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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]When I was a kid (Episcopalian), I visited some Catholic relatives when I was around 10 or 11 years old. They took me to church on Sunday, which was fine, similar enough to what I knew from home. Not thinking anything of it, I joined my cousins in line for communion, took communion from the priest like anyone else, and that was the end of it. When I got home and told my chill parents, they laughed because I "shouldn't" have taken communion, and for years it became this big family joke that if the Catholics in our family were right, I was going to hell for taking communion as a non-Catholic.

But that's not what was uncomfortable. What was uncomfortable was decades later, at a relaxed meal with professional colleagues, having the occasion to tell this story while the dinner conversation was on the topic of kids not understanding things. A colleague seated across from me absolutely BLEW UP at me about this. How disrespectful that was to the church, how could I treat "the host" with such contempt, how my relatives should have known better and how could they have let me, how could I not have known better, etc. It made everyone at the table beyond visibly uncomfortable.

The irony was that he himself was a VERY recent convert to Catholicism, though very devout (as converts always are). Man, what a jerk.[/quote]

You were both wrong.  He was a jerk for blowing up at you.  You are a jerk for making a joke out of other people’s sincere religious beliefs that don’t affect you in any way.[/quote]

PP here. That's fair and I'll take the criticism. I don't "joke" about it the way my family did when I was a teenager, for that reason. In my defense, to have my parents reveal to me that an entire religion believed I was going to hell as a 10-year old for innocently following my cousins in what appeared to be the same kind of communion line I went to at home was something that had to be done with humor. To tell it to me at that age without humor would have been terrifying. (Of course, I would not have been the first child deeply scarred by Roman Catholicism.)[/quote]

Great job pretending to apologize and then launching another insult at the end.  How very ecumenical of you.  Seems to be a character trait.

Perhaps the likelihood of punishment for your mistake will depend on how you react to learning you, yes accidentally, disrespected someone’s tradition?  I know if I disrespected your tradition I would actually apologize and not mock you and then pretend apologize while still insulting you.  [/quote]

What's wrong with you?!? PP didn't do anything wrong at all, and was gracious enough to write she was willing to take criticism. Go away, horrible person.
[/quote]

NP. Sure, circle the wagons but we can all see that PP was disrespectful and is also making a mountain out of a molehill in order to score some weird point (why does she even care what Catholics think of her afterlife prospects?).[/quote]

Whoa. I’m the original PP with the story and didn’t realize it had blown up. I am sorry but I do not see how it was “disrespectful” of me - as a [i]child[/i] - to not know that I was supposed to skip communion. I’m not even sure I really understood that my cousins’ church was a different denomination from my home church at that age. I literally didn’t know the rules and no one told me. So while I regret apparently causing some pain to the guy who yelled at me at my work dinner and to you, I am not sure what else I can do to satisfy you.[/quote]

You’re not causing me pain. I’m just pointing out that this is the proverbial mountain out of a molehill. Sorry of that rankles you. [/quote]

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