Delivered at UUP by KC Greaney on August 5, 2007

Earl and I have been asked this morning to discuss "jewels in the baggage," or how our religious upbringing shaped us. This morning I am going to focus more on the jewels than the baggage, and I am going to emphasize personal experience rather than theology. The tile for my talk, "Faith of our Fathers" popped into my head as I was writing, and I couldn’t get the refrain out of my mind...(incidentally, the song was written by a Catholic, Frederick W. Faber) "Faith of our Fathers, Holy Faith! We will be true to thee ‘til death." The Catholic Church, as you may know, is big on loyalty. Unlike Protestants, who can try out different churches, there is only one Holy Roman and Apostolic Church. Catholic, when uncapitalized, means "universal" after all. When capitalized, it refers to the Roman Catholic Church, a church which believes it is the one universal church, which prays for the reunion of all Christian churches (into the one universal church, of course), based on the premise that all true Christians form a single united group, founded by the apostles.

I was born and raised Catholic. I received the Sacrament of Baptism shortly after birth, First Holy Communion at the age of 8, and Confirmation at 13. I was a faithful, practicing Catholic until my mid-twenties, when feminist leanings and independent thinking caused me to question the Church in which I was raised.

Friends, now, when they hear I was raised Catholic, will joke -- "So you are a recovering Catholic, har har har." I must admit that I am not. I have not felt the need to recover from my childhood faith -- rather, I personally have felt the need to evolve.

I have mostly happy memories of my childhood church, Christ Child Chapel, off Summit Road in the Santa Cruz Mountains, a Little Brown Church in the Wildwood. We were a small church, in a semi-rural area -- too small to support a full-time priest. So, Father Joseph Leonard, originally from County Limerick in Ireland, would drive up the mountain to say mass at 5:00pm on Saturdays and 10:00am on Sundays, times that fit neatly between his scheduled appearances at Saint Augustine Church in Scott’s Valley. Some of my fondest memories center on church holidays -- I’ll always remember midnight mass on Christmas Eve with nostalgia. My mom would send us to bed early, ostensibly because we needed rest (what kid can go to sleep early on Christmas eve?!). She would "wake" us at around 11pm, my sister and I would get dressed in our fanciest winter dresses, and off we would go. Through dreamy, sleepy eyes I would watch the Christmas pageant, smell the incense, sing all the familiar Christmas carols, and after the service eat sweets. I will never forget the year -- I think I was 13 -- that I was chosen to play Mary in the Christmas pageant, because I had long brown hair and brown eyes, just like Mary. (I beat out the very blonde and blue-eyed Shelby Matlock). Participating in such annual traditions made me feel special, important as a member of a group, and allowed me to truly feel community.

Another strong childhood memory is the first time I confessed my sins to our parish priest, participating in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. (This was a requirement before receiving First Holy Communion, so I was around 8.) I cannot remember what I confessed -- I was such a good Catholic girl I probably ‘fessed up to my worst sin, which at that age was fighting with my siblings -- but I do remember the ritual. Part of the ritual is to express contrition and resolve to do better -- not a bad concept.

"O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins because of Thy just punishments, but most of all because they offend Thee, my God, who art all good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to sin no more and to avoid the near occasions of sin. Amen."

What I remember most of all is how very light, light as a feather, I felt as I floated away from the confessional to say my three Hail Marys and two Our Fathers. I felt holy! I felt, deep inside me, that my God knew I was fallible, that I was truly sorry for my sins, and that I was worthy of forgiveness. My sins would not weigh me down permanently.

What else did I gain from my Catholic upbringing? You may be surprised to hear some of these -- Global awareness. The importance of the group over the individual. Social Justice. A love of folk music. And my strong belief that the Death Penalty is immoral and wrong. Other jewels perhaps aren’t so surprising -- Family values (not as defined by the Religious Right!). An appreciation for ritual. The importance of community. A feeling of connectedness with a global church community.

So how did I gain these values and perspectives?...global awareness probably started with Fr. Joe, a foreigner with a brogue so thick we all had to learn patience and tolerance. He was respected and revered at Christ Child Chapel, this man with a thick accent and a lack of understanding of American culture. In my church, it was incumbent upon us to adapt to him and his ways, not the other way around. In addition, I have clear memories of the Maryknoll Sisters, global missionaries, coming to church once a year to solicit donations. They provided us with pamphlets showing third-world poverty, and what they were doing in villages to try to counter it. My own sister gave money once, and for a year we received updates in the mail about their sponsored orphanages, hospitals and schools. It seems easy now to categorize their efforts as charity and not sustainable development, but to a kid in the Santa Cruz Mountains it was the first and most profoundly moving exposure to the fact that conditions were drastically different in other parts of the world. As I got older, Mother Theresa became famous, and the good works of nuns worldwide received some deserved recognition.

