Sisters of Mercy 1st through 8th grade, Jesuits 9th through 12th grade.
Being an Altar Boy was incredible fun. Getting the giggles while serving a funeral Mass was deadly, there was no way to stop laughing.
Overall the experience was beneficial and my future children will definitely go to Catholic school.
I was only at Catholic school as a small child. I do remember the nuns who taught the little kids were young-ish and wore jeans (this was the early 1970s). I felt cheated.
The “real” nuns (who wore habits) were mostly elderly and had roles with less stress. I guess for nuns they were semi-retired, but liked to stay involved with the school. One in particular was a million years old, and she was in charge of the lost and found. No one could ever remember her name, so we called her (not to her face) Sister Lost And Found. There was An Incident when Sister asked a boy to run an errand, and another teacher asked that student who had sent him to the office. He blurted out “Sister Lost And Found!” Long lecture for the entire class about proper respect for the sisters.
I’m always a little annoyed when people try to point out to me that Christmas is a “pagan holiday.” Yeah whatever, I learned that in Catholic School. We definitely talked in class about how many aspects of Christmas celebrations have their roots in other traditions.
My favorite thing was that the principal was a priest, a very kindly elderly priest. His office looked like the set to Masterpiece Theater … like an old library with big leather chairs. He met with a few students every day for about 15 minutes, rotating through all the kids (it wasn’t a very big school). I loved it, you got to have juice and cookies on very fancy china. He was an astronomy buff, so the conversation always included interesting space trivia. He was very excited about the photographs of Venus(?) that were in the news at the time.
My Irish Catholic ancestors are probably rolling in their graves as I type, but…what the heck is Stations of the Cross?
The long walk Jesus took after his sentencing until he was laid in the tomb. There are about, oh, fourteen or fifteen (maybe sixteen, if you count the Resurrection). The Stations are events that happen along the way-Jesus is sentenced, he is given his cross, he stumbles, he meets his Mother along the way, he gets to the cross, etc.
Each Friday during Lent, we met in the church in the afternoon and went through them, with various prayers. Since incense was always used, and very smelly incense at that, someone always had to run outside and puke, or else someone fainted.
My first grade teacher was a little old nun named Sister Frances Ramona. Sister Frances had been there since my father was in school, and she taught him and all of my aunts, and everyone loved her. She was really tiny, probably not even five feet, and she was probably the only one left who still wore a veil and habit-like clothes (very plain navy suits and dresses).
Sr. Frances is probably still my favorite teacher from my childhood. We loved the hell out of her. She’d read us stories and make funny voices, and we used to all pile around her and hug her. She’d bring in white chocolate crosses at Easter time for us. I was her favorite student, and after I finished first grade, she invited my mother and I over to the convent and gave me a little doll that I still have (she’s sitting on my mantel, in fact).
Hm. I didn’t know there was an actual ritual based on the Stations of the Cross. I tell you what, though, I’ve walked the actual Stations of the Cross, and they are baloney. The Ninth Station is in the courtyard of some Greek Orthodox church like, a mile away from the rest of the Stations. Like this:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
…9
10
11
etc.
Yeah, I bet that was exactly the route Jesus took.
Good heavens, what used you to do on Good Friday before the Passion at 3.00pm? We always did the Stations of the Cross (still do in fact).
There are 14 of them, usually represented around the walls of the church in paintings or sculptures. Here the practice is to stop at each one, recite the *Adoramus * Te and then sing a couple of verses of the Stabat Mater.
People hurling or fainting because of the incense? How much did they use?!
Anyway, interesting story here: I was once going to be the cross-carrier for my Wednesday Mass in Catholic School. I followed the priest in (he was a great guy), knelt properly, put the thing in…
looked up.
Big Mistake.
I’ve never suffered from Stage Fright before or since, but right then I completely froze on the spot. Couldn’t move. Felt like I wanted to die. In fact, there were days after that when I wished I could die, once and for all.
Eventually the priest noticed me and told me to move on. Boy, was my teacher PO’d.
Catholic grade school; jesuit high school.
Our high school cafeteria had a giant mural on one wall showing some saint being burned alive while native Americans cut out his heart. That was really appetizing.
I loved lent since it meant the cafeteria actually served good food on Friday. We got more than fish sticks on those days. Every other day was some brown meat in some brown sauce. Lent Fridays had some edible vegetarian stuff.
We never had compulsory mass. In grade school we started each day with prayer and medication with optional mass once a week. In high school, we didn’t start with a prayer (except in French class where we had to say the Lord’s prayer in French at the start of each class) and there was optional mass once a month or so. We all went since it meant you missed class. We also had confession every so often. I never went. No way was I going to confess to one of my teachers!
We wore uniforms which I hated at the time. Looking back, I’m glad we had them. My friends were so worried about wearing the right brand jeans or polo shirt with the correct little animal on them. To hear them talk, it would ruin your social standing to choose the wrong one. I’m glad we didn’t have all that.
