For me, religion was never much more that a subject in school and an hour stolen from my busy weekends. Having spent fifteen years in Catholic school, I know just about everything there is to know about the Roman Catholic religion, its history, and its teachings. However, I have never been able to understand or connect with any of these things on a deeper or more profound level. Although religion has always been an eminent part of my life, it has never really had any personal significance.

My religious education began in preschool, where my experience revolved around the question, “what would Jesus do?” It’s a rhetorical question. At four-years-old, few Catholic children will claim that Jesus would have hit Billy or pulled Jane’s hair. In preschool, religion served as a code of conduct and an explanation as to why some behaviors were acceptable while others were not. Religion-based rules were a means through which teachers were able to manipulate childhood behaviors and begin to shape obedient and unquestioning students. In his essay “Masks of Eternity,” Joseph Campbell states that as a young boy he concretized the idea that he had a guardian angel on his right shoulder and a tempting devil on his left. I was presented with this same metaphor as a child, along with the understanding that choosing the “good” or “bad” behaviors made you either a good or a bad person. Like Campbell, I felt it was necessary to concretize my understandings, as basic as they mat have been. So, at the age of four, my belief in God was manifested through behaviors, such as coloring pictures of the saints and sharing my toys.

Preparing for Reconciliation in the first grade was one of my most horrifying religious experiences. I found absolutely no appeal in telling a man in black robes about all of the things I had done wrong. And, although no one else could hear my confessions, I could always sense my classmates’ eyes on my back as they waited anxiously outside the small booth, wondering what terrible things I might have done. Rather than using the opportunity to clear my conscious, I would often “borrow” other people’s ideas or fabricate my own elaborate sins. I continued this routine for the nest eight years at the biannual, mandatory confessions. Needless to say, I haven’t been back since. At this particular time in my life, religion had become a source of discomfort – my religion was forcing me to do things that shoved me out of my comfort zone and left me feeling vulnerable. This, in turn, led me to become more wary of and shy away from the religious teachings, traditions, and expectations that were so prominent in my schooling.

In the second grade, my class spent the year preparing to receive our First Holy Communion. Unlike most of the other kids, I wasn’t the least bit concern with what the Eucharist symbolized. I instead focused on the actions, trying to remember to “put my left hand on top of my right,” to avoid being scolded once again for messing up. At that stage in my life, my religious experience had become deeply-rooted in people-pleasing, conformity, and obedience, rather than personal religious experience and growth. I continually performed the actions, although I didn’t understand their purpose and I didn’t really care about their deeper significance.

When it came time for high school, my religious beliefs, attitudes, and motives had not changed in the least bit. As much as I insisted on going to the local public school, my mother wouldn’t hear it. She constantly suggested that I wouldn’t be able to handle the transition from a school with under 500 students to one with over 3,000. She also stressed the facts that she had spent her childhood in Catholic school and that her mother and grandmother had been sent to prestigious boarding schools in Belgium. In my mother’s eyes, a good education for her children was the top priority. Although the religious education may have been a plus, I’ve come to interpret my mother’s insistence on Catholic education as a desire to continue her family’s private school tradition and to set her kids on the right path in life. When questioning why I had to go to Catholic school, she always responded, “I want to you to have a good education.” And when I would reply that a public school could offer me the same thing, she would suggest that, somehow, a private school would be immune to all the drugs, alcohol, and peer pressures that she assumed to be so prevalent in the public school system. So, in a sense, she was attempting to control my social behaviors through my religious education. When I realized that I didn’t really have a say in the matter, I reluctantly agreed to the three-hour-a-day commute, daily theology classes, and monthly school masses.

When preparing to receive Confirmation during my junior year of high school, I attempted to open myself up to the experience, but – as hard as I tried – I was not more receptive than I had been in the past. It was if I was mentally and spiritually incapable of comprehending and accepting the church’s propositions. During the weekly group activities, I would sit back and criticize the other participants for their religious behaviors, yet I was also a bit envious of their experiences and curious as to what they had that I didn’t. Overall, my high school experience of religion was one of intense guilt – guilt that my parents were sacrificing so much to put me through Catholic school, guilt that I was taking nothing away from it other than a “good education,” and guilt that I felt no spiritual connection to the beliefs and ideals of my parents.

