. She had realized somewhere along the way that this was something I had to do on my own. With the exception of occasionally asking some tough questions like the things she asked me about the Archbishop last episode, I never felt at all pressured by her. Or let me say any pressure was pretty subtle.

Prior to all this, one time I was pretty sick in bed. She asked our pastor, Father Paul Landwerlen to stop by and pray for me. He visited me at my sickbed at home. He invited me to pray with him and I politely declined but said he could pray if he wanted to. I eventually recovered and he took some gentle opportunities to evangelize me.

He brought me a cassette tape of a lecture he heard one time. The speech had the clever title, “What on earth is God doing for heaven’s sake?” He had it all queued up to a part of the speech he thought would be particularly useful or inspiring or whatever. I listened to it out of curiosity. It didn’t do anything for me. I rewound it to the beginning. No. Nothing here to see. Move on.

I don’t remember the exact sequence of events but somewhere along the way, sometime after the Easter vigil, went back to the tape that Father Paul had given me. I turned the tape over and listened to the other half. It blew me away.

Let me pause a minute to give you an explanation of a bit of theology known as the “Mystical Body of Christ”. It comes from Saint Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians chapter 12. Many of Paul’s letters were written to settle some dispute or misunderstanding. Apparently, in Corinth, they had been arguing over who was a better Christian based on which spiritual gifts they expressed. He begins by describing various spiritual gifts. He explains that all of the gifts come from the same spirit even though our spirituality is manifested in different ways.

Then he talks about the analogy of the human body. About how all the parts must work together. The foot cannot say because it is not a hand it does not belong to the body. The ear belongs even though it’s not an eye. “If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?” It reminded me of the old joke, “My dog has no nose.”

“Then how does it smell?”

“Terrible!”

[Sound FX: rimshot]

Anyway… all jokes aside. He concludes by saying in verse 27 “Now you are Christ’s body, and individually parts of it.” Together we make Christ present here on earth. We are his mystical body doing his work It ties into the other Scripture that says, “Whenever two or three of you are gathered in my name, I’m there in your midst.”

On the other side of the tape, the lecturer told a story which I will now paraphrase.

He had been to a conference and the speaker was a paralyzed woman. Some accident had resulted in a spinal cord injury leaving her quadriplegic. He said she was rolled on the stage lying prone on a gurney. She said, “In my mind’s eye, I can imagine my body doing all sorts of wonderful things. Playing sports, hugging my children, and loving my husband. It’s not a lack of willpower. My will is plenty strong. But there is a disconnect between my mind and my body. I’m trapped in a body that is unresponsive to my will. And so it is the same for the Body of Christ. God has imagined wonderful things for us. It is his will that we enjoy these marvelous things. Yet when we fail to communicate with him and to act according to his will, we handicap the Body of Christ.”

Holy shit.

That freaked me out.

That made the connection between volunteerism and religion. We are all part of a body. We all have a job to do. We were put on this earth for a reason. And when we fail to do our part, we handicap the body that we are part of.

I could extend the analogy further to other types of disability. Look at my friend Christopher Lee who had such severe spasms from cerebral palsy that he would keep his wrists strapped down to the armrest of his wheelchair. Unlike the paralyzed woman, his body had no lack of movement. Yet his body was unresponsive to his will. Often we are out there flailing about thinking we are doing something but we are no more effective than the spastic limbs of someone with cerebral palsy. Or look at my own body. All of my parts work. But because my muscles are weak, like a person with weak faith, my muscles do not work effectively to achieve my will. I too am trapped in a body that is unresponsive to my will.

I survive my disability reasonably well. But I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone. But when I don’t work together with the members of the Body, I handicap that body. And I can’t do that.
Whether God exists or not, the Church was a body that I could connect to. I could play my part and not handicap the body by my absence.

I still had to decide if God even existed. The journey back had a long way to go. Next week we will tackle that problem which will wrap up this series on my faith journey. We will come back to the topic in future episodes but after next week we will return to disability issues as I recount the story of my journey through the special education system.

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

In this week’s episode, we continue a multi-part series about my off-again, on-again relationship with God and the Catholic Church. This episode is about the 9 years I spent away from the Catholic Church and what led me back again. We will continue this series on faith for a few more weeks and then go back to disability-related topics as I review my history in special education.

