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and the last time she was there was for a wedding, other than that, she hasn't gone since the 1970s. Her reasons are various, mostly to do with the Church's position on Choice, GLBT rights, women in general, etc. My Dad was the one who took us kids, my sister and I to church every Sunday. We both even went to PSR(Parochial School of Religion), I was even Confirmed in the Church, after that, my Sister dropped out before she could be confirmed.
I found out later that the only reason why either myself or my sister was in PSR was to keep my Grandmother happy, after I was confirmed, my mother basically said "fuck it" and let my sister(6 years younger than me) to drop out. Interestingly enough, my own life experiences sort of moved me away from the Church after Confirmation. At the time, I was contemplating joining a seminary to become a priest, yeah, I was that faithful in the Church. My mother opposed my decision, and she said it was a big decision, and that I should think about it first, so I said I'll think about it while I went to college.
In any event, it was my experiences outside of the home, making friends with a Buddhist Monk and an agnostic in College, along with my own questioning of the Church's beliefs, especially theological and about human behavior that started moving me away from the Church. I wouldn't have called my life in the home sheltered or cloistered, but I was, by and large, oblivious to certain things.
For example, it wasn't until years later, when I became an adult, that I realized that one of my childhood best friends had two moms. My parents, and all the other parents of my other friends knew, but they never made an issue out of it. Hell, my mom actually had to TELL me this, I was a child at the time, and we moved away from my friend when we were around the age of 10. Sifting through childhood memories of my friend's moms holding hands, kissing, and walking into the same bedroom just sort of "clicked" in my mind.
So, as I became an adult, a lot of questioning of the Church occurred in my mind, and I continued on my I guess you could call it spiritual journey. I became curious about religion in general, and so I read and talked to many people about various different religions, from Buddhism, as mentioned above, to Judaism, Islam, Taoism, philosophies like Humanism(great influence), etc. To be honest, I wasn't sure what I was looking for, I bought or checked out some books, I just wanted to learn. Anyways, so I was at the book store when I found a book called "Wicca for Men" by A.J. Drew. I glanced at a few pages, mostly because I thought it odd that a religion would require a book like that. I knew nothing about Wicca at the time, so I bought the book and looked up a lot of stuff on the Internet. After sifting through the bullshit, I realized I found a religion I'm comfortable with.
Sorry I got side tracked. I guess the gist is that my mother is what you would call a lapsed Catholic, for myself, I'm not a Catholic at all, oh, and for my sister, I actually don't know, I know her husband is a atheist, that's about it. My sister does have a few books about Goddess worship, but that's about all I know, we don't talk about religion that much. As far as my father is concerned, well, he stopped going to church when us kids stopped going, yeah, he did it for the kids only.
Oddly enough, for the rest of my extended family, I have 2 cousins who are agnostic, one who is atheist, and 1 who is some type of Baptist(she married into her husband's church), and another who was the most religious of us all(she was going to become a nun), who later married in a Methodist church and hasn't been back since. Actually, all of my cousins, who are married, and my sister as well, joined other churches to get married, haven't been back to those churches, except for my Baptist cousin. Just a note, all of them were raised Catholic.
Sorry, I got sidetracked again. :)
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