In high school, we had to take a religion class each year. Freshman and sophmore year it was a bunch of feel good stuff like reading “I’m okay/you’re okay.” In my junior and senior years, we got into comparative religions which was really interesting.
If you think the incense is bad when you’re in the church, try being the altar boy swinging it.
Catholic School, I started at St. Phillip Neri in the middle of my 5th grade year and then went to a 4 year high school called Mount Saint Mary’s.
Only for that last half of my 5th grade year did the girls wear uniforms. Boys didn’t have to and the girls didn’t on Fridays. Then the next year they dropped uniforms altogether.
My favorite nun name?
Sister Theophayne (theofane)
She wasn’t the oldest nun but she was up there. She felt that I was too thin and once sent a note to my mom asking if I got enough food at home.
Every lent, we ACTED OUT the stations of the cross. All of the older classes 5-8th, acted out, well, posed as, various stations of the cross. Because I was thin and had longish hair, I played Jesus every year.
My HS now, doesn’t have any Nuns at all! And, a girl who was a senior when I was a freshman, is now the princepal!
St. Phillips was hard. My grade consisted of about 25 kids and most of them had been in the same class from Kindergarten. So I was a real outsider for a long time. Well, till I got out of HS.
My mom’s family is seriously Catholic, but I am Jewish.
Catholic school for first to fourth grade, then Catholic college. What I remember most about grade school is the uniform, which included a tie (no clip-ons!). My mom didn’t know how to tie a tie, and my dad usually left for work before we went to school, so my sister learned how to tie a tie and every morning, she would tie my tie for me.
We eventually left that school and went to a different Catholic school, St. Tarcisius, which I may have spelled wrong. My parents went back to visit that town recently and learned that St. Tars has been converted to a mosque.
As for Catholic college, my favorite bit of Catholic wisdom was that it was better to have sex Friday night, instead of Saturday night, because confession was on Saturdays. That way, you could have sex Friday night, ask forgiveness on Saturday, and take communion on Sunday (after all, you don’t want to go to mass on Sunday and have people wonder why you’re not taking communion). It always made me wonder whether the priest ever got through to any of these people: “You know, part of forgiveness is being sorry, and promising not to do it again. Promising not to do it again until next weekend just doesn’t cut it.”
Like, I suspect, a lot of kids who went to Catholic schools in Ontario, I don’t really remember that religion permeated much of the experience. We said the Our Father at the beginning of school and had religion class. A lotof the religion was pretty namby-pamby stuff, though, or just learning about whatever religious holiday was next on the calendar.
Exactly my experience as well. I also attended K-12 + Catholic undergraduate University. I escaped from the planet of the apes for graduate school, though 
. My anger first evolved around how children of other faiths were treated – you know, not allowed to go to communion, not allowed to get confession - there ws even one girl who cryed for days at the top of her lungs because it was the insinuation that because she was black and Baptist, God wouldn’t forgive her sins… for an eight-year-old, that was nearly enough to induce the equivalent of Reefer Madness -ha–ha—hahahahahahahahaha – oo oo hahahaahahaah. Needless to say, with all of that Catholic upbringing, I am certainly NOT a Catholic. I joking jab my still-Catholic friends, “I am faar too moral and ethical to be a Catholic” :).
Anyway, I looved the smell of the Stations & Good Friday incence, oh that was some good stuff. I was always a good and quiet kid outwardly after being yelled at and guilt tripped until I almost didn’t know which way was up, for raising questions like yours. I never got in trouble - and kept it all internalized until I finally escaped the rubrick torture - but toward other kids, I watched nuns throw chalk and preists slab kids on the @ss with rulers and boards – and a little hair-pulling.
I was always asking science questions in Sunday School and religion class, to which each year, the teacher would concoct a completely (different) stupid explanations… after 4 years of this, it became apparent to me that sunday school teachers should NEVER be asked science questions, and that they were NOT to be trusted for presenting the different answers every year as fact.
Mass was Friday Mornings… Confessions were once a month.
My parents knew all of the other parents from Catholic college that they all had gone to together. But the social sturctures and criminal behavior were about average for schools as far as I remember. Someone was getting beaten up or stealing lunches or telling off a nun every day or two.
That said, I should give a vote of confidence to the Cistercian preists, who hosted my school from 5th-12th, I have never met more logical Catholics in my life. They were essentially the Vulcans of the Catholic Universe - all with multiple PhD’s in language, world religions, etc. Attending there kept me from becoming a complete reactionary – I realized that religous types are not always as stupid as the silly sunday school teachers that I had. They were by no means fundamentalists, and in fact were the first to suggest the “right and left hand of Creation” explanation for evolution – Right hand = Biblical (inspiration to a cretan/prophet from the old testament) – Left Hand = what those ‘Right hand’ things actually look like to those limited completely to the 4-D universe. I still am very thankful for that single view expressed to me at an age where I almost flung completely off the handle.
