Catholicism. Oy vey!

WEDNESDAY, MAY 19, 2010


Catholicism. Oy vey!

Please Put Your Seat Backs and Trays in the Full Upright and Locked Position. Fasten your seat belts because we’ve encountered some turbulence and this may be a bumpy ride.

I am going to talk about religion in a left handed kind of way.

So I went back to the email I sent my brother to find out what I was supposed to do today because I promised him something. I didn’t have to search far since I talked to him yesterday on my cell phone. He is one of the people who are not costing me minutes to talk to. He is ‘Friends and Family.’ That makes it a freebie even if it is not in the middle of the night on a weekend where there are three full moons in that month whose first letter is X. I immediately followed up the phone call with a digital transfer of some typed information I promised him over the phone.

Generally, I keep in touch with my brother a little better than my other sibs. I love them. Between the other sibs and me there can never be any male bonding. This is fact, on top of being some lame excuse for not calling them more often. I have the calling of one of them listed high on my agenda. Then I will rotate through the other two fairly quickly. Counting on my fingers, that brings the total number of us gray haired ‘kids’ to five. Since there were no multiple births in our family and we are not Mormons and fertility drugs were not around for mom to dabble with; that probably makes us Catholic.

If you needed some allies as kids it was always good to befriend the Catholics. In my day, before the magic of ‘The Pill’ and any propensity to disobey the Church, you could always get together a minimum of a basketball team if you got together the children of at least one good Catholic family. It was not unusual to be able to have a football team of children of Catholics. If the father was particularly randy or lucky, you might be able to put together both offense and defense.

One of my first grade girlfriends was also a second child. Her mother was pregnant at her college graduation. Fertility and continual pregnancy were birthrights and something to be proud of then. I cannot remember a time when her mom was not bulging at the seams. Did I mention I went to Catholic school?

So I got to thinking. Since I have no fans of my blog or even a single subscriber that I might possibly start recruiting Catholics. Sister Mediatrix would be proud. That little Italian priest (whose name I can never remember) that convinced mom to have numbers four and five, would also be proud. I doubt Sister Mediatrix is still as hot as I thought she was when she was teaching me to write; blessing herself with her left hand. This is not some kind of old school Catholic code. Many nuns looked hot to first graders. Most of them only used their left hand to cross themselves so the kiddies would not get confused as they faced the nun and Plastic Jesus when the nun faced them for morning prayers. Some of the really old nuns even crossed themselves with their left hand in church when they genuflected. I think that was likely just confusion.

Only a few good Catholic families would be required to jump on board to start spreading the news. Then the principle of geometric progression would kick in. Unlike when I went to school, since Vatican II probably declared it; it isn’t still a mortal sin for Catholics to have friends who are not Catholic. I know Tom Steves would be happy about that because he was my best friend in the first grade. I am sure it is not the guy tripping around Europe with an overnite bag on PBS. That guy is just way too young.

Some lame priest (I think it was that Italian that always needed a shave) tried to convince our class of first graders that we would burn in H – E – double L hockey sticks if we had friends that were Protestants or perish the thought, Jews.

I suffered sleepless nights worrying about this before I made my first conscious decision to flaunt the authority of the Church. I made my first decision to go against the teachings of the Church: to become the first grade Galileo Galilei. Damn the Heretics. Full Speed Ahead. For the most part it has worked out well for me.

So in this quest to add readers I am begging Catholics to support one of your own and not in a Tom Hanks kind of Agnes Dei way. I am also imploring all those of other faiths to join in this rekindled ecumenism and start getting along. Where is Pope John XXIII when you really need him? Maybe if they read my blog people will stop trying to blow up planes with their shoes; a noble cause.

Attempting to get back to my original idea: Are there still Mortal and Venial Sins? I think the Catholic Church still holds the threat of Mortal Sin over our heads to try to keep us in line… but from my estimation and based on the number of children in modern Catholic families, I am going to say they are not being overly successful in the birth control arena. Because there is always confession; I guess there can continue to be Catholics. There just will not be quite as many of them speaking English as a first language as there used to be. Confession saved my bacon quite a few times back in the day.

And… did Obama really say Adios? I have not been watching the news and with all of this digital enhancement, now so easy, I don’t know what to believe. What I can’t believe is my spellchecker just wanted to change ‘all of this’ to ‘this entire’… no way WinDoze! Back off Gates!


Anyway, on the phone yesterday I confessed to my brother that I had started a blog. I just broke down and confessed.

I’ve told very few people I have started writing again because I am still trying to figure out what by the grace of God and Google I am doing here blogging. I did mention it to my imaginary friends on the interwebs. I also recruited one female friend I somehow lost touch with for a while. She is not one of my sisters, just someone that for the life of me I can’t figure out why she hasn’t sent my infrequent emails to the spam folder or labeled my account a phishing scam. I threatened that if she did not at least read it that we could not go to lunch and I might publish some little know factoid.

I seemed to get at least one ata-boy from my imaginary friends and an ‘I’m busier than a (insert favorite euphemism here because the ones that immediately come to mind probably should not be posted where young Catholics, Mormons, Sunnis or Shiites might blunder into them)’. Most just acted confused because either they did try to read some of this dribble or they could not understand why.

