Accept It On Faith

I was brought up a Roman Catholic. I went to a parochial grammar school and parochial high school back in the 1950’s and 60’s. I was taught that if you weren’t a baptized Roman Catholic, you were going to hell. Simple as that. We had a family friend who was a priest and I can remember my mother saying to him “Say there’s this little Jewish woman who was a good daughter, and is now a good wife and mother and never did a bad thing in her life, and you’re telling me she’s going to hell?” And he’d kind of talk his way around it, but still basically say “yes, she’s going to hell.” That would drive my mother crazy.

And you never questioned your faith. I can remember my best friend’s father back then, and the word was that poor Mr. Wallace had lost his faith; he was researching other religions. And I felt sorry for him and his family. We were taught to never question; we were taught to “accept it on faith”.

Over the decades that had passed since then I did start to question my faith. What I specifically questioned was the role of the Roman Catholic Church. How can the Roman Catholic Church be the one true church and yet orchestrate the Inquisition? What about the Crusades? What about all those corrupt popes that had existed over the centuries? Pope Alexander VI was a Borgia and had seven children during the time he was cardinal and then pope (Lucrezia Borgia was one of his daughters). So I have my own issues with organized religion, but I believe in God and I believe in the teachings of Jesus.