Confirmation

In March of 1967 I started my confirmation classes at St. James Roman Catholic Church in Westfield. I was 13. Priests from the local diocese in Buffalo had come to Westfield to teach the classes to us. We were a group of Catholic children from the ages of roughly 10 to 13, boys and girls. Every 4 years the local church would graduate a class of confirmed students to religious adulthood in the Catholic Church. It was my turn.

I went to the first few classes but found them trite. It was supposed to be a serious undertaking with lifelong implications, but as much as I tried, and as much as I thought I wanted to be religiously pious, correct, and even pure, I couldn't bring myself to believe in what I was being told. I found myself questioning everything I was being taught and everything I was seeing around me in the church.

By the time time I was 13 the church, and my role in the church, was an endless cycle of monotony: go to mass on Sunday (or a convenient mass on Saturday night at 5 p.m. if Sunday was too much trouble); go to mass on the year's holy days (and unfortunately there were a number of those); go to confession every now and then to cleanse your soul; and give money. The bonus to make this all worth while; you could receive the body and blood of our lord Jesus Christ at communion during mass. What an enriching experience! And, you were pretty much guaranteed to get into heaven if you followed this course of behavior on a regular basis. (More later)