On facebook, a friend wrote (under my post about this essay), "A born and undisturbed atheist, I muse with I hope compasionate sadness at my Catholic friends who seem able to reject it, but not to forget it."
My reply:
"Is 'compassionate sadness' a fancy-pants way of saying "pity"? Hrrmmm. . .
I don't consider myself traumatized by Catholicism (although others, who had much worse experiences than I did, certainly were.) I was brought up in a loving home in truly bucolic, one might even say idyllic surroundings. And although I didn't enjoy it at the time, I rather often hated it, in retrospect my country-boy/city kid experience gave me from a young age a much broader understanding of the varieties of human experience than many people seem to get in a lifetime.
I don't pity kids who didn't grow up on a small farm & learn to milk a cow when they were 5 years old or get comfortable exploring Brooklyn & Queens & The Bronx and Manhattan by subway starting at 13. I just feel lucky that I did. It was certainly a richer experience than many kid stuck in suburbia ever got or get.
As for the Catholicism, it was just kind of there, like the Scottish or Irish accents of every one of my adult relatives except for Pop."
Correction except for my father and Pop. My father was born in Caldwell, NJ. My mother and her mother & brothers & sisters were immigrants from Scotland; Nana was an immigrant from Ireland, one of the 14 Hudson's to come to USA in early 1900's.
Also, Vatican II was convoked and led by Pope John 23rd. When he died there was a big photo spread in Life Magazine. I remember looking at it during a quite time in my 5th grade (public school) class, when my teacher, Mr. Byrne, the guy who went to mass every morning before going to work, said something to me like "it's going to be a long time before we another Pope like him again." I have no idea why that stuck with me, but it did.
The language in which mass was said in USA switched from Latin to English in 1965, when I was 12 or 13, so I was among the very last of Latin mass altar boys (although I guess in some places & circumstances mass is still said in Latin although that's very rare, I believe.)
As for the ROTC connection: that was some kind of accident of history, I believe. Xavier High School was founded in 1847 and I think the Civil War may have influenced it. I dunno. I don't know when ROTC became a formalized program. But I do know that in this respect Xavier is an outlier. To the best of my knowledge, Xavier was the only such Jesuit/military school on the planet. Xavier still has ROTC, but it hasn't been mandatory for a f few decades now.
On facebook, a friend wrote (under my post about this essay), "A born and undisturbed atheist, I muse with I hope compasionate sadness at my Catholic friends who seem able to reject it, but not to forget it."
My reply:
"Is 'compassionate sadness' a fancy-pants way of saying "pity"? Hrrmmm. . .
I don't consider myself traumatized by Catholicism (although others, who had much worse experiences than I did, certainly were.) I was brought up in a loving home in truly bucolic, one might even say idyllic surroundings. And although I didn't enjoy it at the time, I rather often hated it, in retrospect my country-boy/city kid experience gave me from a young age a much broader understanding of the varieties of human experience than many people seem to get in a lifetime.
I don't pity kids who didn't grow up on a small farm & learn to milk a cow when they were 5 years old or get comfortable exploring Brooklyn & Queens & The Bronx and Manhattan by subway starting at 13. I just feel lucky that I did. It was certainly a richer experience than many kid stuck in suburbia ever got or get.
As for the Catholicism, it was just kind of there, like the Scottish or Irish accents of every one of my adult relatives except for Pop."
Correction except for my father and Pop. My father was born in Caldwell, NJ. My mother and her mother & brothers & sisters were immigrants from Scotland; Nana was an immigrant from Ireland, one of the 14 Hudson's to come to USA in early 1900's.
Also, Vatican II was convoked and led by Pope John 23rd. When he died there was a big photo spread in Life Magazine. I remember looking at it during a quite time in my 5th grade (public school) class, when my teacher, Mr. Byrne, the guy who went to mass every morning before going to work, said something to me like "it's going to be a long time before we another Pope like him again." I have no idea why that stuck with me, but it did.
The language in which mass was said in USA switched from Latin to English in 1965, when I was 12 or 13, so I was among the very last of Latin mass altar boys (although I guess in some places & circumstances mass is still said in Latin although that's very rare, I believe.)
As for the ROTC connection: that was some kind of accident of history, I believe. Xavier High School was founded in 1847 and I think the Civil War may have influenced it. I dunno. I don't know when ROTC became a formalized program. But I do know that in this respect Xavier is an outlier. To the best of my knowledge, Xavier was the only such Jesuit/military school on the planet. Xavier still has ROTC, but it hasn't been mandatory for a f few decades now.
Opus Dei is some fucked-up shit. And very Scalia-ish.