Today is Good Friday. In another time and place I would be spending the evening in church. That was when I attended St. Louis Cathedral Catholic School in St. Louis, Missouri, about fifty years ago.
Back then, I went to a Catholic grade school and religious participation was a cornerstone of my education. It meant attending daily morning mass as part of the student body during Advent, Lent, and the month of May. It meant attending the Stations of the Cross during various other prescribed periods. It also meant saying the Rosary, morning prayers in class, and a dozen other rituals that brought a student in touch with his or her religion on a daily basis.
I’m not sure exactly when I began questioning; but I know it was a gradual process, probably started when I went to Loyola University of Chicago. As I read and studied more — I have a minor in religion — I began to question more. And, as time passed and my life’s situations intervened, I began to feel that the Catholic Church’s teaching were not particularly what Jesus Christ taught.
Maybe some would say I found it convenient to stray from the dogma I’d stuck to through my elementary and high school years. Others might say I’d lost the gift of faith. In either case, I don’t honor Good Friday as I once did. I don’t honor Easter the same way either.
But I haven’t completely turned astray. If that were so, I wouldn’t even remember that this is Good Friday. Or that once I kept silent for three hours in the afternoon on this day. Or that those Latin chants we sang in church half a century ago still echo in my head.
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