This I Believe

This I Believe

I know my parents and friends are worried about me because I seem to have a lack of religion in my life. The irony of this is that I was raised Catholic, I attended Catechism classes at The Shrine of Our Lady of Saint John every weekend for nine years straight. I guess I understand why my loved ones must wonder what went wrong. Well up until a year ago I still attended mass weekly but all of a sudden I decided not to go anymore. This happened partly because I believed that most of the people who attended church were a bunch of hypocrites; because once they left the church they would go back to committing the sins that they told others were bad. I would see this constantly and I developed all of these doubts in my mind. I know that if my mother would hear me speak she would automatically assume that the devil had taken possession of my soul or something to that extent. She would blame all the books I’ve read, or the media I see on television, and even the people I hang out with.

My mother constantly urges me to go to church and to put God first, but my belief in God is not the question here. I do believe in Him. The only problem is I didn’t believe in the people who were supposedly devoted Catholics. I guess I was disappointed by reality. Thoughts that ran through my head often led me to wonder why the people kept going to church if they were going to continue doing what was considered wrong by the church. I realized that these people are just lying to themselves and I didn’t want to be like them. I didn’t want to lie to myself so I stopped going to church. As a look back at it now, I can see that I took the coward’s way out. I ran. I didn’t stay, I didn’t tell anyone about why I made the decision that I’d made. I just left it. I saw the problem and I thought that there was no solution, so I decided to flee while I still could, before I turned into one of those people whom I considered to be hypocrites.

There’s still a long way for me to go in my search for my true belief. My family is still worried about me. They believe I’ve become an atheist. I guess that scares them because it is something they didn’t think I would ever become. But I haven’t, but I haven’t cleared it up to them either. They just need to understand that I need to get my head on straight right now. I need to do this so that I can come to turns on my own. I want to be able to make my own decision about my religious beliefs. I don’t want to say that I am Catholic because I was raised Catholic. I want to say I am Catholic because I believe in the Catholic Church. So I guess you could say I believe in the search for belief.