Did you ever believe in God?

PopePalpatine

When you think about it, even if Father Ted was proposed in 1985-1990 rather than 1995, it would have gone down like a lead balloon.

Anyway, to answer the thread title, I was the average Irish a-la-carte Catholic until I learned what an agnostic was (at 15). The only times I really felt pious were:

• On the day of my Confirmation, when I vowed to not say anything more severe than "crap" (i.e., I couldn't say "bastard", "bitch", "fuck" etc.)
• At about 10pm on some random night, when I was about 13 years old, I vowed to never say the N-word. I still don't, not because of that oath, but because it's a fucking vile word.

That's all I can remember, really. I had a brief period of losing my belief in God when I was 7, when I didn't see any angels when rising above the clouds while flying over to England. Looking back at when I did believe, there were two events that stood out to me as really creepy - firstly, a retreat to somewhere in north County Dublin, I remember one line in a song: "No turning back." I remember the woman, who looked as if she was c.50 years old, having a very hypnotic-sounding voice when singing it - of course, we were supposed to parrot her words.

The second was when this group of young people came into my school when I was in third year in secondary school, we spent the whole school day with them. At the time I thought nothing of it, other than, "Yay, a day free from lessons!" One thing that one of them said that stood out was that Jesus wanted him to wait for marriage before having sex. This was at the time when a lot of noise was being made by some pop stars (e.g. Miley Cyrus, the Jonas Brothers) about how "pure" they were - I even remember the South Park episode taking the piss out of chastity programmes, too!

lazygal

I was a very compliant child so belief in god came very naturally to me, it was the same as learning my times tables and spellings for the tests every Friday. Really got into the confirmation and communion preparations and was the first female alter server in my parish. Secondary school was a different story. I don't know how I came to have serious doubts but when I was 13-18 years of age the Brendan Smith story broke, then all the abuse in the orphanages (Dear Daughter really affected me), and a few 'whacky' retreats from down with the kids hipster try hards were where my faith and belief took a hammering. It was very, very hard to shake off though. I remember being very opposed to divorce being introduced and abortion was never, ever ok. Even in college I was quite conservative about social issues.
I think travel and being in the working world really caused my outlook to change. I spent some time working abroad and in different jobs and studying different postgrad stuff. I can't pinpoint when I really stopped believing any of it, but now I can't believe it took me so long to shake it all. The power of indoctrination at a young age is very, very important to religions.
I'm determined my children won't need to shake off a belief system like I had to. I'm very glad my husband is on the same wavelength and even if we have to send our children to a religious school I am absolutely determined to stand firm with teachers about indoctrination. I've had some tell me the AliveO programme is benign, that children don't mind learning about being nice and friends and nature and whatever, but its a programme designed by the Catholic church in an attempt to make the whole indoctrination system as touchy feely as possible and something no one would object to, which makes it even more insidious.

Hotblack Desiato

DazMarz wrote: »

I felt like screaming Basil Fawlty's line, "This is exactly how Nazi Germany started!!!" over it.

And you'd have been right. Adolf of the funny hairstyle was brought up in the catholic tradition and learnt well how it uses symbolism and empty rhetoric and vague scriptures and pomp and ceremony and deference to authority to control the masses. He employed these tactics expertly. There is no real difference between a papal mass and the nuremberg rally, both require mass suspension of reason and blind deference to an idiot ideology.

Lithium93_ wrote: »

(seriously sat in the seats listening to the priest babble on about an invisible being and how his son died for our sins for 30 minutes every Saturday,biggest waste of time)

30 minutes??

SATURDAY???

You got the Catholic Lite (tm) upbringing!

(Only time I'll ever set foot in a church is for Christmas Day mass and anniversary's)

Um, why?

Hotblack Desiato

DazMarz wrote: »

I felt like screaming Basil Fawlty's line, "This is exactly how Nazi Germany started!!!"

It's a great line, so I'll quote it again and one whose true significance is rarely recognised.

Conformity above all is deeply valued in Irish society as in many others. Logic and freedom trail in way behind.

"You wouldn't want your Joe to be the only child in class not doing holy communion" is exactly akin to "You wouldn't want your Hans to be the only boy not going to Hitlerjugend."

ryan101

ninja900 wrote: »

"You wouldn't want your Joe to be the only child in class not doing holy communion" is exactly akin to "You wouldn't want your Hans to be the only boy not going to Hitlerjugend."

Yep, exactly akin.

Hotblack Desiato

It is yeah. Kids didn't actually get arrested for not going to Hitler Youth but the chatter of their mothers and desire to conform was enough. Catholics don't actually have a higher power to fear apart from self-guilt and the chattering of aul wans.

kylith

I believed when I was a kid. Heaven, hell, everyone on earth my brothers and sisters, the whole shebang. Then, around the age of eight, I started spending my free time on mixture of David Attenborough and Terry Pratchett. One taught me about evolution and the other introduced ideas like all gods exist or none do, and that there's no need to 'believe' in things that are real. Couple that with realising that priests were casting themselves as experts on things that they obviously knew nothing about, and I was done with religion by about age 12. I didn't stop attending mass until I left home ("While you live in our house you'll live by our rules"), and I was even the public face of the church choir for a few years!

endacl

I've no idea OP. Depends by what you mean by 'believe'. When I was a kid, I accepted what I was told by grownups. This of course included my dad telling me he was the best footballer in Ireland and that Fats Domino was from Bunclody. Weird man, my auld fella...

Once I reached an age when I started to figure stuff out for myself - I had access to many many books - I certainly didn't.

Do you mean actively believe, or passively accept?

Lithium93_

ninja900 wrote: »

And you'd have been right. Adolf of the funny hairstyle was brought up in the catholic tradition and learnt well how it uses symbolism and empty rhetoric and vague scriptures and pomp and ceremony and deference to authority to control the masses. He employed these tactics expertly. There is no real difference between a papal mass and the nuremberg rally, both require mass suspension of reason and blind deference to an idiot ideology.




30 minutes??

SATURDAY???

You got the Catholic Lite (tm) upbringing!




Um, why?

You sound very surprised about mass lasting only 30 minutes on a Saturday.......... Kinda glad i only got the ''Catholic Lite'' upbringing, don't know why i only got to church for Christmas........ The anniversary's part has been kicked to the side of the kerb.

Hotblack Desiato

Lithium93_ wrote: »

You sound very surprised about mass lasting only 30 minutes on a Saturday..........

I wouldn't know. By the time the thing about satisfying the Sunday obligation on Saturday evening came in (yep. the RCC can be populist when it feels like it) I was pretty much done with mass attendance anyway.

Given the average pace of a Sunday mass out our way (45 mins give or take) they might save 5 mins tops on a Saturday evening with fewer communicants, so still 40 mins or so.

There was one priest though who was very popular as he was well known for doing a 'fast mass', barely over the half hour including dispensing a few hundred wafers was some going. It was your lucky day if he was saying mass.

The latest Sunday mass in the nearest church was 1pm, but that was regarded by my mother as a bit lazy, we usually went (as in, were made go) to 12. But the odd time we went to a neighbouring parish that had a 4pm mass, it was never less than an hour two lengthy sermons IIRC, or perhaps it was lots of hymns using up all that time, but it's well over 30 years ago now.