Growing up Catholic in the 50's

I was born into a catholic family who brought us up in that faith.
I was baptized, received first communion, (the wafer stuck to the top of my mouth.) and confirmed as a soldier in the army of Christ. now, you have to remember I was trained for and received communion after doing confession.
Hmm Confession is when you get in this closet like thing and a man (the priest) sits on the other side of a dark screen. He would mumble something (Latin) and I would give confession. What in the world can an 8year old do for sin? Asked my brothers, always a bad idea in retrospect, and they said "Tell him you lied 500s time and disrespected your parents 500 times then my other brother said “Don’t for get impure thoughts”.
Well, dear Father McCarthy did me the respect of not laughing at me but I’m sure he talked to my family. I swear I had callouses on my knees from the numbers of our fathers and hail Mary’s I had to do for penitence.
At 8, it felt like a year before I said all my prayers and left the church. My mom who had been waiting for me, grilled me about what took so long and I finally caved in and told her. She was nice and told me what I was supposed to do in confession. And I was never to listen to my brothers, the heathens again!
Mom and I went out that evening and I understand that :warning: Trigger Warning

Daddy, his belt and the boys had a meeting of the minds while we were gone.

The lesson learned was not to lie to the priest and don’t tell on your brothers.
It was weeks before the heathens stopped tormenting me. They’d pinch me or bump into me or call me a snitch. I didn’t know what that was so I kept quiet.
All in all, it wasn’t too bad a childhood. Of course I was raised a princess and Disney propagated the lie. But fun while it lasted.
Garnet
PS: I’ll talk about confirmation at another time.

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I grew up in a Lutheran Household. I was baptized, confirmed as a Lutheran. Growing up was different, all my brothers and sisters, after they were confirmed didn’t bother to stay with their faith. I stayed and went to church every Sunday, even walking two miles to attend Church. I felt like an outsider since none of my family continued to attend Church Service after I was confirmed. I Was the youngest of five children. I was a Daddy’s girl and he could do no wrong and my hero. I lost my Dad in my 20s, later my Mom, and then a sister.
Growing up in the 50s and 60s everything was so simple, no one locked their doors and was not afraid of someone coming in. Now you can’t do that, leave your doors unlocked at night. The worst thing that happened growing up was we had this man that had shot and killed one of my friends in school, he killed two others in our town before he traveled up the valley. One week later he was arrested. The town was in a bit of a shock and by a couple of months seems like everything went back to normal.

Well, that is a little of my growing up.

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@Garnet , the majority of your story sounds very familiar. I’m a survivor of 7 years of Catholic School. :laughing: That good ol’ Catholic guilt! It turned me off from any organized religion. Bet that’s not what they were trying to do. But hey, it all worked out in the end. :mage:

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I grew up Methodist and they’re pretty open-minded. Of course not open-minded enough for when I started wondering why if there was a Father God why wasn’t there a Mother Goddess. LOL!

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It took me decades to realize that church was just a building It was dogma and politics that screwed us up.

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Baptist here.Talk about hell on earth! Lol! Everything is a sin.

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Too true. It’s the beliefs, not the ideas.

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Add a dose of Pentecostal from me! :roll_eyes:

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