Okay, so I was reading the paper today about the Catholic church’s new campaign to get it’s followers back into confession. It’s called “The Light is On For You.” Yeah, I bet it is. The church is going all out on this one…running radio spots and putting up a special web site. It is Lent, after all. For those who are non-Catholic, Lent is that magic time of year when you give up something you really like so that you can do penance before The Big Guy comes back from the dead. You know, one of my sisters gives up M & Ms; the other gives up black jelly beans. Me? Well, you know, I give up the same thing every year. I give up Church. I’ve been doing that now for at least, oh, thirty-six years or so. My whole life is basically Lent.

You know, it’s not that I’m not spiritual. I actually am. I now tell people that I survived my Catholic upbringing. I’m Catholic by birth, but I’m Buddhist by choice. The fact is that I went to Catholic school most of my life…right up through two years of college. In spite of that, I’ve always had issues with organized religion (even Buddhism, but I don’t want to digress here). Frankly, the nuns scared the shit out of me, not when I got older but certainly throughout grammar school.

The Penguins (as we affectionately called them) painted God the Father as someone to be feared. It brought new meaning to the words “God-fearing children.” We were. They also made us feel like chanting “We’re not worthy! We’re not worthy!” They gave us no quarter. The God I learned about was not a kind and forgiving God. He was a God of retribution. Hell, I was terrified of the crucifix that hung on the wall in our house. I was afraid Jesus would open His eyes and say, “Hey, you, over there! You little heathen! Do you know I died for YOUR sins?”

So, here we were getting brainwashed and scared shitless in school every single day. We had Religion every day. And we were forced to sing in the choir, but I managed to get myself thrown out more than once. First, it was for telling jokes and getting all the kids to laugh. Then, a couple of us got tossed because we were spitting down on top of peoples’ heads from the balcony. I admit that was a bit extreme. The religious barrage continued at home — at least it did at my house. At one point after my dad died, we lived with my grandmother. She had a little shrine with votive candles buring on her bureau in her bedroom. At Easter, we had to sit around and watch those religious movies, like “The Robe” with Victor Mature, or  “The Ten Commandments” with Charlton Heston. There was no shortage of this stuff. No rest for the weary, as my mother would say.

There was a picture of The Sacred Heart hanging in her room too. I think my sister has that one now.  It seemed to me that Jesus’ eyes followed me no matter where I went. It was even scary in my grandmother’s basement. She’d hung a picture of St. Theresa down there. Didn’t matter where you walked, her eyes followed you all over the place. I found that very disquieting. You know, like I was being watched all the time. You can bet your life that I didn’t take any little girls down there. Wasn’t going to happen.

“Bless me Father, for I have sinned…”

Okay, so this confession thing. I remember when I was a kid, we’d have to go to confession. We’d tell this guy behind this foolish divider everything we did wrong. Now, I knew what priest I was confessing to. So, you can bet he knew who he was listening to. The sinners did not remain nameless. I’d go in there and say, “I lied five times.” Or I’d say, “I swore under my breath at my mother.” Then, I’d get my penance. “Say five Our Fathers and ten Hail Marys.” And if you sighed like it was too much penance, the priest would tack some more prayers on there. Hell, I decided that I was never going to confess about having dirty thoughts about my girl friends. I’d be in the pew doing penance all freakin’ day if I did that. I kept those sins to myself.

As I got older, though, I got more and more pissed off about having to do this. My issues with organized religion started at a pretty early age. I just had a difficult time with telling my sins to just another guy. I mean, it wasn’t like I was telling them directly to Jesus or anything. When I announced to my mother that I was no longer going to confession because these were “just guys” I was talking to, I thought she would just keel over and die right on the spot.

So, when I got into a discussion this morning with one of my Starbucks customers about the Catholic church trying to bring its flock back to the confessional, I’m pretty sure my mother was rolling over in her grave.  Now I’m downright angry at this whole prospect. Seems to me the Catholic church as some of it’s own confessions to take care of.  I’m not saying everyone associated with the Catholic church is bad, but I don’t think it should go down this path until it takes clear of cleaning up its own house.

The church can start by confessing that it spent years covering up for pedophiles when it should have been turning them over to the authorities. The main part of the Catholic church’s penance can be actually turning these files over to the authorities. I think that’s fair. Then, they can say four thousand Our Fathers and ten thousand Hail Marys and we’ll call it even. NOT.

Back again with a here-and-now post…of sorts. A lot of this story is related to my past, so it’s in that mid-zone. I always tell people I am a Catholic by birth and a Buddhist by choice and that’s the absolute truth. However, I am not what I would call a ‘religious’ person. I’m a spiritual person, but not a religious person. I have great disdain for organized religion. I always tell my kids that it’s not God, or Buddha, or Mohammed or whomever your particular deity is that causes the problem. It’s what people do once they get hold of that religion and try to shape it in their own image and likeness.  It’s the organization of it by mortal men (and women) that I take issue with.

