Religious Frustration

I must admit that I probably fall under the category of a Cafeteria Style Catholic.  The older I get the more "Cafeteria" I get.

I struggle with organized religion.  I get why we have it and I get why we have rules.  But like anywhere else in life, sometimes rules are allowed to be stretched a bit.  Although I am a Cafeteria Catholic, I am practicing and I'm pretty devote by my standards.

I think I am morally grounded and I do everything I can to live a good "Christian" life.  Am I a model Catholic - no.  I'm not perfect and will never claim to be.  I've spent a good year questioning the whole thought of "God" but more specifically the whole "Jesus" concept.  I just sometimes sit there dumbfounded about why He was sent here on earth and why He let people walk all over Him and then let them kill Him, and I try to piece this together with the notion that by doing this He saved us from damnation.  And I get it only because I walk by Faith - and I truly do.  But I think it is healthy to question things as often times it brings you closer to God.

I have to say that over the last 19 months, someone from above has made my life "perfect" by human standards.  My son has developed into a sweet, charming, intelligent and independent boy.  He is eating, he is growing and he tests my mommy-ness daily.  Just like every 4 year old boy is supposed to do and I relish that so deeply from the core of my heart.  I have a daughter who is the sweetest, kindest, most loving, caring person.  She is the perfect big sister any little brother could ever ask for.  She has grown infinitely and compassionately since her brother was brought into her life.  I had a job opportunity surface back in April and I didn't land the job until September.  This was absolutely perfect timing.  I had my summer with my kids, I found a fabulous school for my son which also allows him to go every day all day long and his teacher is a friend, who I know watches over him like he's her own.  I walk away in the morning guilt free and relaxed because my kids are in safe learning environments.  This job I got is perfect.  The products I will be managing are perfect for me and given all of the knowledge I gained over the last 4 years with my son and his medical hiccups, I have a better awareness of my job.  Like I said, I feel as though everything in my life has happened for a perfect reason.  And I will tell you I begged, prayed and even bargained with God for all this to fall into place so perfectly.  And I thanked Him from the bottom of my heart and I say thank you every day when I wake up.  Because for a period of time, life stunk.  And it took those horrible days and nights for me to realize how wonderful and perfect my life is now.  And I know Divine Intervention played a huge part.

So that takes me to why I am frustrated…

I am married into a mixed religion relationship.  I am Catholic and my husband is Jewish.  I practice my faith overtly, my husband practices his faith much more privately.  We are raising our children Catholic, both kids are Baptized Catholic and are in PSR (religious study classes weekly).  One important thing that my husband I both feel our children need to be exposed to different religions and we do our best to instill religious tolerance.  Our children need to be aware of, respectful of the different religions.  They need to know that even though people practice differently, they are still good people and that no one group of religious people are better than another.  My feeling and I believe my husband's too, is that in the end we all are praying to and honoring the same God - we just call Him something different.  I am discounting those who choose to use religion to be hurtful, vengeful and terroristic.

I've struggled with our PSR director at the parish I am currently a member of - not overtly but more in my head.  She initially rubbed my husband the wrong way and I knew that at all cause I need to keep them separated from each other because I never know what will come out of either person's mouth and who will end up offending who.  I actually told my husband that it is not required for him to go to church with me anymore because its just better that way.  I'll deal with the questions from the kids "why doesn't daddy go to Church".  They have asked and I've told them flat out it's not his religion.  I'm waiting for the - "Mom, I'm Jewish today, so I don't need to go to Church" - comment and I know it will come out at some point.  And I'm sure I'll bite my lip to keep from laughing, cause I'd probably use that line too if I was my kids.

So knowing that this nun is hard nosed and often times doesn't think before she speaks had us PSR parents meet with her this past week to discuss PSR and why our kids are there, and to go over the whole child safety and how the Church is actively involved in making sure the kids are safe from sexual predators.  So sad that we even have to have that talk/video.  In the course of this meeting, she said something that just did not sit well with me.  It took every ounce of "Christianity" for me not to fire off some expletives and to tell her off.  I am highly sensitive to statements where Christians think they are better than non-Christians.  That God loves Christians more than non-Christians.  Where do people come up with these asinine beliefs?  My goal as I said earlier is to maintain an openness regarding all religious beliefs.  For one, I don't know for certain that the Catholic Church is the "chosen" religion; God didn't tap my shoulder and tell me, nor did He whisper in my ear, send me a text, Facebook post or email.  So I'm thinking, the best way to be is to be tolerant of all peaceful religions - period.  So this nun, stands up there in front of all these parents and says,  "I wonder if I asked the public school teachers if they could pick out the Christians from the non-Christians".  Seriously, she said that.  Not once, but at least two times.  All I could think at that moment was "thank goodness Jon wasn't there".  I'm not sure I would have been able to tame that beast inside of him, hell it was hard enough to tame myself when she said that.

I waited and shared it with Jon the next morning and he was flabbergasted and angry.  And the more he thought about it the angry he got.  I wasn't really happy myself.  All I can think is that this nun just set up the environment for my children to be teased or ostracized because their father is Jewish.

Then I think to myself, our world is really messed up.  And it's not just certain areas of the world that have all this deep hatred of each other because of their religious beliefs - I just witnessed it in my own Church.  The Church that my husband and I were able to have a concelebrated wedding ceremony where both a Priest and Rabbi were present and where our ceremony was blended.  The priest allowed a chuppah to be brought into the Church.  I had a full fledged Mass.  My kids were both Baptized in this Church.  I am so sad.  I will be leaving this parish in the near future in an effort to make sure I can allow my kids to be raised Catholic as Jon is really disenchanted.  I can't say that I blame him and I can't say that I disagree with him.