At on point in his essay, Campbell suggests that “in [Judeo-Christianity], everything is prosaic and very, very serious.” And he’s right. Throughout my Catholic education, I always dreaded the school masses. I hated the incense, I hated the silence, and I hated getting in trouble for periodically breaking the silence with whispers and giggles. Although I’m sure the masses were a great opportunity for personal spiritual experiences and growth, I never took advantage of this. I instead sat with a blank face and wandering mind, unconscious performing the necessary actions with which I had become so familiar over the years. As Campbell hints, it’s difficult to become actively involved in something when it all seems to dull and tedious. I would guess that most Catholic children find mass to be long and boring; however, I believe that the frequency of masses in a Catholic school setting makes the event even less meaningful for those students.

Of course, when it came time for college, my mother encouraged me to attend another Catholic school. Although there were a few Catholic collages that I had originally considered, finding out that many required two to four semesters of theology courses completely turned me off to the idea. I finally had the opportunity to emancipate myself from religious education and I planned to take full advantage of it. This particular mindset reinforced the idea that I defined my religion as little more than a subject in school and an inconvenience in my daily life. Since beginning college, I’ve only been to church once, and that was only because my parents made me feel guilty about not going. I had never been actively involved in any religious decisions in my life, so being away from home suddenly gave me the opportunity to do so. However, this opportunity was overwhelming, as I still wasn’t sure what I believed. Thus, I put religion on the back burner, unconsciously waiting some kind of epiphany.

In reading Joseph Campbell’s “Masks of Eternity,” I was immediately struck by a comment in which he suggest that, in teaching a class on comparative mythology, his student’s beliefs were enhanced rather than destroyed. He states that “religious traditions, which didn’t mean very much to [the student], but were ones their parents had given them, suddenly became illuminated in a new way when we compared them with other traditions, where similar images had been given a more inward or spiritual interpretation.” Although I have taken courses on Catholic theology, comparative religions, and mythology on many occasions, I have never experienced this type of enlightenment. Having spent most of my life in Catholic school, I have memorized hundreds of facts regarding religion; however, I have never felt a personal connection to any of them. And I’m not quite sure why that is.

Maybe religion was over-illuminated in my life, denying me the opportunity to discover things on my own. In my experience, religious schools attempt to dictate and manipulate student’ beliefs and behaviors to conform to the church’s teachings. It is possible that, in sensing this coercion, I put up my defenses and shut myself off to nearly everything they presented me with. Although I’m sure my teachers had the best intentions, I often felt as if they were shoving religious ideas down my throat and forcing me to agree with things that did not coincide with my personal beliefs. And although I did develop some beliefs independently, many of these were constantly challenged at school, forcing me to continually question what I truly believed and how those ideas fit into the church’s teachings.

Another potential explanation for my lack of spirituality may be the fact that my parents were behind nearly every religious decision in my life. They brought me up Catholic, put me through fifteen years of Catholic school, and never really gave me the opportunity to question their beliefs or develop my own opinions. Religious events, such as receiving the sacraments were never a choice; they were an expectation. Even though I fought to go to a public high school, I don’t think my arguments were ever seriously taken into consideration. I believe that instances such as these serve to illustrate my lack of control over religion in my life. I feel that realizing this – even at a subconscious level – throughout my life has continually distanced me from religion and discouraged me from becoming personally involved in my religious experiences on a deep and meaningful level.

On top of that, I have always been a very logical and rational thinker, which has made it impossible for me to comprehend many of the church’s teachings and abstract beliefs. As Campbell stated, “you cannot imagine what you cannot personify.” At several points throughout my religious education, teachers have asked their students to draw their vision of God. Most people drew an old man with a beard, some drew a dove, and others had their own unique perception. My paper was always blank. I have never had a vision of God. God was just a name, or possibly a symbol beyond my comprehension. Regardless, the inability to find a connection between that “name” and the things I learned in my theology classes prevented me from ever pursuing a further understanding.

I can’t say which, if any, of these explanations has contributed to my personal religious experiences, or lack thereof. However, I would guess that each has played at least a small role in my religious development and contributed to my current religious stance. Contrary to its intended purpose, the constant compulsory exposure to seemingly incomprehensible religious ideas was overwhelming for me, which I believe has pushed me further and further away over the years.

