Losing my religion

If you're very religious you might not enjoy this post, just saying.

I was raised a catholic as were most Irish children and I never really questioned my religion even when I resented being dragged to mass. It almost went without saying that if you grew up in Ireland you were a catholic and to this day most schools still teach it as though it were the only religion with occasional exemptions given to non catholic children from these classes. 
I did all the usual stuff, got baptized and made my holy communion and collected a load of money and bought a bike with it and whined about having to go to church because it was so incredibly boring. Now my dad did have a religious phase for a few years which thankfully wore off so that by the time I made my confirmation I was no longer being dragged to Sunday mass against my will.

I haven't actually been to a mass that wasn't a wedding, funeral or christening since then and nor do I see myself becoming a frequent mass goer at any point in the forseeable future. Actually that's not right, once when I lived in Switzerland I went with my polish friend to a mass in Polish to see if that made it more entertaining. It didn't and obviously I didn't understand a word so the whole thing just sounded like that made up language we would use as children. I didn't share this observation with my friend as I really couldn't see her appreciating it.

While I was in secondary school, Religion was still mandatory and in my last two years of school I would get into very heated debates with my religion teacher, a horrible close minded woman who was intent in force feeding us her own opinions like they were facts. I remember her once describing with abject horror a time when she saw two girls holding hands and she thought they might be ...gasp ... lesbians. She said it as though she had witnessed them having sex in the middle of town when chances were they were just friends holding hands, a lot of girls I knew did that in their teens and if she was right about them being together then so what. I kind of made it my mission to rile her because I was contrary like that at seventeen and I had a lot of questions about this religion we were being told to blindly accept.

Now as an adult I suppose I haven't quite given up my religion, I suppose I'm vaguely agnostic and I do believe in something, I'm just not sure it's the Catholicism I was hand fed growing up. For starters I think a lot of the stuff they preach is out of date and I think people from a number of religious backgrounds will interpret the Bible to suit their own needs. I don't agree with a lot the beliefs the catholic church upholds. I don't think there's anything wrong with homosexuality. I don't believe it's a choice any more than I chose to be a straight woman. I am not married and I have had sex and I don't believe I'm going to hell for it. I don't know if I'll ever get married so I guess for the time being it will all be out of wedlock, what an outdated concept. My Parents only married a few years back and we all survived it pretty well. I know this is a controversial one but I think a woman has a right to chose if she wants to be pregnant or not and I don't just mean using contraception. I think it's up to the individual or couple (as the case may be) to decide if they want to terminate a pregnancy and no one else and I'm pretty sure everyone I know feels pretty strongly one way or the other about this subject.

so anyway this is how I feel about religion but I still behave respectfully towards priests and nuns when I meet them out, I can't help it. You can't get through catholic school without having that drilled into you. But yesterday in work I was at the customer services desk when I was approached by a customer who had come in to collect a book we had ordered for her. Some sort of guide the to the catechism. And when I handed her the book she tried to engage me in a conversation about it. I'm too nice to act disinterested so I politely nod and try to look like I know what she's talking about. Then just before she leaves she turns to me and asks if I'm familiar with the rosary for unborn babies. Now, honestly I have no idea if I should be familiar with this rosary? perhaps it's very well known and I didn't want to out myself as a non practicing catholic in front of someone displaying such obvious religious zeal so I say yes,  I have heard of it (thank fuck she didn't ask me to recite part of it or I'd have been rightly screwed). She's delighted and starts telling me how she's been praying to stop women having abortions (not quite sure how that works, do the prayers make women change their minds ? or do they just ground the planes those women were going to take to England ?) and then she takes out her purse and hands me these rosary beads especially for this particular rosary and I take them in my hand ( like an idiot) and try to appear interested so I take a closer look and realize much to my horror that inside each of the clear plastic beads is a tiny plastic foetus, It was lucky I didn't throw them back at her. Before she leaves she tells me that Mary (the virgin Mary that is) told her not to keep them hidden. Well she probably should have advised her to take her medication so she would stop hearing voices.

This is me losing my religion and trying not to have nightmares about the creepiest rosary beads I have ever seen