Catholicism

“A person who wants to become Pope doesn’t love himself. And God doesn’t bless him”

-Pope Francis

Just to set the record straight: I am not Catholic. My family isn’t very religious period. My dad was raised in a pretty strict Lutheran family so he rebelled and decided not to take us to Church on Sundays because he didn’t want to. No one complained. We got more sleep. Watched more cartoons. If we were all going to burn in hell at least we would be well rested and 6 year old Ella would know how to turn on a TV without waking her parents up. We went to this one breakfast place a lot on Sundays and we started calling it the Church of Eggs & Bacon. Talk about sacrilege. Anyway, my experiences with religion were limited to Christmas, Easter, and whenever I would sit in the back of my grandma’s car and listen to kid friendly Christian rock songs. For example, The Bible Book Bop by Go Fish, a group of Christian father, acapella singers. That was until kindergarten, when I was enrolled in Immaculate Heart of Mary-Saint Luke’s Catholic School.

My parents had a very selective process for choosing where I would receive my elementary education, they picked the school based on the fact that it was two blocks away from my front door. I walked to school everyday, rain or shine. Since I live in Minnesota, most of the time it was snow, so your girl strapped on her velcro snow pants and twenty pound rubber boots and trudged her way to school.

The first thing people ask me when they find out I went to Catholic school is if there were any nuns. Yes, but only two and they just dressed like normal people so it wasn’t like you could tell and I’ve never been hit with a rule There was Sister Sarah, she was a kindergarten teacher who I’m told was really nice but I never had her. She lost like 200 pounds but kept all the same clothes so she was just kinda swimming around in plaid pastels and daisy shirts. The other nun was Sister Pauline and I swear to God she was 100 years old. She may be the scariest woman I have ever met. She wore those all-white nurse shoes with velcro and always made us all sit on our knees, which is not a very comfortable position, but I guess she either didn't have joints in her body or didn’t feel pain anymore. Either way, one time she threw a kid across the classroom and that kinda scared the crap out of us. I remember when she retired we had a special prayer service in her honor and the school presented her with a gift which was just a pair of lavender colored slippers, which I didn’t think much of at the time but looking back, that has got to be one of the saddest things I have ever seen. This woman has pledged her life, her chastity, her everything to the Catholic church, has spent the last like 80 years teaching these stupid kids, some of which she has literally had to throw across the room to get to shut up, and all she has to show for it is a pair of lavender scented slippers. Ya’ll should do a Hail Mary for Sister Pauline.

Once a week we would have Mass. Our entire school would sit in a cold, stone church and listen to a balding man talk/sing ancient Hebrew loosely translated to English. Mass isn’t like other Christian church services where you can just kinda sit there and hang out while they preach at you. In Catholic mass you got to interact. No zoning out. You have to stand up, have to repeat things back to the priest, you have to give peace to your neighbors, you had to do call and response hymns, you had to kneel, then sit, then stand then kneel then stand, then recite the prayer of St. Thomas More, then get in line to receive communion, then kneel, then stand, then hold hands with your neighbor and sing a different prayer (except after swine flu hit, then you just held them up in the air), then sing another hymn. That might not be in the right order but you get the idea. Mass isn’t super fun as it is, but it’s even worse if you’re not a Catholic. I wasn’t allowed to touch the communion because they thought it was actually the body and blood of Christ and if I touched it with my non-Catholic suddenly it would turn back into boxed wine and cardboard bread chips. You know how religion works. Anyway, I would get really bored so I signed up to be a reader at Mass. It meant I got to sit up by the front and then go read a section of the bible to the entire school. I loved it. It made mass go faster. I got a lot of attention. I didn’t have to kneel because there’s no kneelers in the front row.

Catholic school uniforms are really poorly portrayed by the media. They are not cute or whatever. Pervy guys shouldn’t have fetishes about them. The uniform at my school at least was either a knee length plaid jumper a light blue polo with the school crest embroidered on it, with knee high socks so only a quarter inch of your lower knee was showing. The other option was navy blue pants with your blue polo with either had to be banded, which I guess where they just make it all go elastic at the bottom, or tucked in. In third grade I decided to be quirky. I wasn’t going to be like all these other basic girls in their jumpers, I was going to wear pants. Better yet, I was going to wear a dark navy sweater vest, also embroidered with the school crest. What I didn’t plan for with the 98 degree weather on the first day of unairconditioned school, and the fact that I had drank one dixie cup of water that day. I passed out from heat stroke right around recess. At least I looked cool and quirky while being unconscious.

So I’m still not Catholic. I don’t go to church on Sundays, not even the Church of Eggs and Bacon. I haven’t done any Hail Marys since I graduated in 8th grade or squeezed back into my navy pants or knee high socks. But Catholicism taught me a lot. Mainly how to pick up Catholic guys in Mass.