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It Took 10 Years as an Atheist to Recover from 12 Years of Catholic School
My journey with the Pilgrim Church on Earth: Part 2
In Part One of this series recounting my religious sojourn, I dealt mainly with my formative years in a Catholic elementary and junior high school. I also did four years of Catholic high school, but those years aren’t really worth mentioning. The religious aspect of my high school was the epitome of what Bishop Robert Barron calls the post-Vatican II “beige Catholicism:” a watered-down, feel-good faith that was almost an afterthought. The few nuns didn’t wear the habit (and were far from terrifying), our chaplain often didn’t wear a clerical collar and tried in vain to be cool, and the only evidence that we were even a Catholic school was a tiny crucifix on the wall of every classroom. St. Ignatius Loyola would have had a stroke if he’d lived to see it.
Even if those high school years were far less radical than the earlier ones with the crazy Irish priest, the cumulative effect was the same. The title of this piece is something I’ve said for three decades: it took me ten years as an atheist to recover from 12 years of Catholic school. It’s a cool line I love repeating, but to be completely honest, it’s not true.
