When I was younger I was both confused and a little bit frustrated by church more specifically the Catholic Church, fortunately as I got older my confusion gave way but it gave way to more frustration.

             I served my elementary and junior high school sentence at a small private Catholic school in my home town. My experience there was, I am sure, no worse then anybody else’s, church twice a week and not a clue what they were yelling about until about the sixth or seventh grade. Along with church came teachers that frowned upon questions and praised conformity. I couldn’t tell you an exact day or moment that I finally understood and realized what it was they where saying, but it was that same moment that I realized I was not and never would be a Catholic.

            In the eighth grade I was blessed enough to have a teacher that questioned the teachings of the church and thought the religion should be a more openly explored thing. This helped me figure out why specifically I didn’t like the Catholic Church.

            It turns out that the Catholic Church in my mind is more dictatorship then religion. If the infrastructure wasn’t enough to turn my fourteen year old mind away then the teachings were or should I say lack there of. When the priest was done yelling at us for not coming to church (mind you he was yelling about this during church) and telling us, in a not so subtle way, that we were all going to hell, he would give us a few pointers as to how to lead good lives and make it to heaven and they where as follows:

1. Never use a condom.

(Propagation is the key to a successful religion.)

2. Steer clear of gay people.

(They obviously subvert the goals of the church…those goals being mainly to take over the world.)

3. Last but not least you MUST give money to the church.

(This is key in the goal stated above…world domination.)

            After realizing that these were the only three pieces of “advice” they had I felt that as a fourteen year old I had gotten what I could out of Catholic Church/school. Being obviously unsatisfied with my past religious experience at about the age of sixteen I started looking at other religions/ways of life. I found that infrastructure aside most Christian based churches offer little more then the Catholic Church which was practically nonexistent. So I started looking at non-Christian religions and found Buddhism to be the closest thing to a standard religion that fits my way of living.

            I don’t claim Buddhism for a few simple reasons, one my mother would faint, two although I have a basic idea of the religion I don’t feel as though I have enough knowledge to truly call myself a Buddhist and last is that I don’t feel as though I need a label to define the way I live my life and/or my moral beliefs.