Whenever I hear people saying if only children could pray in the schools, America would be a better place. They assume that forcing children to pray in school will somehow make them religious in the future. As someone who experienced twelve years of Catholic schools where prayer, religious ceremonies and religious instructions were all a part of the daily schedule, I can assure you that this rigorous adherence to prayer and religious faith in no way guarantees a Christian when this education ends. I have no desire be a Christian.

The religious training I received was boring, incoherent, and, whenever the questions got difficult, fell to stop asking all these questions and believe whatever I am telling you. Daily Mass was bore number one. If you want to turn a kid off religion, there is nothing better than daily Mass to do the trick. Mostly because it was daily. At some point, someone realized it was counter productive to force children, particularly small children, to sit quietly in Mass and listen to a religious service that had little meaning to them and so they went to a three days a week Mass schedule. By the time I graduated 8th grade, I think we were down to once a week. The teachers spent most of the Mass maintaining order among their unruly charges while the priest raced through the Mass in order to end, as quickly as possible, everyone’s misery. My fondest memories of Mass was that they sometimes served Long Johns (maple bars and chocolate bars) afterwards.

I attended St. Pius X grade school. One of St Pius X greatest achievements while he was pope was he lowered the age when a person could receive first communion. Children, if willing, could now participate in the sacraments. A fact that we were reminded about on a frequent basis. How lucky we were that we could become Catholics so young. Which is why I learned to curse Pope Pius X’s name because instead of limiting religious training to those few 7 year olds who freely choose to be Catholic, the Church, after Pius X, assumed that every child attending first grade would receive the sacraments whether they liked it or not. I guess I could have objected and the whole process would have stopped. But who is going to listen to a 7 year old concerning his religious commitment. They were in the business of making Catholics and no child was going to stop them from their duty.

Particularly troublesome for me was Communion. The whole idea seemed weird to me. The priest changed a piece of bread into the body of Jesus. I couldn’t figure out why. Really. Why are they doing this? Why did the church think it was so important to change a piece of bread into the body of Jesus Christ? More importantly, why did I have to eat Jesus’ body after the priest made the change? I was assured that one day it would make sense to me. I am still waiting.

Then there was Confirmation. Why? The only thing I could figure out is it allowed me to meet the archbishop of our diocese and I got to choose my confirmation name. Except my mother wouldn’t let me. My mother insisted my name was too long as it was. For those of you who don’t know, my name is Thomas Bartholomew Fitzpatrick. She insisted that my confirmation name be Bartholomew because of that. I tried to argue the point. In my confirmation training I was encouraged to find a saint who I resonated with. I reviewed the Lives of the Saints and found my saint. It was pointless. My mother, of course, won the argument and so all I really got from the whole Confirmation thing was a handshake from the Archbishop.

Too prepare for all these sacraments, most of the first four years of religion training was reviewing the Baltimore Catechism. The book outlined the important Catholic beliefs in a question/response format. By that I mean the book had a question: Who is Satan and then the book gave you the Catholic Church’s approved response to the question. If anyone in authority ever asked you a question about your faith, all you had to do is give the canned response from the Baltimore Catechism. Since I was good at memorization, I was golden. But I can’t say that I had a good sense of what the Catholic Church was about. In fact, soon after being confirmed, I promptly forgot everything I learned because someone older and wiser, perhaps my older brother or sister, informed me that no one will ever ask you a question from the Baltimore Catechism again. I, in case you are wondering, can confirm this to be true. I have yet to have anyone ask me a question that required a response from the Baltimore Catechism.

After twelve years of Catholic education, all I really I took from this time is a vague fear of Hell, a hatred of Confession, a difficultly staying awake during Mass, an unhealthy attachment to personal suffering and a pretty good recollection of biblical stories. Of these, only my recollection of biblical stories has helped me in real life as Biblical questions occasionally comes up in trivia contests. Faith, however, eluded me. I never quite developed any faith. I even asked my parents if I could stop going to church as I really wasn’t believing it. My parents declined my proposal and assured me that some day down the road, faith would come to me in some moment of need. I needed to continue with religion and religious education in order to prepare myself for this eventuality. As long as I lived with them, I had to go to church.

This might work for some people. It, however, was the worst possible way to persuade me. What I have discovered its that people either have religious sentiments or don’t. If you don’t, no amount of prayer is going to change that. In the 4th grade I remember a fellow student telling me he didn’t believe in God or any of this Catholic shit. I was amazed because, even though I had similar sentiments, I was confident that my parents were right. At some point in my life, it would all make sense to me. All I had to do was wait. I had no definite opinions on God one way or the other, but my friend definitively told me, “I don’t believe in God.” Think about it. After four years of Catholic education, in disagreement with his parents, his teachers and society as a whole, at ten years of age, he came to this conclusion. It is a feeling deep inside of him. You either have it or you don’t.

My parents wanted their children to be Catholics. In order to insure this outcome, they sent, at some expense, their five children to Catholic schools. The Church failed miserably. Zero Catholics out of five. I am sure there are better outcomes out there but I am betting those results had very little to do with prayer in the school or Catholic education. I once was arguing with my mother about God and I finally asked her, “What do you want from me?” She replied, “To get you to heaven.” I thought will this is impossible then. In her eyes, you are either Catholic or hell bound. For her, I was hell bound. How horrible to do everything possible to make your children Catholic and to fail. You won’t share eternity with your children because they rejected the Catholic faith. It was at this point I turned irretrievably against the Catholic Church. All I could think, and still think to this day, what a horrible religion. I understand that the Catholic Church is less strident about such ideas these day. Well good, it is, unfortunately, too late for my mother.

Pray with your children. Give your children a Christian education if you wish. Just don’t count on having a Christian when you are done.