In the wake of the Pope’s visit I faced a conundrum. I felt rejuvenated and proud to say I was Catholic. Yet for over 40 years I’ve considered myself a “recovering” Catholic. What was it that made me turn away from this religion that now displayed a beam of hope for the planet?

Without hesitation the first word that flashes before me is GUILT. The subliminal message throughout my Catholic education was essentially the Smith Barney commercial from the 1970’s. Only I believed it should have been “How do Catholics make it to Heaven? The old-fashioned way…they EARN it.” You were required to be a good person, and it was work to stay that good.

When I was growing up, there were two groups of people…Catholics and Protestants.

I was lead to believe that it was far better to be Catholic. If you followed all the rules you could earn Heaven. These rules included all 10 of The Commandments and then some. If you broke one of the rules there would be a sin implanted in your soul.

These sins were divided into two different categories, Mortal and Venial. Both categories could be removed from your soul by going to confession and fulfilling a penitence which consisted of prayers based on the level of your crimes divvied up by the priest behind the screen. (The fewer “Our Fathers”…the better.)

Venial sins were the lesser of two evils. To commit a Venial sin required something minor like lying or petty theft. If you died with a Venial sin on your soul you still had hope of seeing the Golden Gates, but not until after you did some hard time in Purgatory.

My impression of Purgatory was a place where sinners floated in flames and suffered. But the fire wasn’t as hot as Hell and you got water breaks. A friend of mine described it as a Dr.’s waiting room with no magazines. Whatever the surroundings, I did know that the sentences had to be really long.

There were indulgences that you could obtain by simply writing JMJ (Jesus, Mary, Joseph for you Protestants) at the top of a paper. The indulgences would shorten your stay…kinda like getting time off for good behavior. The credit for JMJ was something like 15,784 years off your sentence. To me it was unfathomable to imagine what the total must be. But I knew that once your time was up, you got to go to Heaven.

To avoid Purgatory and go straight to Heaven you needed to go to confession. The penitence for “V” sins were minor. Usually 4 Hail Marys, 2 Our Fathers and a good Act of Contrition. Once confessed and the penitence was prayed the sins were erased and you were free of sin until the next lie. In that small window of time, you’d go straight to Heaven if you died.

Mortal sins were the biggies. If you died with a Mortal sin on your soul, it was straight to Hell for you….no “ands, ifs or buts”! Mortal sins consisted of acts such as murder, sex outside marriage, and missing church on Sunday.

I didn’t know if Protestants killed anybody or had hanky panky, but I did know many that never went to church on Sunday. When I asked a nun about it, she replied “They’re not going to Heaven anyway.” That was the mid 1950’s and was an incident that started me on the road of doubt. Why didn’t we tell them? This was my first glimpse of what I call Catholic arrogance.

The penitence for a Mortal sin was more like 10 Hail Mary’s, 8 Our Fathers and as always, a good Act of Contrition.

A major downside to walking around with an unconfessed and un-repented Mortal sin on your soul was that you could not receive communion. Many a rumor was started as the result of someone staying in the pew during communion on Sunday morning. The question was “What happened Saturday night?”

In 3^rd grade I got braces. Up until this time, my biggest challenge regarding communion was keeping Jesus from sticking to the roof of my mouth. Now I had a mouth filled with deadly hardware. To avoid catching Jesus in the barbed wire, I sat out a few communions. More than one person did a double take toward me while they were in the proceeding line and I often wondered what Mortal sin they believed I committed…especially the Sunday my brother went to an earlier service and wasn’t with us. That Sunday I kept a sly smile on my face and just stared straight ahead.

As a Catholic it seemed everything I did either would send me to a place of fire, or was done to eliminate my transgressions and clear me for Heaven. It was an ongoing battle that only Catholics could win because we knew the secret of making God happy…but it was work.

When things were bad, I knew it was my fault. (I’m still apologizing for Desert Storm…and I probably “let the dogs out”). Worse yet, when things were good I knew it wouldn’t last. I always waited for “the other shoe to drop” so I could repent and get my suffering done on Earth.

I guess I began my “recovering” process when I realized that if the teachings were correct, the majority of my friends and loved ones were destined for Hell. Knowing that this was absurd was a game changer. I now believe God is more interested in how I treat others than where I am sitting on Sunday mornings.