He’s already had that “awakening” you mention. That is why he stopped going to church!
Let me tell you how it went….
Young, nice, polite, accomplished, blonde blue eyed Catholic boy meets totally smokin’ hot long legged SoCal natural beach girl (that would be me). They date for a few years, he asks her to marry him. She is not Catholic, but was for the first 5 years of her life, until her alcoholic father left his wife and five children so he could have the freedom to sit in a bar without getting nagged about passing out on the living room floor in front of the children each evening afterwards.
Her mother went looking for guidance from the priest. She cried, wondering how she was going to make the transition from stay-at-home RSF mom, with hired help, to full-time working mother on a nurse’s salary with five kids aged 3,5,6,10, and 11 in a tiny little tract home. She was given no help or sympathy, but rather told she should repent, etc etc.
She tried to comply (she was raised as a strict Catholic girl), but one day as she watch the gay priest – who, BTW, was always blatanly flirting with her 10yr old son –flitting/sashaying/waltzing down the aisle at Mass (she had heard rumblings about their gay cocaine parties as well – which were all confirmed by the newspapers a few years later) — it suddenly occured to her…. “F*%k this Sh*t! I DID NOTHING WRONG HERE! Who are these guys to judge me.” That was they day she learned to think for herself – and stopped attending the Catholic church.
So, back to the early 90’s part of the story. Nice Catholic blonde boy takes sunkissed wife-to-be to the Catholic church to discuss marriage. The priest says that although future wife was baptised Catholic and is currently attending Mass regularly with husband to be, she did not go through 1st Communion so they cannot be married. Priest gives young maiden lots of up-n-down eyeball evaluation, and then tells couple how he will be oh-so-generous in this situation, and offers that if couple finds their own priest, he’ll be generous enough to let them use his church for the service (for a small fee).
The nice catholic boy was offended. How could his church, who he has served and worshipped at for his entire life, turn away the woman he loves, the woman he has carefully chosen to marry?
Viola! Awakening…
My husband is a well-read individual, and knows perfectly well that it was the rituals and stories in his religion that he was worshipping, and so our kids have attended CCD from the earliest ages, until the age when ‘reason” takes over (about the same time they realize Santa is not a real person)… Just long enough to learn the stories of the Good Samaritan, etc. The Bible has excellent lessons for living in society. i do not dispute that, but there are also some horrible, intolerant messages in there, and I NEVER want my kids to follow along blindly ‘because they should’. I believe that is exactly how my mom got into the predicament that she did. She married this guy, and then was stuck because of the “rules” she lived by as dictated to her by her church.
She is now a VERY strong, happy and satisfied 73 year old woman… living near the beach in SB, and always speaking her mind. All her children went to college and or post-grad, and are functioning individuals. We drink, but none of us to excess… She did this with no financial help from anyone at all.. She also did not need the church.
