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So, I recently read a meta on how it's easy to leave your religion behind if your Christian and someone else talking about ethnic heritage in America and I just can't shut my mouth. If you don't want to hear me drone about growing up Irish-Catholic and the issues therein, you really oughtn't read.
My parents actually left the Catholic church to avoid excommunication. This would have been very problematic except a) they were avoiding excommunication, b) they were having babies, and c) they could (and would) come back later. So they went to the town's local Formerly Catholics Anonymous and went on to have the illicit IVF treatment and produce myself and my brother. My brother and I then grew up in a slightly confusing mish-mash of Catholic and Protestant. Our family was, obviously, Catholic all-around. Our church was Protestant, except for when it wasn't. (We had Seven Sacraments and were hardcore on the saints and a variety of other not-Protestant things. I'm still not entirely sure how I managed to have a First Communion, but it was enough to convince my family so celebrate it.)
When we were ten, we started going to Catholic school. I left Catholic school when I finished high school and moved on to wander through WASP land. My brother stayed and went to a Catholic college. I grew up with fish on Friday, church on Sunday, ashes to mark every Lent and a choice of fast for forty days. I grew up with a gift of the rosary from my grandmother and a portrait of Mary in the bedroom and confirmation saints and St. Anthony for lost things and St. Blaise to bless the throat. (I didn't learn the rosary until I learned that I could get indoors early in the winter with the other girls if we would pray the rosary with the women of the community, but I don't know that I could forget it now.)
I also learned the little things that differeniate me from my classmates - the French-Catholic, the Polish-Catholic, the Italian-Catholic. They are simple things, little things, but they're there. I couldn't tell you at this point, but they're there, they're instinct.
It wasn't just part of growing up - it is part of my family. My family gets together around religious festivals and celebrations and mourning - the funeral, the memorial, the wedding, the holiday. Masses on birthdays are totally plausible. Getting together in the morning to pray the rosary? Totally plausible.
People in my family have been disowned for leaving the faith. (Recently as within my parents' generation, not within mine.) Catholicism is it. It's what we've got. It's better than blood. You can marry outside the faith - it's happened - but the kids are always Catholic. I learned in my confirmation process that I know more about Catholicism than Protestantism. Protestants regularly baffle and frighten me (my mother periodically explores these faiths). For my confirmation, we had to go visit other religious sects and be part of their religious service. I visited a mainline Protestant faith and Greek Orthodox. I dressed wrong for the Orthodox service and don't speak Greek (and I look like Irish McIrishpants), but in the mainline Protestant service - where I looked like I belonged - I felt even more out of place. I kind of knew their hymns, but I didn't know their prayers or habits or beliefs beyond, "Jesus = god."
Mostly? Even as an agnostic pagan, I don't get to leave. Well, I could leave, but in many ways, I can't. It would be giving up my family, which I can't bear to do. They'll have to give me up first. And even if I did, I couldn't drop the quirks it's given me - like the inexplicable fact that I don't want meat on Friday.
I'd like to request something of people (both on the internet and otherwise).
I'm not saying that I didn't grow up with Christian privilege or white privilege or whatever you want to say. And I'm interested in learning what you have to say about that.
But. I also think that assuming people are all the same if they're not you is really wrong. Saying "Christian" works kind of okay in some situations, but honestly, to say, "Christians say..." or "Christians believe..." or, even worse, "Christians and former Christians say/believe..." is so wrong. What kind of Christian? Mormons? Baptists? Seventh Day Adventists? Italian-Catholic Americans? Catholics in Ireland? Russian Orthodox? Those are all different faiths and have different tenets, different traditions, etc.
I believe what you mean is, "mainline Protestant sects in America." Sometimes other Christian sects fall into that category, sometimes not. I know that many practising Catholics in America (as opposed to lapsed Catholics and former Catholics) vehemently disagree with many things that are common to "mainline Protestant sects in America." I would also disagree that the culture I grew up in is the "culture of America." Sure, I've got Christmas in how I grew up, but I remember, without any fondness, having fits over meat-filled menus on Friday at college (and Good Friday, too, the biggest meatleass day in the Catholic calendar - and I can tell you fits were had on my behalf all over the country when I informed my family).
As a final bit, since people are talking about how people appropriate their heritage and faith, I would like to add this. I grew up in - and still live in - Irish-Catholic Massachusetts. I am fully aware of the problem of the pedophile priests. I know people who were affected by the situation. I know the churches and the priests themselves and all of that. I have actually stopped reading and watching things about Catholics and Catholicism that are not written/directed by Catholics. Not every priest is a pedophile, not every clergyperson is sexually repressed and/or has pedophilic tendencies and/or is secretly gay, not everyone is destroyed, body and soul, by Catholic school or priests or whatever. Treating it like it's great fun is damaging.
