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Scary Nuns, an Insane Priest, and the Foundations of My Faith
My journey with the Pilgrim Church on Earth: Part 1
I am born. When you’re Charles Dickens, you can begin a tale this way, but I’m no Dickens and thus I won’t go that far back. But every journey, especially one of a spiritual nature, starts somewhere, so a bit of background is in order in this first chapter of the story my faith journey (you can read the introduction here).
I learned early on that I was different than the kids in my neighborhood when it came to religion. None of my classmates at the Catholic elementary school I attended lived anywhere near me (the school was on the other side of town) and none of the kids in my neighborhood were Catholic. Those neighborhood kids were jealous that I got the day off school for “holy days” they didn’t understand (the day the school’s patron saint was martyred, for example) but not at all jealous that I couldn’t eat hamburgers on Fridays during Lent. Some of the kids from more fundamentalist families were also convinced that the statue of the Virgin Mary in our yard made me an idol worshiper.
That semi-outsider status in the neighborhood was something I embraced as a kid in search of an identity to claim. I touted my Italian heritage (and still do), but I’m actually only one-quarter Italian; the rest was just…