Hello, this is Chris Young, and welcome to episode #11 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. 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 before the Oscar break, I was 19 years old and I had just decided to leave the Catholic Church. My passion for science, intense skepticism, and the failure of the church to engage me in meaningful ways led me to quit going to Mass.

I had no ill will toward the Church. I wasn’t mad at God, at least not now.

There was one occasion a few years earlier when I was mad at God. One of my best friends in high school, Terry Johnson who was two years older than me died of complications of his Muscular Dystrophy just six months after graduating from high school. He had earned eight consecutive semesters of straight A grades and was awarded an academic letter sweater. However, after graduation, he did nothing with his life. He never attempted to enter college or find employment. Like some people whose lives end when they retire from a lifetime of hard work, after high school he had no future and apparently gave up on life.

It seemed to me that all of the hard work he put into getting perfect grades was a total waste. After his death, I was determined not to let high school graduation be a death sentence for me. I already had college plans and plans for a career as a computer programmer. His senseless passing made me more determined to make it to college but less determined to achieve academic perfection. I would rather have a good time while I lived, goof off, and earn Bs and Cs than work my ass off getting As and end up dying young.

I wasn’t so much angry that he died. I lost lots of friends from complications of their disability at an early age. It was never easy to lose friends but somehow I took this one personally. I concluded somewhere along the way at the only purpose or meaning I could find from his death was that it might motivate me to be different. Somehow that made me feel responsible for his death as if God killed him just to teach me a lesson.

I can’t really say that that argument with God was part of why I left the church. You can’t be angry with someone whom you are not certain even exists.

While I seriously doubted the existence of God, I didn’t describe myself as an atheist. In my opinion, atheists are absolutely certain that there was no God. Good scientists are never absolutely certain about anything. You always have to be open to new evidence. I described myself as having an open mind about God and religion yet I didn’t do anything to try to fill that opening.

If you pinned me down I would probably identify with the label “agnostic”. Somehow that word felt like it described someone who couldn’t make up their mind.

So, if agnostics were considered wishy-washy and atheists radically anti-religion I needed a different rebel. In the early 1970s, they invented a label that seemed to fit my beliefs best– secular humanist. It seemed to me that the phrase was invented in response to the accusation of religious people that atheists were immoral because they didn’t have God in their lives. Calling yourself a secular humanist was a way of saying, “I have morality and values that are not significantly different from mainstream religion. I just don’t believe it’s necessary to connect that sense of morality to belief in a deity.”

One of the values that my mother instilled in me was a strong sense of volunteerism.

As I was growing up in the early 60s, it was not that common for housewives to work outside the home. That gave her lots of free time, especially during the school year. It began with her involvement in the PTA at the special education school I attended. She served as “room mother” which meant that she hosted Christmas and Valentine’s Day parties, as well as a thank-you party after our annual fundraising cookie sale. I recall she was elected treasurer and eventually the president.

This led to involvement in the PTA at the city and state-wide levels. From there she became involved in education and disability advocacy with a grassroots coalition known as the Council Of Volunteers and Organizations for the Handicapped or COVOH. That organization helped secure the passage of the Indiana Mandatory Special Education Act which required all Indiana school districts to develop special education programs a few years before a federal mandate required the same nationwide. For once, Indiana was ahead of the curve.

During the summer of my college years and then later after college and after I had to quit work because of my worsening disability, I accompanied her to the Indiana Statehouse to lobby the General Assembly for disability issues. We attended several monthly meetings of the Indiana State Building Commission as they were revising building codes which included accessibility requirements. In a future episode, I will tell some stories about those efforts.

She also served on the Indianapolis Mayor’s Advisory Council on the Handicapped and on the Indiana Special Education Advisory Council and I attended many of those meetings with her.
She also did significant volunteer work for a United Way agency called the Marion County Muscular Dystrophy Foundation which is now known as the Indiana Muscular Dystrophy Family Foundation. I will detail her work for them in another episode. She served their board of directors for several years.