My parents actually left the Catholic church to avoid excommunication. This would have been very problematic except a) they were avoiding excommunication, b) they were having babies, and c) they could (and would) come back later. So they went to the town's local Formerly Catholics Anonymous and went on to have the illicit IVF treatment and produce myself and my brother. My brother and I then grew up in a slightly confusing mish-mash of Catholic and Protestant. Our family was, obviously, Catholic all-around. Our church was Protestant, except for when it wasn't. (We had Seven Sacraments and were hardcore on the saints and a variety of other not-Protestant things. I'm still not entirely sure how I managed to have a First Communion, but it was enough to convince my family so celebrate it.)
When we were ten, we started going to Catholic school. I left Catholic school when I finished high school and moved on to wander through WASP land. My brother stayed and went to a Catholic college. I grew up with fish on Friday, church on Sunday, ashes to mark every Lent and a choice of fast for forty days. I grew up with a gift of the rosary from my grandmother and a portrait of Mary in the bedroom and confirmation saints and St. Anthony for lost things and St. Blaise to bless the throat. (I didn't learn the rosary until I learned that I could get indoors early in the winter with the other girls if we would pray the rosary with the women of the community, but I don't know that I could forget it now.)
I also learned the little things that differeniate me from my classmates - the French-Catholic, the Polish-Catholic, the Italian-Catholic. They are simple things, little things, but they're there. I couldn't tell you at this point, but they're there, they're instinct.
It wasn't just part of growing up - it is part of my family. My family gets together around religious festivals and celebrations and mourning - the funeral, the memorial, the wedding, the holiday. Masses on birthdays are totally plausible. Getting together in the morning to pray the rosary? Totally plausible.
People in my family have been disowned for leaving the faith. (Recently as within my parents' generation, not within mine.) Catholicism is it. It's what we've got. It's better than blood. You can marry outside the faith - it's happened - but the kids are always Catholic. I learned in my confirmation process that I know more about Catholicism than Protestantism. Protestants regularly baffle and frighten me (my mother periodically explores these faiths). For my confirmation, we had to go visit other religious sects and be part of their religious service. I visited a mainline Protestant faith and Greek Orthodox. I dressed wrong for the Orthodox service and don't speak Greek (and I look like Irish McIrishpants), but in the mainline Protestant service - where I looked like I belonged - I felt even more out of place. I kind of knew their hymns, but I didn't know their prayers or habits or beliefs beyond, "Jesus = god."
Mostly? Even as an agnostic pagan, I don't get to leave. Well, I could leave, but in many ways, I can't. It would be giving up my family, which I can't bear to do. They'll have to give me up first. And even if I did, I couldn't drop the quirks it's given me - like the inexplicable fact that I don't want meat on Friday.
I'd like to request something of people (both on the internet and otherwise).
I'm not saying that I didn't grow up with Christian privilege or white privilege or whatever you want to say. And I'm interested in learning what you have to say about that.
But. I also think that assuming people are all the same if they're not you is really wrong. Saying "Christian" works kind of okay in some situations, but honestly, to say, "Christians say..." or "Christians believe..." or, even worse, "Christians and former Christians say/believe..." is so wrong. What kind of Christian? Mormons? Baptists? Seventh Day Adventists? Italian-Catholic Americans? Catholics in Ireland? Russian Orthodox? Those are all different faiths and have different tenets, different traditions, etc.
I believe what you mean is, "mainline Protestant sects in America." Sometimes other Christian sects fall into that category, sometimes not. I know that many practising Catholics in America (as opposed to lapsed Catholics and former Catholics) vehemently disagree with many things that are common to "mainline Protestant sects in America." I would also disagree that the culture I grew up in is the "culture of America." Sure, I've got Christmas in how I grew up, but I remember, without any fondness, having fits over meat-filled menus on Friday at college (and Good Friday, too, the biggest meatleass day in the Catholic calendar - and I can tell you fits were had on my behalf all over the country when I informed my family).
As a final bit, since people are talking about how people appropriate their heritage and faith, I would like to add this. I grew up in - and still live in - Irish-Catholic Massachusetts. I am fully aware of the problem of the pedophile priests. I know people who were affected by the situation. I know the churches and the priests themselves and all of that. I have actually stopped reading and watching things about Catholics and Catholicism that are not written/directed by Catholics. Not every priest is a pedophile, not every clergyperson is sexually repressed and/or has pedophilic tendencies and/or is secretly gay, not everyone is destroyed, body and soul, by Catholic school or priests or whatever. Treating it like it's great fun is damaging.
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"Christian" is not an all-inclusive word by any means. I've seen so many different expressions of Christianity in my day that I find it slightly ridiculous that people use the term so loosely to mean pretty much anyone who goes to church on Sunday.
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And yes, it's pretty obvious that people who aren't Christian when they spout off things like that. In a way, I get it, because I don't know very much about a lot of religions. But then again, I don't go posting all over the internet pretending I do.
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