So, the pope is dead and the TV is making a big business out of it. See him from all angles, show people crying and griefing about the loss, and telling over and over again what a great man he was.
I was a bit touched when he died but not because he is gone, more because somebody is gone whose organisation formed my opinions, formed me. I know that sounds weird and it is hard to explain, but I'll try.
As many of you know my father was Italian and he died only 20 days after my birth. Though my mother is protestant and does not believe in God, she deceided to have me baptised in Italy around my father's family. The result is that I'm a catholic.
My only contact with religion in my early years was when I visited my relatives in Italy. I do remember my excitement when we went to church and though the mass lasted forever I was fascinated by the ordinance of the mass, the old women wearing black and praying the rosary over and over intensely and the huge dressed holy figures in their corners. I remember sneaking into my aunt and uncle's bedroom and touching the old wooden rosary which hang over the bedpost.
I went to a Catholic Elementary School in Düsseldorf and I got interested more and more in religion. When the time came that the whole class of mine was dued to go to take lessons for the communion, my mother asked me if I want to go too. I did. I went to the communion lessons for a year, I loved it. I loved being with the people, I loved the young priest who used to do little excursions with us, excursions to places I have never been to before like a game park or the dome in Cologne. And I started reading the bible from the beginning to the end and I loved the message in there. I joined the church choir and when I had communion and I had to go to confession right beforehand, I was soooooo relieved that I had confessed that I had stolen sweets from my mothers drawer. I was pure now and God forgave all my sins.
Then we moved to a little village in Hessia. Though 90% of the people living in Hessia are protestants there was a little Catholic Church in the village. I was astonished the first time I went to the mass. The priest was old and grumpy. He was angry, very angry - but I never found out why.
When I was 14 the time came for the confirmation and of course the confirmation lessons started about a year before. So once a week I went there and the angry priest was telling us about the hell and the purgatory. And he assured us that we all would have to spent a long time in purgatory before God would be able to decide whether we are good enough to enter the gates to heaven or end up straight in hell. I never heard of the purgatory in the Catholic community in Düsseldorf (I later learned that most of the Catholics think that this is nuisance anyway) and I astonished asked how it comes that God puts us into purgatory and crucify us as he knows who is good or bad - at least that was what I believed in.
He was totally mad with me and I could tell he did not like the fact I was there. The next lesson he talked about Adam and Eve and the sins - and as we had Evolution right at that time in school, I asked (and I assure you it was an innocent question) how it come together that we learn in school that the human beeings are basicly descend from Apes while the Church tells us that Adam and Eve were made by God. That was it.
He started yelling at me. He called me Doubting Thomas, told me that I would have been the one who wouldn't believed that it was Jesus though he was showing his wounds after he revived and that I'm a not a Christian. He told me to go and that I am not worthy to administer the sacrament of confirmation.
I ran home and I cried and I was so miserable. My mother went to the living room and she called him and through the closed door I could hear my mother's very loud and very angry voice. She came out and said: "If you want, you can go to the confirmation but the priest does not want you to come to the lessons anymore!"
I went to the confirmation - that was the last time I have been to a Catholic mass! The suffragan bishop did not allow any of my relatives beeing the ones to put their hand on my shoulder (they do that during the procedure) as they are not Catholic so I did had to ask somebody from the village whom I didn't like at all (a grumpy catholic grandfather of a school friend).
Coming home I questioned the Catholic Church and I do ever since. I started reading the Bible again with a different perception and I found so many things that contravene with the Catholic Churches teachings or the "Real" Life teachings.
And the pope was acting in opposition to the pure teachings of the Bible too: Treating women second quality, telling people in the poorer countries in the times of AIDs that they should not take any contraceptives as celibacy is the best prevention for pregnancy and furthermore AIDs (yeah, finally they found a sin which castigates itself), telling the Bosnian women who were raped by Serbs that they can't abort the children, calling catholic lawyers and judges to not participate in divorces and a lot more.
Now that he died, the broadcasters are talking about the pope and how good he was with young people and that he attached young people to the church. I can say that this is not true for me. He formed my opinions or manifested them, but they are mostly all of what he and the Catholic Church dislike.
Nat