Sorry (Grammar above)… I get excited when I talk about things like this. The more excited I get, the worse the grammar I produce. I’m glad to see that some experiences of others often parallel my own.
Ah, Catholic school. I went K-8, graduating from maroon plaid jumpers to maroon plaid skirts.
Everything was blamed on the CCD kids. Missing a workbook? CCD was here yesterday. Statue of Mary cracked? CCD. Can’t find yer pencil case? CCD. Sometimes, they were even the actual perpetrators. What did those kids do all day, run up and down the rows, rummaging through desks?
I had Sr. Jeane, the last full time nun besides our principal, who preached to us as much about the Yankees as she did about Jesus. She must have shown us that “Baby Growth” calendar a thousand times, which started off with its first heartbeat and ended with “My mommy killed me today.” Since no one even told us what abortion was, it was extra confusing. She still had her ruler hanging in the closet to remind people that even though she wasn’t allowed to use it anymore she still had decades of practice. (True enough, she had my aunt almost thirty years earlier and I heard she had only gotten kinder over the years.) She yelled at everyone, from her favorite student (Uh, that was me. What can I say, she taught English.), to the class bully, which I loved. Usually, the teachers only yelled at the kids they didn’t like and let the others get away with murder, but not Sr. Jeane. Sadly, she was put on probation the year after she had me for pushing a kid down a flight of stairs and was forced to calm herself down. She even gave out A’s in conduct after that.
Sister Rose, our principal, was the epitome of the good Irish Catholic nun, and most people loved her. One speech I remember best went something like this, “You can call an asshole an asshole, darling, and be no worse off, but take the Lord’s name in vain and you’re going to hell.” She was always going on about how her mother raised her and her eight siblings on a poor man’s salary, but because she trusted in God was able to put every one of them through college.
Surprisingly, I learned a lot about the Jews. Many of my religion classes were marked by odd cartoon videos about Moses, the 40 years in the desert, and life before Jesus. We were taught not to bother people of other religions, and that just because they were “unenlightened” didn’t mean they weren’t going to heaven unless they specifically rejected God. Some of this stuff actually earned me an A on a history essay about ancient civilizations.
Also, Stations of the Cross was hell on my knees. Who wants to kneel so rigidly while the priest gives that long monologue? Not only that, but we had to go through them weekly during Lent.
Of course, the one thing I loved about Catholic school is that we had to say please and thank you and hold doors open for everyone. Even your arch enemy (which there were a lot of, given the small classes and cliques) would hold the door open for you. No one holds doors for people anymore, and I loathe it. The other thing I liked is that even the dumbest kids knew grammar, including what verbs, adjectives, and adverbs are. I am in public high school right now, and by God, I don’t think I’ve met smarter people who could only half quote me the definition of a noun as a person, place, thing or idea.
Of course, now I’m this agnostic public school kid who can quoth Biblical tales like no tomorrow. I should’ve known earlier I’d end up like this, since the only thing about Catholic school I liked besides the extra name you got to choose for Confirmation was reading the children’s Bible.
Question, CCD?
I’m wondering if I’m the youngest person posting in this thread… no nuns, no uniforms (though I would’ve loved to wear uniforms, no need to bother with picking clothes!) and pretty much like public school.
North American Martyrs?
When I was at St. Mary’s (K-8, 1983 until 1992), we still had the sort of post-Vatican II, liberation theology, guitar Mass, Oscar Romero types.
The suckiest thing though was 8th grade when we had to write a pro-life essay. Yuck.
I went to a Catholic college, although by that time I was no longer practicing.
We didn’t start wearing uniforms until I was in fourth grade. Before that, we just had to wear dressy type clothes (no jeans or sneakers), but we had Jeans Day once a month. In fourth, they started us wearing uniforms, only it was only 1-4, and then the next year 1-5, then 1-6, etc. They were the UGLIEST blue plaid you’ve ever seen. I still will never get the sexy Catholic school girl thing because those skirts were nasty. Cheap, stiff, scratchy polyester. We still had jeans days, and dress up days, though.
CCD-I don’t remember what it stands for, but it’s basically the Catholic equivalent of Sunday School. If you’re Catholic, but don’t go to Catholic school, on Saturdays you go to the parish’s school for religious instruction.
I went to St. Nicholas 1st through 4th grades. No uniforms, and a pretty good system of rotating Masses so that kids of similar ages had Mass together and the priest could tailor his homilies to the audience.
My parents got divorced when I was 9, so I left and started public school. Financial stuff. I became a loathed CCD kid. CCD sucked big time. 
Oh, and I was the puker! Ash Wednesday 1988! Influenza, not incense fumes.
At my current parish, St. Rose of Lima, there is a K-8 school, which was the first new Catholic school to open in the diocese in something like 20 years. The Nashville Dominicans have five or six nuns there. They still wear full, floor-length habits. Most of the nuns are quite young, too.
StG
Confraternity of Christian Doctrine