I followed in her footsteps joining the board of MCMDF immediately after she left. I also was invited to serve on the Board of Directors of another United Way agency called Central Indiana Radio Reading. This organization used a subcarrier frequency of the Butler University radio station to broadcast people reading articles from the daily newspaper and some magazines for people who were described as “print handicapped”. This included blind and visually impaired people as well as physically handicapped people who could not easily handle a newspaper or magazine.

There will be future episodes about my involvement in all of these activities. I only mention them here because it describes what I was doing while I was away from the church and as you will see, my involvement in these activities gradually indirectly led me back to the church.

As I mentioned, I had no brief with the Catholic Church. I admired and respected my mother’s faith and her involvement in the Church. Somewhere along the way, mom transitioned her time from doing disability advocacy to becoming more involved in parish activities. She served on the Parish Council and was involved in a variety of activities in the church.

Along the way, she heard about a software package developed by a priest and one of his parishioners called Parish Data System. It was a database that would keep track of your membership. It not only kept track of names, addresses, and phone numbers. It also allowed you to record sacrament records such as if your kids had received First Communion or Confirmation. It would also allow you to tag members with keywords such as “maintenance committee”, “school family”, “Eucharistic minister”, or “usher/greeter”. It would also keep financial contribution records and print charitable tax donation records at the end of the year. Because she had become skilled at using my personal computers for her volunteer activities, she knew how important a computer could be for church administration. She worked to get us a personal computer for the parish. I was happy to volunteer to get the program up and running and to advise them on how to best use it.
Before we were able to obtain a computer for the parish, I allowed their volunteer bookkeeper to use my computer and spreadsheet software to prepare monthly financial statements and annual reports.

Although I didn’t attend Mass on a regular basis if someone in the family was having a Baptism or First Communion I had no problem attending to show my support for their own spiritual journey. I might have also tagged along on occasional Christmas or Easter or at least I wasn’t opposed to the idea of going to church for some special occasions.

Through my involvement with the Muscular Dystrophy Foundation, I was invited to attend a special volunteer recognition Mass at Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral the seat of the Archbishop of Indianapolis. The invitation went out to a variety of voluntary organizations which included United Way Agencies.

I had always admired Archbishop Edward T. O’Meara. Each year the Catholic Archbishop is invited to give the invocation at the Indianapolis 500. Rather than pray “in Jesus’ name” as your typical NASCAR chaplain might do, he always gave a very ecumenical prayer to “our common God” and would give a blessing to the drivers in their variety of native languages.

The Cathedral had just completed a major renovation and my dad had worked on part of it refinishing huge bronze doors at the front of the building. The opportunity to hear the Archbishop speak on a topic such as volunteerism and to see my dad’s handiwork seems like it was a reasonable excuse to go to Mass on a weekday afternoon. I got to visit the Blessed Sacrament Chapel attached to the Cathedral which was the location of my parents’ wedding. The renovations of the building did not do much in the way of accessibility. I had to go up and down a very steep ramp that definitely was not according to disability access standards.

The Archbishop had just returned from a meeting of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops in which they ratified a document expressing the immorality of the nuclear arms race. While the church agrees that there are instances where going to war can be justified where all else fails, the document declared that nuclear war which indiscriminately kills innocent civilians and threatens the entire human race to possible extinction could not be justified under any circumstances.

In his homily, he was quite enthusiastic about this new teaching document and was looking forward to finding ways to have it proclaimed and understood at the parish level. The theme of the Mass however was volunteerism. As previously stated, that was a word with which I strongly identified so he was speaking to me and my kind. He talked about the nobility and the necessity to serve our fellow human beings.

Everything he was saying both about war and volunteerism resonated strongly with me. He was a very likable, intelligent, and charismatic speaker. Somehow, he tied it all to serving God. “Whatsoever you do to even the least of my brethren, you do unto me.” according to the parable in Matthew’s Gospel.

When we returned home, mom asked me what I thought of the experience. I told her how much I enjoyed it and how that Archbishop’s resonated with me. He seemed so enthusiastic about the Church’s statement against nuclear war and naturally I appreciated his recognition of volunteers like the two of us. I don’t particularly agree that that has anything to do with God but he is still a pretty cool guy.