Outwardly, I’m a practicing Catholic. However, I have yet to have a personal experience in which I am convinces that I believe on a deeper level. Campbell mentions the phenomena of peak experience, the “actual moment of your life when you experience your relationship to the harmony of being.” I have always sought such an event to assert my religious background, yet in doing so I set myself up for disappointment. Even in the most extreme and die situations – ones in which a peak experience would seem the most probable – I always seem to walk away from the encounter unable to make any kind of spiritual connection. A strong example of this can be seen in a recent car accident. Driving home from school with a friend, her car spun out in the middle of the freeway at eighty miles-per-hour, barely avoiding several collisions. Although I may have escaped death by mere inches, my first thought when the car came halt against the center median was not “Thank God we’re okay,” but instead, “How is this going to interfere with my spring break plans?” My unconventional response to the accident had been a distressing issue for several weeks following the accident. I would have imagined such a drastic experience to illuminate my inner spirituality and renew my gratitude for life. Instead it just provided me with even more confusion and frustration.

Three weeks later, one of my high school classmates died in a car accident and I suddenly realized how lucky I was to be alive. Although Nicole was only sixteen, hundreds of people showed up to her funeral and memorial – people from her school, her church, and her community. After a lot of reflection, I began to wonder whether if, for me, religion was not about the spiritual connection to a greater being, but instead the connection to a community. I had never interpreted my religious education as anything more than book knowledge and behavioral code; however, I have come to realize that the small private schools I attended allowed foe deeper and more meaningful relationships than I could have had anywhere else. In the small communities, everyone knew and supported everyone else. In both times of sorrow and celebration, countless numbers of people came out of the woodwork, eager to support their community. Although similar communities could arguably be found in a public school setting, I believe the Catholic school communities were more tightly knit through the frequent school activities and prayer, which the vast majority of students and their familiars were actively involved in. For me, these instances of community and unification were far more meaningful than those tedious school masses and repetitive theology classes.

Campbell states that he thinks of “compassion as the fundamental religious experience.” Based on my personal experiences, I agree wholeheartedly with this notion. I find it much easier to accept religion as interpersonal relationships than as a spiritual connection with an intangible God. Throughout my Catholic education, teachers constantly encouraged their students to see Christ in others and “love thy neighbor as thyself,” frequently citing the Bible and other religious documents to support and justify their suggestions. Although I was never able to espouse the persona of God, I latched onto this concept of good-doing and have yet to loosen my grip. Since I was unable to uncover a spiritual connection in school or church, I settled for the satisfaction of helping others and simply being a good person.

As stated earlier, peak experiences are the points in time at which one sense that their life is in perfect harmony. Although Campbell describes his peak experience as a physical one, in which he was confident in his ability to win a race, he suggests that peak experiences can also take on other forms. Peak experience in a new phrase in my dictionary but, looking back on my life, I believe my peak experiences have been founded in my intimate relationships with others, particularly my family and closest friends. For me, time spent with family and friends is time spend in pure bliss. I believe this euphoria arises from the mutual and encompassing sense of love and commitment – two qualities that are typically associated with a relationship with God. So, it seems as if I may have personified my learned concept of God through the people in my life since I was never able to connect to his abstract persona.

In her essay “Then and Now: Creating a Self through the Past,” Susan Engel describes “the way in which a particular scene from the past serves to illuminate or explain a current aspect of the self.” I believe that my memories of Catholic school offer a lot of insight into my current religious understandings and beliefs. When I was young, religion meant being a good person. Although my understanding has developed and become far more complex over the past fifteen years, my ideals of Catholicism are still rooted in that rudimentary idea. Looking back, my sense of religion has always been based on actions, ranging from Jesus-approved behaviors, to people-pleasing conformity, and then self-satisfying good deeds. Being a good person has always been a way for me to connect to and express my religious beliefs, even though – or possibly because – there were no concrete beliefs behind the actions. So, essentially, I’ve spent my life “living the faith,” despite the fact that. there is no faith – no understanding, no belief, and no connection between my actions and the abstract ideals of my parents and teachers.

Engel concluded with the idea that “memories can tell you what happened, but they feel so potent and powerful because they explain who you are.” Although religion doesn’t define me, it has always been a huge pillar in my life. Memories of Catholic school have always been prominent in my memory; however, it wasn’t until going back and probing the past that I realized how these memories have contributed to and illuminated who I am today. Through my attempts to understand the effect of my religious education on my current religious beliefs, I was able to discover things that I had previously overlooked and uncover a whole new layer of meaning. In analyzing my own experiences, I’ve begun to realize that I’m far more spiritual than I had ever imagined, although not in any conventional sense. Although the church would never approve of such a view, I’ve come to understand that religion is subjective and open to personal interpretation. Religion is not necessarily about some connection to a greater being; religion is not defined as rules of moral conduct; nor is religion all about community and compassion. Rather, religion is the means – whatever it may be – through which each individual is able to come to find meaning and happiness in his or her own life.

 *Written: Spring 2008