Faith

 Faith 

I'm not a religious person, but I am trying to find some kind of faith in my life again. Maybe it would be easier if I was to surrender to a higher power, giving my life over to something else with more meaning in such a meaningless time in the world. I do see the benefits from being part of one of those communities, the sense of belonging, the routine, the shared history you automatically have with other people. But I just don’t feel that pull towards organised religion, I feel the opposite really. I grew up Catholic, going to Catholic school and attending Sunday school until the age of 16 and for the longest time I didn’t question a thing. It was my upbringing, my routine, I had friends in the church and at school. It all felt very familiar, but I could never shake the feeling that the beliefs were not my own. I’m really not convinced that my mother believed it either, if it wasn’t more about keeping something alive that she shared with her own mother, a devout Irish Catholic. 

These days none of us attend church, apart from my mother on holidays and all of us for funerals. It is strange to spend over half of my life in the same place every week, recounting the same incantations to just suddenly stop and until recently never give it another thought. My feelings towards the Catholic church are quite simple, it is too big, too powerful to operate with any integrity and their abuse and most poignant child abuse record is so prolific I could never in good faith support such an organisation again.