“Do you think he’s stupid?”, she asked.

“Of course not. On the contrary, he seems like a very intelligent man.”

“Then if he is so right about the immorality of nuclear war and he is so right about the importance of volunteerism, what makes you think he is so wrong about everything he said about God?”
That was a good question. I didn’t have a good answer for it.

When I was attending Mass on a regular basis, Saint Gabriel Church was a bit cold and unfriendly. Naturally, there were cliques of people who volunteered for the church and were friendly with one another. Overall most people came to Mass, fulfilled their obligation, left, and that was it.

That began to change when the Parish Council decided they needed to do something to spark more involvement. They kickstarted a program called Christ Renews His Parish. It was abbreviated CRHP but often pronounced “chirp” as if the “H” and “R” were reversed. A group of parishioners consisting mostly of Parish Council members including my mother spent a weekend at a religious retreat presented by a parish in Fort Wayne Indiana. Men and women attended the retreat separately.

The program was presented not by professionals but by ordinary Catholic parishioners who had been through the process themselves. Over the two-day experience, the team presented a program in which they would tell personal stories or give what they called “witness talks” about their own faith journey and what God had done for them. While giving testimony is quite common in Protestant nominations, Catholics are not typically accustomed to telling their personal stories or talking about their relationship with God.

Once our parishioners had been through the process at the parish in Fort Wayne, they came home and spend six months in formation preparing to present the same program to a group of our people. The process would then repeat every six months. Each group of people who attended the program would then form a team to present it to the next group 6 months later.

My mother had been heavily involved in the parish prior to this process but after returning from the retreat, her involvement, dedication, and enjoyment of church activities multiplied significantly. Although our disability advocacy work had been waning for some time, now all of her volunteer efforts were dedicated to our parish.

Prior to attending CHRP, it seemed like she was friendly and collegial with the people she worked with at church. After CRHP she developed a strong bond of friendship with the people at church.

The most significant new relationship that came out of her involvement in the Parish Council and subsequent involvement in CRHP was her friendship with Judy Chapman. Judy also later became a significant person in my life as you will learn in future episodes.

Judy’s husband Paul was not Catholic but together they attended a year-long program at Saint Gabriel called RCIA. That acronym stands for Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults. It involves attending weekly classes in the Catholic faith, participating in various preparatory rites and rituals, and culminating with an initiation ceremony at the Easter Vigil service the night before Easter.

According to Jewish tradition and subsequently Catholic Christian tradition, each day ends and a new day begins at sundown. Therefore, attending Mass on Saturday evening counts for Sunday. The initiation ceremony consists of the Sacrament of Baptism for those who have not already been baptized in another Christian tradition, the Sacrament of First Communion (also known as First Eucharist), and the Sacrament of Confirmation which we’ve previously discussed.

Judy didn’t have a large family to attend the ceremony for her husband so she invited my mother and me. I already mentioned that I had no objection to supporting people by attending sacraments and that Easter and Christmas were not off the table. This Easter Vigil service counted as Easter Mass and would involve the celebration of three sacraments at once. It was 4 for one! Despite the fact that it would last from about 8 PM until nearly midnight I agreed to tag along.

April 21, 1984, at the invitation of Judy Chapman, I attended the Easter Vigil Mass at Saint Gabriel the Archangel Catholic Church to support her and see her husband Paul initiated into the Catholic Church. What occurred that night was a challenge to my belief or rather unbelief that set me on a journey back to the Catholic Church – a relationship that continues to this day.
Next week I will talk about that evening and the events that followed as we continue to explore my faith journey. We will continue on this topic for another couple of weeks and then take a break and go back to talking about disability issues. I am planning a multi-part series chronicling my history in special education.

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

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.

If you find this podcast educational, entertaining, enlightening, or even inspiring, consider sponsoring me on Patreon for just $5 per month. You will get early access to the podcast and any other benefits I might come up with down the road. It’s not that I’m desperate for money, but a little extra income sure could help.

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Even if you cannot provide financial support. Please, please, please post the links and share this podcast on social media so that I can grow my audience.

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

In this week’s episode, we begin 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.

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If you cannot support us financially, please, please post links on social media so we can grow our audience.

