EARLY RELIGIOUS LIFE
I had no religious upbringing. I was never taken to a worship service as a child. Not once.
I don’t really fault my parents for this, in the sense that I hold some grudge against them for neglecting that part of my life. That was where they found themselves, and they didn’t have anything to give me in the religion department. What they did give me was a sense of values: how to treat other people, the importance of honesty, the importance of work (though I didn’t take naturally to that one right off to be honest); in short I was raised to be moral but not religious.
I wasn’t trained to be anti-religious either. Like with all other things, I was taught that a person's religion is something to respect, as long as they didn't get all pushy about it (a lesson I forgot in my first few years as a Christian). So, all in all, I think my parents raised me quite well. When I was confronted with the claims of the Christian religion, I was ready to receive what I was hearing. Though now I reject the exact brand of Christianity I first embraced, I cling to Christianity itself, in the purest of its forms, the Catholic Church. Had my parents raised me in one religion or the other, perhaps I would not have been able to ever freely choose to be a Christian. The way it turned out, I had a tabula rasa, at least in a sense, so that I came into the possibility of giving my life over to something besides myself without preconceived notions.
Not that I plan to bring up my own children (should I ever have them) without religious training. They'll be brought up more Catholic than the Pope. The point will be to raise them in a manner that makes them eager to embrace the truth of the Church when it comes time to trade in the religion of the parents for the religion of the grownup son or daughter. Whether that happens at 10 years old, or 40.
I don’t really fault my parents for this, in the sense that I hold some grudge against them for neglecting that part of my life. That was where they found themselves, and they didn’t have anything to give me in the religion department. What they did give me was a sense of values: how to treat other people, the importance of honesty, the importance of work (though I didn’t take naturally to that one right off to be honest); in short I was raised to be moral but not religious.
I wasn’t trained to be anti-religious either. Like with all other things, I was taught that a person's religion is something to respect, as long as they didn't get all pushy about it (a lesson I forgot in my first few years as a Christian). So, all in all, I think my parents raised me quite well. When I was confronted with the claims of the Christian religion, I was ready to receive what I was hearing. Though now I reject the exact brand of Christianity I first embraced, I cling to Christianity itself, in the purest of its forms, the Catholic Church. Had my parents raised me in one religion or the other, perhaps I would not have been able to ever freely choose to be a Christian. The way it turned out, I had a tabula rasa, at least in a sense, so that I came into the possibility of giving my life over to something besides myself without preconceived notions.
Not that I plan to bring up my own children (should I ever have them) without religious training. They'll be brought up more Catholic than the Pope. The point will be to raise them in a manner that makes them eager to embrace the truth of the Church when it comes time to trade in the religion of the parents for the religion of the grownup son or daughter. Whether that happens at 10 years old, or 40.
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