When I was 13 I was a strict catholic. Before then, I really didn't give a shit about religion and all the required CCD sesssions and church masses that my mother made me attend. I hated going to Christmas Mass especially, because we had to go to my grandma's church which was in South Omaha...once known as Little Italy, but soon became "Little Mexico". The only reason I liked attending her church was because there were times when they would ask me play my violin during mass or sing with them, and also because I got to listen to the mass in spanish as well and made many friends with the hispanic choir. BUT, the reason I hated it was because it made the mass twice as long, and who enjoys sitting in those uncomfortable wooden pews for over 4 hours?
When I was 13 and suddenly my relationship with my grandmother began to blossom (after she stopped calling me Sarah..which was my 6 cousin who was 6 months older than me and attended a catholic school from kindergarden until she graduated highschool), you would find me more than 4 times a week in a church, whether it was the one I was confirmed from or my grandmothers....praying, or just talking with the priests....confessing my sins which were not much for 13 year old.
I continued to practice catholicism, maybe not as strictly as I was when I was 13...until about a week and a half before I turned 15. My grandmother died 11 days before my 15th birthday. And suddenly, my belief in God died with her.
I never really thought about why my sudden interest in Catholicism disapeared until lately. Now, I do not practice any religion. I feel that I do not know enough about one certain religion to subject myself to it. And, I know what you are thinking, I could study them, learn and get to know a religion better that suits my beliefs, and BAM, I'd be set. But, the truth is, I don't have time too. Not only that, I don't know if I really want too.
On page 83 in Theory Toolbox, it says "This constitutes the first definition of Ideology: something that is false or misleading because it's mystifying. Ideology in this sense is a discourse that always misrepresents concrete conditions and specific causes, trading concrete realities for murky, vague, metaphysical conditions."
Did I just fall into Catholicism to escape from what was happening in my life during my early teens? I had no real knowledge of the religion because I never paid attention during church, or CCD growing up. But, there was something special and powerful about it when I began to really believe. I saw my grandmother, so happy and powerful, in her late 80's and what was something that she had believed in her entire life?--God and Catholicism. I had no confused or hurt feelings when I suddenly quit attending church and believing. I did not feel guilt. I felt nothing. I do know, that when I was attending church, reading the bible, praying, and believing, some sort of positivity took over my life that made everything seem alright. It gave reason to everything wrong. Is this the mystifying part?
So, after discussing ideologies in class, is this a reason why I am far from interested in finding a religion or a belief that would suit me? Is it because I have learned that it is all just a false misleading mystified version of something that really does not matter in the end?
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