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Hello, this is Chris Young, and welcome to episode #6 of “Contemplating Life”.

In my first episode, I promised that we would cover a variety of topics among them disability, religion, politics, entertainment, and whatever else I felt like talking about. In the first five episodes, we talked about my experiences living with a lifelong disability and some of the issues related to that disability. Today we are going to begin a multi-part series on my off-again, on-again relationship with God and the Catholic Church.

Let me reiterate my disclaimer from the first episode. When I discuss religion, I’m not specifically trying to evangelize or proselytize anyone. I’m just sharing my views and experiences and perhaps explaining a little Catholic theology along the way. I hope that it’s entertaining and informative. If by chance, you find it sparking something in your own faith journey that’s fine also.

My mother was raised Catholic and practiced the faith her entire life. She attended Cathedral Grade School and St. Agnes Academy which was the all-girls counterpart to the all-boys Cathedral High School.

My father came from a mostly nonpracticing Christian family. He rarely if ever attended church growing up although he had fond memories of attending a church-sponsored summer camp one summer.

When my parents were married in 1954, you had to jump through a lot of hoops to have a mixed-faith marriage in the Catholic Church. My dad had to attend a series of about a half-dozen instruction classes with the priest. He also had to formally agree that his children would be raised Catholic. He had no objection.

I was born eight months and two weeks after they were married. When I was old enough to do the math, Mom insisted that I was two weeks premature. After me, she had five premature babies that she only carried for about six months each. None of them survived more than 48 hours. She also had a number of other miscarriages. The explanation that I was two weeks early seems completely credible. And so what if the folks jumped the gun a little bit?

If you are watching the YouTube version of this podcast you can see the 8 mm color home movies that my dad took of me outside my grandmother’s house on the day of my baptism. I was dressed in a long white baptismal gown that made me look like a girl. Years later we transferred the film to VHS and later DVD and now YouTube. There is no footage of the actual baptism because home movie cameras require a great deal of light. I doubt that the priest would have allowed filming using an awkward, intensely bright, and annoying light bar.

Although it doesn’t have anything to do with my faith journey, I might as well recount the few early childhood memories that I have.

From the time they were married until I was nearly 4 years old, my parents and I lived in a small one-bedroom duplex on W. 34th St. on the near west side of Indianapolis, near the canal. I only have a couple of vague memories of living in that house. I remember going next door to the other half of the duplex and sitting on the floor playing with the neighbor’s daughter who was about my age. She had a small toy iron and an ironing board. I used it to smooth out a tiny doll’s tablecloth while the girl prepared a tea party. I don’t know why I was so fascinated with the process of ironing and why I retain that memory so vividly. Perhaps it was that it creates order out of chaos.

I remember sitting in my dad’s lap on a lounge chair on the front porch while my dad was cleaning his 22 caliber hunting rifle. His friend George Brake was sitting in the other chair and they were planning a hunting trip. He had a book called, “The Shooter’s Bible” which was a reference book with photos of hundreds of different kinds of firearms. My dad was in no way what you might describe as a gun enthusiast. He had that 22 rifle and a 22 pistol but only went on a couple of hunting trips when I was very young. The only other time I ever recall him using a gun years later was to dispose of a possum that had infiltrated our garage.

I recall a TV repair man coming to fix our TV at that house. I thought TVs were magic so he must’ve been the smartest person in the world if he could repair it.

I recall a deliveryman delivering a set of dresser drawers and my mom telling me that that was going to be furniture in my bedroom when we moved to the new house. I continued to use that dresser until I was about 30.

In May 1959, just before I turned four years old in July, we moved to a newly built home on Cossell Dr. in the Eagledale neighborhood on the northwest side of Indianapolis, just north of Speedway. I still live in that same home 63 years later.

At the time, we were in the geographic area of St. Christopher Parrish on Lyndhurst Dr. in Speedway about five minutes away. However, my earliest recollections of attending church were at St. Bridget’s Church on the corner of West St. and St. Clair Ave. I remember being carried into the side door of the church by my mother and/or my grandmother on a couple of occasions. Inside the door was a tiny vestibule featuring a rack of votive candles. There was a small wicker basket to drop in donations when you lit a candle. I distinctly remember asking what the candles were for and why there was a basket with small change in it.