So when my brother called, I confessed. I just blurted it out. This is almost as serious as answering questions that were never asked. Before Child Abuse Laws and if you went to Catholic school; you already know that this is one of the best ways to have your knuckles adjusted with a meter stick by a nun or a serious pounding on of some priest or brother.

Initially there really was no ulterior motive… then I thought of how my brother had married a good Catholic girl and they still attend mass. He has had some special Theological training and achieved an elevated status within his religious community. Fortunately for him he is not qualified as my spiritual counselor.

And my brother’s wife, my sister in law, is a real saint. Like Paddy Coffee used to tell my deceased Irish immigrant grandmother ‘they’ll be singing with the angels’ while the rest of us are stuck somewhere just among the minions. I think the Catholics dumped Limbo with the venial sin as part of negotiations at some Synod. But after coming up with the thought that someone should read my thoughts besides me… God knows, with the number of siblings my sister in law has - judging from the length of the CC: field on her broadcast emails and what I can still remember; this could be a good start.

Barring intervention of some deity this might very well be my best option. I can be like the forwarders of Junk Mail. Every time I see someone I have told about this and threatened in some way; I could ask them if they have read my blog. I am going to have to start full recruitment, marketing and advertising because if a blog falls in the forest. Especially this effort.

One of my sisters, the next in line chronologically, becomes the next target. She is a great sister and a mother of a small family. I am not going to talk of her frequency attending mass or if my brother is praying to St. Jude Thaddeus on October 28th for her redemption. I will at least mention that she teaches in the Catholic High School all of the kids in our family attended.

I am proud to say we held the record for the longest stretch of continuous attendance for any family going there since my brother went there the first year the school opened as a freshman and we had a boy or girl there right up until those damn rabbits stole our crown. They at least did not go there from day one since the first of that line transferred into my class when I was a junior. They had a randy dad and a football team of kids. So not counting the extended season or steroids, like Babe Ruth we still hold the really important record.

Did I mention sister1 teaches English but it is her husband I am after too, since he teaches at the same school and he teaches English Comp? Their three daughters went to school there too. It must be pure hell having your mom and dad teach you how and what to read and write besides how to drive the car. Maybe I should really return those Alumni questionnaires and try to recruit the entire school and all of its graduates as blog readers.

So then who do I go after next? The Shiites or the Sunnis? Which would be better in my scheme for world peace? Or would the Jews be better? Possibly the Palestinians since some of them are even Catholic. I am going to have to consider things and take them as them come. I will report back on this later.

Back to real life: my real dilemma now is what am I going to do about my wife? She has supported me thru thick and thin even when she likely knew better. I warned her that I was interested in blogging in only the most obscure way.

I am not going to go back and edit past venial sins since I made myself a promise to stop doing that when it started interrupting the media war between ABC and FOX that happens every Tuesday nite when ‘American Idol’ is up against the results show for ‘Dancing with the Stars’. AAAARGH! Don’t mess with my TV!

My spouse witnessed my fascination with Julie & Julia and knew I even read the book after the movie. I don’t know if she knows I read every post of that blog and also don’t know if I can put Julie up on a pedestal with Julia after the butchering stuff and I have yet to read that book, however, I would like to meet her. Julia too if she wasn’t so stiff and uncommunicative. My brother in law would butcher this entire paragraph. Maybe this entire post or blog. Perish the thought.

My spouse is a kind and wonderful person, at least as saintly as my sister in law. I am not lying to her since I never told her I was not blogging. I am not trying to hide it from her, other than I just made a conscious decision not to confess to her like I did Mike. I am not going to recruit her like I did imaginary friends. I am just going to let happen what does happen. Someone is going to spill the beans. Likely it will be me answering some question that wasn’t asked.

So, she will either find out at some point or she won’t. If she doesn’t, I might just stop blogging.

So finally. The real question, the crux of the matter and a bona fide worry for me: I can find no reference to it anywhere… If you went to Catholic School, is it a mortal or venial sin if you are blogging and haven’t told your wife? And without the aid of Google and a real need to know I may not ever find out if there even still are venial sins. Bing was absolutely no use at all in solving any of my dilemmas.

I guess I can call my brother to find out; after all, the call will be free… if you don’t count the cost of the contract we had to sign to be able to even have phones, the cost of the phones themselves, the monthly payment necessary to continue to utilize the services outlined in the small print and the modifications to the small print in the contract that is usually mailed disguised as junk mail, the cost of the phones’ activation, the electricity to charge the phones when the LED lights indicate that it must be done and last but not least the biggie - the brain cancer my brother and I are going to end up with from using the phones not in speaker mode (because we don’t want everybody in earshot to have to hear and/or participate in the conversation). Glenn, how’s that for a run on sentence?

So it might be better to just email that computer illiterate.

I am not even going to investigate the entire entomology of Oy Vey and what Wiki says about it. Jewish or German? I’ll leave it with Hebrew since we are talking about religion here and I never heard my other WASPish German grandmother say it.


Oh, and, guess I ought to email my wife too. Make a note: send an email.