religion dilemma solved

Two weeks ago*, I went home for just over a day before heading out to Hawaii with the family. Unfortunately, this meant that I had to spend a Sunday morning at home which meant church time. It's always difficult to be forced to go to mass with my family and, this time, I didn't have Jesse with me to act as a buffer. I figured I'd be the only really, really, really lapsed Catholic in the church.

The church my family goes to is not a regular church. A few years ago, the Diocese of Orange purchased land to build the Diocese's second cathedral. This was before the pedophile priest scandal broke out. The church had not yet been built at the time of the scandal and, in an attempt to build a church community, religious services were held at a nearby grade school auditorium until a Cathedral could be built. A few years later, the Diocese still didn't have the funds to start building on the land they had purchased. Why? Well, they were too busy spending money on those case settlements for the pedophile priests the Diocese had protected**. Just last year, the Diocese bought the church community some portable units and combined them to make a makeshift church-like facility. This has been about a 5 year process. To this day, the Diocese has not yet started building the Cathedral.

When I entered the makeshift church, I noticed the community's demographic--old and young, nothing in between, and mostly Latino. I was greeted by friends of my family and soon sat down and waited for mass to begin.

Unlike all those other times since I've moved out that I've been forced to go to church, I felt like I didn't belong and I was COMFORTABLE with it. I listened to the deacon give his sermon (which was about communication) and felt that the advice was not only helpful, but universal--as in, not just advice for Catholics but for everyone. When the collection plate came by, I refused to put any money into it. Everything was fine and dandy until...

Communion time. We were seated in the second row and, soon it was my row's turn to go up to receive the body and blood of Christ. Catholic teachings require that your soul should be pure before receiving the host and the wine. Considering I violate Catholic teachings every day with my views, I knew that the Church didn't deem me worthy of receiving the body and blood of Christ. However, as I was about to sit down, my mom pinched me hard, forcing me to stay in line to receive the host.

Whenever Jesse and I go to church with my family, I never receive communion. After many years of Catholic school, I know I have sinned by violating the teachings of the Church and the sacrament of Confession requires that you reveal your sins and be sorry for committing them. I do not feel sorry about my views and my job and therefore I have not been to Confession in forever. I think my mom assumes that when I don't go up to receive communion I do it to keep Jesse company (Jesse cannot receive communion since he is not Catholic).

So my mom forces me to stay in line for communion and I know exactly what to do when I get up to the priest. When it is my turn, instead of extending my hands palm up to receive the host, I cross my arms over my chest and look down. This is a common signal to a priest that I want a blessing, not communion. The priest blesses me and I'm on my way. I'm not sure if my mom saw that I didn't take communion because when I went to my seat, she was beaming at me.

That day was remarkable to me for one reason--I realized that day that I am not a lapsed Catholic. I'm a former Catholic. While there will always be some Catholicism in my life as it is so ingrained in my culture, I feel comfortable not subscribing to one particular religion. In fact, I think I will make the following bible passage the main tenet of my religious faith:

"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'

"Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'

"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'

From the parable of the sheep and goats in Matthew 25: 34-40


*Yes, I know that this story is way late but in the last 20 days, I've spent only 7 days in DC. The rest were business travel and vacation travel days. If you are wondering, yes, I'm still jet-lagged :)
**Everything you wanted to know about the priest sex abuse scandal in Orange County can be found here.

on breaking the cycle of abuse and dating violence

In case you haven’t heard, Chris Brown beat up his girlfriend Rihanna at a pre-Grammy party last month. The media has been all over this story like flies on fresh poop and have unearthed (or made even more public) a few details that may or may not be relevant to this story and that may or may not be true.

• Chris Brown’s stepfather used to beat his mother and Brown witnessed this. After seeing his mother suffer, he vowed that he could never do that to a woman (until he did).

• In an interview with Giant , Chris Brown discussed the issue of his stepfather’s abuse: “…an 11-year-old Brown made a promise to his mother. He vowed that he would go to jail by age 15 for killing his abusive stepfather. "I just want you to know that I love you," he told her. "But I'm gonna take a baseball bat one day while you at work, and I'm gonna kill him."”

• On the evening of the incident, Rihanna was allegedly upset with Chris Brown because she saw him flirting with Leona Lewis. She went batsh*t crazy on him and he went batsh*t PHYSICALLY crazy on her.

• On the day of the incident, Chris Brown found out that Rihanna had herpes and had passed it on to him. That evening, he went batsh*t PHYSICALLY crazy on her.

• Allegedly, they are both hotheaded and this stuff happens all the time.

For me, the story is simple. Chris Brown beat up Rihanna. That is not acceptable, no matter the rationale.
Yet, public opinion is actually split about this. I’ve read many blog threads and blog posts (no, I will not link and increase their traffic) where people, some of them women, are suggesting that Rihanna deserved the beating because she must have done something to provoke it. I do not understand this line of thinking on any level, so if you think Rihanna deserved this, feel free to explain yourself in comments. Seriously, I do want to understand this point of view but I can’t.

I was raised to believe that domestic violence is wrong.  My grandparents on my mom’s side had a rocky relationship. It all started when my grandfather started drinking. Whenever he drank to the point of intoxication, he would beat my grandmother while my mom and her sisters watched. Luckily, my mom herself was not beaten by her father. But obviously, the abuse left quite the impression on my mom.

Fortunately for me, my mom taught me that abuse is never acceptable and to watch for warning signs. My mom herself is quite the strong woman and (for better and for worse), I am very much like her in many ways. Neither of us takes crap from anybody. If a boyfriend or someone I’m dating even says something that remotely can be interpreted as a putdown, I call him on it to make sure it doesn’t happen again (for the record, Jesse is the best boyfriend ever and has never put me down).

Thanks to my mother, I’ve been taught that abuse is wrong in all circumstances. Unfortunately, some parents haven’t done such a good job of teaching that lesson to their kids.

In an article in the Chicago Tribune shortly after the Chris Brown/Rihanna incident, teenagers pretty much put the blame on Rihanna and claimed that dating violence is normal. The whole article is definitely worth reading (if you haven’t already; it’s all over Google) but here are a few gems:

• Ed Loos, a junior at Lake Forest High School, said a common reaction among students to Chris Brown's alleged attack on Rihanna goes something like this: "Ha! She probably did something to provoke it."

• "People said, 'I would have punched her around too,' "

• "There was a girl at school this week with a scratch on her eye," Jackson said. "She was talking openly about her boyfriend hitting her, but she was smiling and saying it was funny."

No, abuse is not funny, it is not acceptable and it should not be commonplace. WTF.

I don’t mean to get all “public health” on you peeps again, but these kids need some education on how violence is never ok under any circumstances. We are in a critical position right now.  Two very famous young people have brought this issue onto the front pages of newspapers, magazines, and blogs.  Now is the time to educate future generations about abuse and how it is NOT acceptable. 

If this continues and nothing is done to set these kids straight, you better believe that the cycle of domestic violence will continue. Doing nothing would ensure that dating violence will truly become commonplace for many years to come.

For more information on dating violence, check out Break the Cycle and Love is Not Abuse