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February 15, 2004
On being Catholic in the Bible Belt
I was baptized, Confirmed, First Communioned, Confessed and Married in the Catholic Church. I was also annulled in the Catholic Church. I married John outside of the Church because he is not Catholic and was previously married and would have to go through the annullment process for us to be married in the Church. A silly and ridiculous expense and pain in the ass, in my opinion.
I may not go to Mass very often, but I am still a Catholic, through and through. Nothing is going to change my feelings on that. I may think the Pope does silly stuff - priests should be allowed to be married, for example - but I'm still Catholic. I am pro-life, for example. I believe that life is the most precious gift that God gave us, and we should not take it away from innocents. I also believe the Death Penalty is wrong - because we may take the life of an innocent and because it is unfairly used - not because some evil people should be saved from death.
I grew up in the suburbs of St. Louis, Missouri - in what you could fairly call a Catholic Ghetto (even though we were all middle class or upper middle class).
I had Catholic friends and Jewish friends. I did not meet a person of the Protestant faith until I was 17 - and that was in Dallas, Texas. I had a summer job at Six Flags Over Mid-America (now renamed to Six Flags over St. Louis), and a couple of busloads of us visited Six Flags Over Texas, in Dallas. We stayed with families of kids who worked there. Unfortunately, I drew a family where the dad was a Baptist Minister. He was immediately suspicious of me because my last name was Healy - obviously Irish. He asked me what my dad did for a living. When I told him that Daddy was a Vice President of Falstaff Beer, this minister kicked me out of his house - I had to go and find somewhere else to stay.
When I first came to Kansas City, Missouri for college - way back in 1971 - I came across some rather fundamentalist folk who assured me that I was going to hell and that at Mass, we ate the body of babies born of nuns who had sex with priests.
Yes, that is what a Bible Baptist told me her minister revealed to his flock.
Catholics worship Satan, the minister told them. The Pope is the Anti-Christ. Nuns are whores.
Well, let me tell you, I was rather surprised at these revelations - shocked, I was.
One would think that things would have changed in the past 30 years. One would think incorrectly.
I have met many people - many of them, sadly, military officers and their wives (the Southern Baptist tradition is strong in the military), who literally hate Catholics. I have to stay away from those people, or I will say something that might be damaging to John's career (even though he is retired, he still works with these folks).
The Catholic faith is the one target that most of the media agree on. They can freely rant and rave about the evil that is the Church.
Were they to rant about Islam, there would be a huge uproar by many non-Islamic people.
It tires me to read these objections aimed at the beliefs of my religion. Why is it okay for Muslims to proclaim Jihad against all non-believers, but it's not okay to believe tha abortion is a serious and mortal sin in nearly all cases?
Why do they get to tell us what is wrong with our religion - that we are intolerant of gays because we don't allow gay marriage - that we are unreasonable in not allowing easy divorce, etc., etc., etc?
I don't think it will improve in my lifetime - but it is important to let people know that the prejudice is there, is strong and is unrelenting.
Posted by Beth at February 15, 2004 03:26 PM