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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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.

Please consider supporting us at https://www.patreon.com/contemplatinglife

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

Where to listen to this podcast: https://anchor.fm/contemplatinglife

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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