I’m glad I skipped my Catechism Classes

4/2/05

I think it was my first mortal sin according to the rules laid out by the Catholic Church when I questioned why I would go to Hell if I didn’t go to catechism class. I remember asking that question to old Father Bouchard who tried to scare me into sitting in my seat with the threat of eternal damnation. As a six year old boy the thought of eternal damnation sounded more promising than having to sit through an hour long class with a bad tempered, old priest. I remember the older girls in the front row of the class turned around towards me in fright for my soul and put their index finger over their mouths and said “SHHHHH you don’t want to go to hell do you?” I didn’t know where hell was so I didn’t care all that much until the old priest insisted that he tell me.

“Hell is where your soul burns forever!! Hell is where you go when you are bad and wicked. Hell is where all bad people go when they die. Hell is where you are going if you don’t sit down in your seat and be quiet for the rest of this class!” I recall it didn’t sound like a fun place to go to but for some reason I felt that if Hell is where bad people go then how did he know where it was? I never once saw him smile. My father would threaten me with a visit to Father Bouchard when I got out of hand. He would scare us with talk of devils and hell and pokadoted souls. I remember turning pages in my catechism and seeing illustrations of the devil as a frightening evil looking demon that had a caption that said “GRRRR, I WANT YOUR SOUL!!” It was a great comic book. It had pages with pictures of three torsos one said Original Sin and had a little black spot in the center of the torso, the second had black pokadots all over it and it said Venial Sins and the third torso was all black and it said Mortal Sin. I remember thinking how strange it was that if you did one mortal sin like swearing or stealing or not going to church on Sunday then your soul would be all black just by doing one mortal sin. And I thought how can anyone tell if you did more than one mortal sin if your soul turns black after just one sin. It didn’t make much sense to me then and makes no sense to me now.

I can remember trying to figure out how stealing a stick of bubble gum could make my soul as black as if I killed someone, or if I didn’t go to church on Sunday or didn’t obey some other commandment. I asked my father when I went home “How come if I killed someone its the same as stealing some bubble gum?” My father didn’t understand the question so I told him that the Father Bouchard said that when you commit a mortal sin your soul is black and breaking any of the Ten Commandments was a mortal sin so if I kill someone or steal a bubble gum I go to hell. My father explained that I could go to confession and get my sin removed by the priest then I’d have a white soul again. This still didn’t make much sense to me but, as long as I confessed to my sin to a priest, then I would have a white soul again. I was force fed this Catholic craziness until I was eighteen years old and by then I was convinced that Catholics were completely out of their minds.

So I’m sorry for all the Catholics who feel that Christ died again because Pope John Paul the 2nd has passed away. There are one billion Catholics on their knees praying for his soul, when they should be praying for their own,and four million viewers expected to pass by the Pope’s coffin. Why, so they can clean their pokadoted souls or because they have been so scared by the Father Bouchards of the world that they will never be able to think for themselves, or do they just feel good to be one of the great flock of sheep, thinking that their Shepard had a clean soul and went to Heaven.

L.A.Steel