I also recall one time attempts to carry me in my wheelchair up the steps of the side entrance. That meant I had to be at least five years old because that is when I got my first wheelchair. Why did we attend St. Bridget’s when St. Christopher was much closer? St. Bridget’s held the distinction of having the latest start time of any Catholic Mass anywhere in Indianapolis at 12:10 PM each Sunday. I never understood why 12:10 and not perhaps high noon. I’m not certain, but I think I was baptized at St.Bridget’s Church.

St. Bridget’s Church was closed by the archdiocese in 1994 citing financial difficulties, a decaying structure, and high crime in the neighborhood. The building was briefly used as a Newman Center for IUPUI but was torn down in 2000. A new apartment complex now sits on the site.

One of my earliest memories of being Catholic revolved around a conversation I had with a neighbor boy. I’m guessing I was about four years old and it was shortly after we had moved into the neighborhood. My parents and his parents had gotten together for some sort of gathering on a Saturday night and we were playing in his bedroom. I mentioned that I had to go to church the next day. He asked why.

“Because we are Catholic”, I explained.

“We go to church sometimes. What is Catholic?” he inquired.

“I don’t know exactly. I just know we have to go to church EVERY Sunday.”

He deduced, “Well, I guess I’m not Catholic then.”

As I reached school age and as it became too difficult to carry me up the steps in a wheelchair, my mother and I began attending our home parish, St. Christopher’s Church. They operate an elementary school and my mom attempted to enroll me there. Although she carried some emotional baggage from her 12 years of Catholic education, she remained committed to Catholic schools. She had been indoctrinated to believe that in order to be a “good Catholic” you had to send your kids to Catholic school no matter the financial burden.

When she approached the priest about enrolling me, he politely said that they were not in any way capable of dealing with my special needs. It wasn’t quite the confrontational scene we talked about last week from the movie Mask in which Cher portrayed the mother of a son with a disfiguring medical condition. In this particular case, the priest was correct that the school was not equipped to handle a student like me. It was just the sad truth.

When my mother inquired, “How is he going to learn religion in a public school?”

The priest replied, “Religion is taught in the home.”

She didn’t accept that answer even though he kept repeating it over and over again. Eventually, she persuaded him to give me private one-on-one instructions in what Catholics refer to as “CCD classes”. More on the phrase CCD later.

Years later, her commitment to Catholic schools evaporated. She grew to see the school as a drain on the parish’s resources and a financial burden on families who could not afford it. While she respected parents who chose to send their children to private Catholic schools if they could afford it, she often wondered if we were a church supporting a school or a school with a church attached.

I don’t know which of the three priests at St. Christopher’s Parish mom argued with over my education. But the task of giving me religious instruction fell to the youngest of the three, Father Paul Rehart. Once a week, mom would take me to the rectory (the house where the priests reside) and I would sit in his office and get religious education one-on-one.

First-graders curriculum for Catholic education was from a little blue book known as the Baltimore Catechism. A Catholic organization known as the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine a.k.a. CCD based in Baltimore, MD was responsible for creating the book and educational materials in the form of worksheets that would go with the catechism.

A major part of the indoctrination was that you had to memorize the exact answers to a series of numbered questions. The teacher, in my case the priest, would ask the question and you had to recite the answer 100% verbatim. I still recall the first four questions. I promise you I did not need to refresh my recollection several years ago when I purchased a copy of the Baltimore Catechism on eBay. These questions were burned into my brain.

Question 1: Who made you?

Answer: God made me.

Question 2: Who is God?

Answer: God is the Supreme Being who made all things.

Question 3: Why did God make you?

Answer: God made me to show forth his goodness and to share with us His everlasting life.

Question 4: What must we do to share in His everlasting life?

Answer: To share in God’s everlasting life we must know him, love him, and serve him.

Those questions bring to mind one of my favorite Catholic jokes.

