The Vatican Loses a Child

The child was raised Roman Catholic, and he attends a Catholic grade school, and he goes to Mass, and wears a tie and everything. And I hadn't heard, from him, a peep of annoyance at this state of affairs. Until last Sunday.

Right before we went off to Mass, we read, courtesy of Witchvox, an article (this was from the Telegraph, in London, though I did my research and found it elsewhere as well), stating that the Vatican has recently stated that not only is it not ok, in the liturgy, to refer to Our Lord as Our Creator, or any such like, anybody who was baptized in a ceremony wherein such terms as Our Creator were used, rather than the gender specific Our Lord or Our Father, wasn't really baptized at all, and has to have a do-over.

I laughed and laughed, cause I thought it was just about the funniest useless proclamation I'd heard in a long time, and the child laughed too, though not as gleefully, and then later at Mass, when it was time for him to go on up for communion, he said, "Mom, I don't want to go up for communion," and I said ok, and we sang our songs and listened to the announcements and at the end of everything I said, "ok, tell me what's going on."

And it turns out that for Some Years the child has been Entertaining Doubts. Years this has been going on. He just quietly disagrees with what he's being told, sometimes. And the news about retroactive baptisms was the last straw.

I asked him what he does believe in. "I believe there's a God," he said. "I just don't think he says stupid things."

Well, no arguing with that.

So this week we're off on an adventure. He read the Unitarian Universalist affirmations, and said he believed them all, and so we're going on over there tomorrow, where, to his great joy, he gets to hear about All Sorts of Deities, and be someplace where his mom is Welcome.

And maybe there'll be jelly donuts. I think that's a big piece of a nurturing spiritual environment.