With the Small Child going to Catholic school nowadays, I’ve been thinking lately about how the church and I kinda parted ways. And from what I can remember it wasn’t the usual Evolution vs Creation debate…. it was something altogether simpler that didn’t gel with my young brain. Sr Mary-Clare (God bless her cotton frocks) used to teach us Religious Education (and everything else come to think of it) when I was in primary school in a time when we still used to get sent to the Principal’s office for ‘the cuts’ if we perpetrated one of a gazillion ill-defined infractions. She did her best I guess with a bunch of kids who would yawn rudely as she tried to beat some catechism into us. No doubt it was our blatant boredom that caused her to frequently retaliate with her own special weapon of mass dysfunction – that uniquely Catholic torture known as the Liturgical Dance 😐
I recall one day when I was in Grade 3 one of my classmates, Libby Free (there’s a name I haven’t thought of for a few decades) had come to school upset because their family dog had been run over by a car and her parents had told her that Rover/Fido/Fluffy (insert generic dog’s name of your choice) had gone to heaven. Well Sr Mary-Clare was having none of that. So she set the record straight… “We (Catholics) do not believe that animals have souls – only humans have souls….. so Rover/Fido/Fluffy can not go to heaven.” Which being ever a laterally thinking little miss (Yes my teachers often had that slightly hesitant and fleetingly exasperated look about them whenever I raised my hand with a question ) caused me to say “But Sr Mary-Clare… last week you said humans ARE animals” or something of that ilk.
Whatever explanation she offered for this glaring contradiction is long forgotten and likely irrelevant. Needless to say it didn’t satisfy my young curiosity and being spoon fed Catholicism throughout my entire education rapidly became something to be tolerated but eventually deemed to be irrelevant and even fanciful. As I got older the Evolution vs Creation argument definitely cemented that particular sentiment and by the time I was paying attention to international news and/or politics as a young adult most other organized religions were firmly added to the list of “Stuff Borys Wants Nothing To Do With”.
Yes I know… I’m going to hell (if it pleases you to believe in such a place).
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