My timing in growing up also exposed me to a kinder, more progressive Catholic church. I came of age after Vatican II, the international Catholic conference that, among other things, changed church policy to say mass in the vernacular instead of Latin. (Side note here, in honor of Leland: Who knows the origins of the word "hocus pocus," meaning trickery and slickness? It derives from the Catholic mass said in Latin, where when the bread becomes the body of Christ, the priest said "Hoc est Corpus," or "here is the body." Hoc est corpus, hocus pocus. No wonder they began saying mass in the vernacular!) OK. Back to the story. I also came of age with the Hippies. Our church was too small to have a choir, so we had some folks play guitar and sing not-so-traditional Catholic music. Does anyone remember the Kris Kristofferson song "Jesus was a Capricorn?" I first heard it in church. "Jesus was a Capricorn, he ate organic food, he believed in love and peace and he never wore no shoes. Long hair, beard and sandals and a funky bunch of friends. Reckon they'd just nail him up if he come down again."

It also helped that as I grew intellectually, as an undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley (which by the way was rife with Young Republicans when I was a student in the early 1980s), I attended the campus Newman Center that was staffed by Paulist Priests. Paulists are the only American order of priests, and as such they are far left of center. When I was in college over two decades ago, the Newman Center in Berkeley openly ministered to gays and divorcees -- shocking! The priests also preached about liberation theology, that radical south american catholic movement promoting the belief that the Church has a duty and an obligation to oppose social, economic, and political repression in societies where exploitation and oppression of humanity exist. And, I recall Fr. Michael Park preaching a moving sermon I will never forget outlining the Church’s strong moral stance against the Death Penalty -- the rationalization is consistent with the Church’s anti-abortion position, that the sanctity of life is of paramount importance.

The church of my childhood is still important to me today, in tangible ways. When my brother Mike died in 1999, and when my sister Valerie died last fall, my mother’s church, the church of our childhood, opened its doors. Even though my siblings were not practicing Catholics, and in fact the officiating priests didn’t know them, the pews were filled with church folk (many of whom I still recognized, after over twenty years). And the church ladies! Oh those wonderful church ladies! They checked in on my Mom, brought casseroles to the home, provided flowers, and made certain there was a feast for the crowd after the memorial services. And in the multitude of condolences were many cards indicating my Mother’s church-going colleagues had made donations to have masses said in remembrance of my siblings, which really meant a lot to my Mom. I know that my Mom does the same for others in the church in their times of need.

I am glad that I was raised in a faith tradition -- ironically, my mother was raised in a godless household, and she converted to Catholicism when she married my father. And you know what they say about converts! My Mom has been most catholic ever since. My religious foundation, with full exposure by attending mass every Sunday for years, allows me to recognize biblical references and better understand world history. I wonder how my children will feel, in retrospect, having been raised in a faith tradition without a creed.

You are probably wondering why I left the Catholic Church. Part of the reason is that when I left Berkeley and the Paulist priests behind, and moved away from my childhood home with our global-hippy-mostly lay led-church, I realized very quickly that most catholic parishes were far more conservative. In addition, I had always had some theological disagreements with the church, and nagging questions and doubts (which really aren’t allowed). I had issues with the role of women in a patriarchal institution (in addition to the fact that women cannot be priests, or bishops, etc. it is nigh impossible to measure up to the high standard set by the pious and docile Virgin Mary). I questioned papal infallibility, the concept of transubstantiation, the trinity, the doctrine that all those not baptized are barred from heaven, and I struggled with Immaculate Conception (I digress again, in honor of Lee -- most folks know about the virginal birth of Jesus Christ [his parents didn’t have sex -- the Holy Spirit intervened and made Mary pregnant]. But the Immaculate Conception is different. In 1854, Pope Pius IX defined as dogma the belief that Mary, who was conceived in the usual way, was so holy and so pure that she was born without the stain of original sin, and that she was filled with grace and lived a life free of sin). Again, I say it is nigh impossible to measure up to the high standard set by the pious and docile Virgin Mary. Jesus Christ himself professed the imperfection of humans! But little catholic girls are to aspire to be like Mary. No wonder we had to go to confession!

Back to the story again, and my decision to leave the Church...what most of it boiled down to is that I could not believe that the Church had a monopoly on religious Truth. And some of the contradictions became difficult for me to continue hearing about on Sunday mornings, such as the anti-abortion and anti-birth control mandates. I was what I’ve heard called a "buffet catholic," picking and choosing what I wanted from the church’s teachings, and at some point I could no longer live with the incongruity of it all. I had never immersed myself deeply into Catholic theology, so it wasn’t too difficult for me to stop attending, even though I had to deal with the guilt of leaving The Church. But then, years later when my daughter Bailey was born, I yearned for the community and connectedness that a church can offer. I knew I didn’t want to return to the Catholic Church -- I wanted to find a spiritual home that was willing to accept different points of view, and not just preach their way or no way. I developed my own litmus test to ensure open-mindedness -- my new chosen church must accept atheists, and must be pro-gay rights. I did my research, and you all must know how short the list of such churches is! Of course my quest brought me to Unitarian Universalism, and ultimately to this pulpit before you today. But please remember that I am not a recovering catholic, I am an evolving spiritual being, content to carry along in my baggage the jewels of my childhood faith.