This is the religion forum, so I share this here.
My mother was raised a Catholic, she went to Catholic school. (And was a great student…at one point, she could hold a conversation in Latin!)
She walked away from the Catholic Church at age 17, after having a child out of wedlock and having her scholorship to Georgetown withdrawn. She never went back.
These events occurred 62 years ago.
I was raised without any kind of religion. Nothing, nada, zip, zero. God was something some people believed in.
Twenty years ago, my mother became an ordained minister in the Church of Religious Science, a metaphysical church.
My mother is now 79 years old. She is frail, and is facing the sort of health challenges many people her age face.
This morning, I got a call from my sister: “Well, we just left the church. Mom made her confession, received absolution, and the priest even gave her Holy communion, special just for her.”
Did you know that jaws really do drop? You couldn’t have surprised me more if you’d told me she had declared she was a lesbian.
Of course, during preparation for the communion she bitched at the priest that Jesus was a pain in the ass and she didn’t believe in the Bible, but still… and my sisters said she was positively beaming.
I had no warning. Apparently my mother has been talking about this for awhile, and told my sister that she was going to die a Catholic some time back.
Wow. Surreal.
Then again… it was my mother herself who told me many times what the Jesuits said, so I guess I already kinda knew. “Give me a child until he is 6 years old, and he is mine for life.”
Wow.
Thanks, mom, for sparing me this. And congratulations, I’m happy it makes you happy.
(And that is one confession I would pay alot to have listened in on.)