A young nun was teaching first-grade kids from the Baltimore Catechism. Each day she would ask questions in order. Unfortunately, she always started with the kid in the front row and went from child to child in the same order every day. The kids soon realized they only had to memorize one question each. One day, the boy in the front row was absent. She asked the next child, “Who made you?” The child couldn’t answer. She asks the next, and the next, and none of them could answer the first question. She became highly agitated. She thought they had been doing so well. Finally, a little boy in the back of the room raised his hand. With great enthusiasm, she called on him. He explained, “Sister…The little boy that God made isn’t here today.”

Years later, when I began teaching the Catholic faith to adult converts, I began to have a deeper appreciation of the brilliant wisdom and deep theology contained in those first four questions from the Baltimore Catechism. I was reminded of the book titled, “Everything I Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten”. I concluded that everything I needed to know about Catholic theology was summarized in those first four questions of the Baltimore Catechism.

It gives us the essentials of who is God and what our relationship is with him. In some respects, it explains the meaning of life. The purpose of our creation was to spend eternity in paradise with God. And it gives us a complete outline of everything we need to fulfill that goal

It begins with knowledge. We must acquire a deep understanding of God, his message, his role in our lives, his plan for the building of the Kingdom, his unconditional love, and the forgiveness of our sins that is there for the asking.

Having a deep knowledge of God, the obvious result is that we will come to love God.

Knowing what we do about God and having a love for him as a response to his love for us, the natural consequence is that we will attempt to do His Will by serving him. For the most part that service is to our fellow human beings who are also Children of God as are we.

While our Protestant friends were memorizing Bible verses, we were cutting through all of the confusing symbolism in Scripture and getting straight to the heavy-duty theology without having to argue over whether or not God actually created the earth in 6 days of 24 hours each and what was so sinful about eating an apple. It didn’t matter how long it took God to create us and everything else. It didn’t matter how He did it. We are God’s children, part of his master plan, and our destiny was eternal life in heaven.

It’s brilliant in simplicity yet it is so deep, one can easily spend a lifetime coming to understand all of the ramifications of those first four questions.

Naturally, I like most Catholic children, thought the whole idea of memorizing answers to questions was a ridiculous waste of time. Yet I still remember those questions decades later. It took me a long time to appreciate what it all really meant.

As a student in those one-on-one sessions, I was probably a royal pain in the ass. I had lots of questions of my own. The church portrayed itself as the absolute authority with the answers to every question. So, often I would sling some pretty tough ones at the poor unsuspecting young priest.

I swear to God… These are things I really asked the priest at about age 6 or 7.

I was taught that we had a serious obligation to attend Mass every Sunday. To miss Mass without a good reason was a serious sin. So I posed the following hypothetical…

I’m on a cruise ship in the Pacific Ocean and it’s Sunday. There is a priest on board and he has scheduled Mass in the ship’s chapel. I’m on my way there ready and willing to fulfill my solemn Sunday obligation. Suddenly the captain comes on the PA and announces, “Congratulations everyone. We have just crossed the International Date Line. It is no longer Sunday. It’s suddenly Monday.” Before I can persuade the captain to turn the ship around and take us back to Sunday to save our mortal souls, the ship hit an iceberg as the Titanic did. The ship sinks and we all die with this horrible sin on our souls. Would we go to hell?

I was a real shit, wasn’t I?

But wait… there is more. Riddle me this Batman!

They said that when the priest says the words, “This is my body” the ordinary bread on the altar magically turns into the Body of Christ. Similarly, when the priest says “This is my blood” the wine in the cup magically becomes the Blood of Christ. Anyone who receives the Body and Blood unworthily or who is non-Catholic commits a terrible sin.

So, a priest walks into a bakery and is standing next to a huge case of freshly baked loaves of bread. Someone walks by not watching where they are going and bumps into him violently. Without thinking, the priest says, “Hey… watch where you’re going. This is my body.”

Or similarly, a priest walks into a liquor store to pick up a bottle of wine. As he takes it from the shelf, someone else bumps into him, he drops the bottle and it breaks. As he is picking up the pieces of broken glass, he cuts his finger and wipes it on his shirt. The store clerk comes with a bucket and a mop to clean up the mess. He notices a red stain on the priest’s clothing and asks, “Did you get wine on your shirt?” To which the priest answers, “No. This is my blood.”

