Catholic Religion

Assignment 2:

March 11, 2012

I chose to research the Catholic religion since I know very little about the Catholicism except that it was my mother’s religion. I went to church very briefly but was too young to grasp what Catholicism was about and how a Catholic was taught to act and believe. When I was in high school, I briefly dated someone who was a very conservative Catholic and we talked about our beliefs. He informed me I could never be a ‘true’ Catholic because some of my personal beliefs went against the church’s teaching. However when I asked him if his views were based off personal beliefs, like mine, or if they were due to the teachings of his religion he couldn’t truly answer. That experience really turned me off to Catholicism. I felt religion wasn’t for me if that was what the church was teaching its ‘flock’; forcing them to believe what the church wants you to believe and installing within you the fear of sinning against or the threat of being removed from the church if your views are different. I’m not one who believes in following the teaching of a religion verbatim especially since most religions have not evolved with the changes of time and still hold strong to the ideals and beliefs that were prevalent hundreds of years ago.

Before researching Catholicism I had many misconceptions regarding the Catholic religion. When I decided to research Catholicism I really felt this would strengthen my belief that religions, particularly conservative religions like this one, are mind-washing tools used by individuals to try and control the weak minded. I remembered everything I had ever learned about Catholicism in books, I had heard on the news, or saw in the movies. I believed all Catholics felt their religion was the only ‘true religion’; people of different beliefs would go to purgatory or hell even infants; that the religion itself kept an individual so steeped in sin, since everything you do seemed to be a sin in the Catholic religion, that you had to constantly do penance, pray, and ask forgiveness to void the elevator ride down after death; and people like me who were pro-choice, believed in living with someone before marriage, and believed that going to church and telling people you were religious didn’t make you religious but rather the way you lived your life and gave thanks, even in private, to God made you a person of faith. After talking with Father Grankauskas of St. Thomas à Becket Catholic Church I realized I had many misconceptions about the Catholic religion.

Through my encounter with this religion and talking to people who are devoted Catholics my prior understanding was altered in the way I had always saw or had heard about this religion. I sat down the Father Grankauskas of St. Thomas a Becket Catholic