From the folks who brought you The Crusades and The Spanish Inquisition

The Catholic faith does not work for me on many levels. Right off the top, the church’s steadfast opposition to anything LGBT will rule Catholicism out. I really do not want my children exposed to the bigotry within those teachings. The incredible hypocrisy surrounding the whole issue of pedophilia is huge for me. I really think it’s over the top to condemn homosexuality when the church has spent years protecting pedophiles. It’s not so much that there are pedophiles in the church. I can see that happening. Becoming a priest gives them access to children and a great cover. Nobody questioned the Catholic church when I was young. Nobody. We didn’t know, but somebody did: Those in power. Instead of cleaning the mess up, they shuffled these sexual predators to new parishes and kept it hidden. I take issue with that. They should all have been prosecuted as perpetrators and accessories. Instead, when the story broke, they painted these sexual predators as homosexuals. I’m very much in command of two words in the English language: Fuck them.

Then, there are the nuns: Terrorists in penguin suits. I’m not sure how things are now, but when I was young we were terrified of them. I remember I wrote a story once called “Nuns with Guns.” I wish I could find it now. They ruled by intimidation when I was in grammar school. (By the time I got to high school, I wasn’t afraid of them anymore.) They also made you terrified of God. One false move and He’d smote you. Half of the problem was the outfit. It was like a klan outfit for the holy. Black and white. No gray. Appropriately enough, just like their teachings.

I was turned off to the Catholic religion for one other reason — a very personal one. This incident happened well before the whole church sex scandal broke. The catholic priest in my parish refused to come and give my dad last rites when he was dying because he had a golf tournament that day. In reality, the Catholic church lost me that day.

A brief foray into Judaism proves my theory of organized religion

For a while, Beth and I toyed with Judaism. We even began the process of conversion by taking the interfaith course in Westwood. The Rabbi teaching the course was a pompous, pretentious putz. It was when he got to Leviticus that I became uncomfortable. If you think the Catholics are tough on gays, try Judaism. During the time we were looking into Judaism, we were also trying to choose a temple to associate ourselves with. This was my second bad experience with the Hebrew vision of homosexuality. I’m not exactly sure what temple we had chosen. I’m thinking it was one on the north shore, since were were living in Beverly at the time. We were sitting in the Rabbi’s office and discussing the whole gay issue when he asked which one of us “plays the man.” Now, that was a real W-T-F moment for me.

I remember just looking at him and asking — in a very exasperated tone — “What?” He sat back and looked at me. “One will obviously be the mother, so who will be the father figure?” You know, ask anyone, I’m a very patient person. I’m loyal to a fault. My friends practically have to try to murder me to get me to dump them. I’m just not patient with this crap. I wasn’t going to try to talk to this guy and get him to understand because he clearly thought his question was perfectly logical. I remember saying to him, “Our child will have two mothers. Neither one of us will play the father. That’s not what this is all about. Thanks for your time. See you later.” I think Beth got up and followed me simply because she wasn’t expecting me to do that.  See, she’s a processor. I know she would have stayed there and tried to reason with the guy ad nauseum. No way. He did not want to “get it.” Sayonara, Judaism.

Those were the only two mainstream possibilities for me. The others, like Mormonism and Christian fundamentalism, have too many whack jobs per square inch for me. They are too overbearing and are always in “high conversion” mode.

Why Buddhism works for me

I chose Buddhism because I like its principles. It doesn’t ask for you to blindly go forward. In fact, it encourages you to question.

“Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who said it, no matter if I had said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.” (Buddha)

That’s what I like about Buddhism. I also like that Buddhists, including the Dalai Lama, don’t for a minute believe that Buddhism is for everybody. The Dalai Lama doesn’t force feed anyone his ideology. He puts it out there. If it works for you, fine. If not, fine. Buddhism also teaches that its followers should never look down on anyone else’s religion. That’s a far cry from what you get with the Catholics and the Jews.

“Here is my simple religion. There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart are temples; the philosophy is kindness.” (The Dalai Lama)

This works for me. The whole belief in Karma works for me, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t got issues with the “organized” side of Buddhism. I have issues with it. For one thing, they raise too much money for nonsensical things, like giant statues and ornate religious symbols. I understand the importance of the deities in Buddhism. I get it. Beth and I even have an altar with some deities on it. Medicine Buddha is very big in our household, for obvious reasons. It’s not an alter you pray at, by the way. It’s where you make offerings. But the Buddhists spend too much time raising money to build hugely ornate statues and temples. There is so much more they could do with that money…like feed their monks who basically subsist on nothing but rice, and eat just one meal a day. That’s crazy.

The other thing about Buddhism is the number of wealthier people who are involved in it because it’s seen as “fashionable” to be Buddhist. That’s not really anything that Buddhism itself can control, actually. I used to go to the Kurukulla Center in Medford every once in a while and you could see the hangers on. None of these people upheld the basic tenets of Buddhism. They had attitude. They were snobs. They weren’t nice to those less fortunate than they are. Those aren’t Buddhist qualities in the least. I really never get there anymore and I honestly do not feel as though I’m missing anything. I can be Buddhist here at home. After all, the Dalai Lama says so!