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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I come from a large Irish Catholic family, though my mom was a young widow and I was an only child. My mom had a college degree, somewhat unusual for her time, but it was from a Catholic women’s college. I attended Catholic school until college, though my mom very much wanted me to attend the college she had.

Sooooo many things my mom, family, Catholic school and church did made me want to leave. The list is too long. But whatever Catholic doctrine applied to any given situation, you’d better believe we followed it. Only now, at age 58, do I have the understanding that I was raised in a cult-like environment.

DH is not Catholic. We baptized our kids as such because my mom would have disowned me otherwise. Frankly, the only reason I got away with marrying a non-Catholic is because DH is a charming guy. Mom loved him.

In my extended family, relatives were disowned upon divorce. My devout aunt and uncle missed YEARS of knowing their first grandchild, who was born out of wedlock.

My biggest regret is that I never had the freedom to choose religion for myself, nor could I raise my kids outside the church. We did baptism, confession, and communion for all 4 of our kids, but my mom was in her 90s and not aware of our household happenings as much, so we skipped confirmation for the 4th.

I was robbed from having any freedom of thought or action until I was much older and realized how the cultlike environment of my upbringing had directed so many aspects of my life.

At my mom’s funeral, I turned around and looked inside the cathedral as we left. Barring any wedding that I feel I’ simply must attend, I vowed on the spot that I would never set foot in a Catholic Church again. And I haven’t.

Just don’t raise your kids with edicts regarding religion, whatever religion you may practice. Catholicism has a LOT of them. [/quote]

Hi PP!

I certainly don't doubt any of what you have written.  However, as a Catholic from a large Irish-German family who is just a year older than you, I had a very different experience that I'd like to share.

My parents were devout (and both college educated), but sent me to public school and I went on to attend a public university.  I married a non-Catholic, divorced, and married again after a few years.  There was no disowning, just entirely-appropriate sadness that I had managed to run my first marriage onto the rocks.

I was given the freedom to wander away from my faith starting in high school (and I did), before "choosing religion for myself" in my early thirties.  Basically, as I got older I came to realize more and more that my dad was no dummy.  I decided it might be worthwhile for me to figure out why his faith was so important to him.  And so I did, and that has been an enormous gift that has changed my life profoundly in a positive way.

I'm saddened by reading of your experience of the faith, which seems to have been driven by your mom and her family.  I obviously never met them, but I do know that some people tend to like rules that can give structure to their lives, and can sometimes get hung up on them.  That works for them, I guess, and I wouldn't take it away from them, but it's not for everybody.  Clearly it wasn't for you, and it colored your experience negatively.

But Catholicism is about love, and mercy, and forgiveness, and charity, and healing, and beauty, and virtue, and a thousand other things.  If that got lost in your family's rule-mindedness that's a tragedy.  But it's never too late to set aside the baggage of the "cultlike environment of your upbringing" and wonder what else might be there.[/quote]

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