Does every piece of baked good in the bakery become the Body of Christ including doughnuts or does the bread alone become the Body? And similarly, do all the alcoholic beverages in the liquor store become the Sacred Blood or only the wine? What is the radius of influence of the words of consecration?

Inquiring minds want to know. I wasn’t satisfied with the answers the priest gave me. I think in the case of the sinking ship he said it was just so unlikely to happen that God would understand. In the case of accidental consecration at the bakery and the liquor store, he just said, “Priests have to be careful what they say.”

It was now time to prepare me for the Sacraments. At about age 6, Catholic children receive their First Holy Communion. Boys dress up in suits and ties. Girls wear fancy white dresses and lace veils. All of your Catholic relatives turnout and a few of your non-Catholic relatives might show also. They make a pretty big deal out of it.

Prior to First Communion, you have to do First Confession. In the six years since your Baptism, you might have committed some sins that you need to confess so that you are worthy to receive Communion.

In the early 1960s, it was still the practice that confession took place in a confessional booth. Unfortunately, those facilities were not wheelchair accessible. So I had to do my confession in some private space face-to-face with the priest. We had a small enclosed area in the back corner of the church called “the cry room.” It had glass windows in the front and a small speaker from the PA system. Parents would take crying babies and unruly toddlers into that room. For me, it was the confessional. I would meet with the priest either before or after Mass and he would hear my confession there.

It wasn’t until the reforms of Vatican II that it became normal for everyone to use a Reconciliation Chapel and do Confession face-to-face. So, I was ahead of my time. Eventually, that cry room became the official Reconciliation Chapel for everyone to use although we still retained a slightly remodeled confessional booth as an option.

The Second Vatican Council, a.k.a. Vatican II was a meeting called by Pope John XXIII that lasted from 1961 through 1965. All of the bishops of the world were called together for a series of four sessions in which they produced documents intended to help make the church more relevant in the 20th century and beyond. Among the obvious reforms which came out of that Council was that the celebration of the Catholic Mass would no longer be in Latin. It would be the language of wherever you resided.

They also made changes to some of the rules of discipline. For example, it was a practice that Catholics were supposed to abstain from eating meat on Friday. The theory behind it, which nobody understood as it was never taught, was that you were supposed to take the money that you saved by not eating meat and give it to the poor. So, if rather than having a 15-cent hamburger, you went out and ate a big fancy expensive lobster dinner, you had fulfilled the letter of the law but had missed the point. As I said, that reasoning wasn’t taught. All we were taught was, “It’s a rule and if you don’t follow it, it’s a sin.” Another aspect of the practice was that it was practicing self-discipline.

Similarly stricter rules about fasting during the season of Lent were also about denying oneself little things so as to have the spiritual strength to deny temptation in more important things.

Throughout the 1960s as the Vatican II reforms were promulgated, the rules kept changing. I didn’t have to abstain from meat until I was seven because young children were exempt. Then about the time I was eight or nine, they changed it to 14 so I was able to eat meat on Friday again. By the time I turned 14, they got rid of the rule altogether except during Lent.

Before they changed the rules, the requirement to abstain from meat on Fridays was a source of great consternation for my mother. Because I attended public school, she couldn’t guarantee that they wouldn’t serve me meet for lunch on Fridays. She had a long conversation with the priest in which he convinced her it was okay. She and the other Catholic moms at the public special education school traded notes on how to have that conversation with their pastor.

My only memory of violating the rule was on my eighth birthday. Mom was in the hospital dealing with maternity issues. Grandma Young, from my non-Catholic side of the family, was taking care of me and fixed me a hot dog for lunch. Perhaps I will burn in hell.

Legend has it that during Vatican II when they decided to relax the rules regarding abstaining from meat on Friday someone asked, “What then of all of the souls burning in hell for eating meat on Friday?” The reply was, “Just because we sentenced them to eternal damnation doesn’t mean that God actually carried out the sentence.” So, maybe I’ve still got a chance. I’m pretty sure I brought it up at my next confession.

In our next episode, I will continue to discuss the reformer of Vatican II and the effect it had on me and my struggles to accept the teachings of the Church.

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