Experiences with the Catholic Religion

Gina DiCorti

Sociology 431

Religious Experiences Paper

Raised Catholic

My family is entirely Roman Catholic on both sides and my brother, Peter, my sister, Jennifer, and I were raised in the Catholic Church. When I was young my mother would force us to go to Church on Sundays as often as she could get us to go. We hated going because we all thought it was so boring and the fact that we had no choice made it worse. My dad didn’t really like to go either so it was mostly my mother encouraging us to go. We also each had to go to catechism and made our first communions at the appropriate age. Peter and Jen both were confirmed when they were in eighth grade but I quit going to catechism before I completed my eighth grade year so I am still not confirmed. I want to finish it one day because it would make my grandmother happy. I was surprised my mom let me quit; I guess she was tired after having forced her first two children through it and she stopped making us go to church around this time.

As of now, I consider myself Catholic because I was raised as such but I am not a very religious person and don’t believe all of what Catholicism preaches. For a period of my life, I felt I was atheist and did not believe in God; though now I realize I was simply angry with God. When my sister was one year old she had a tumor in her abdomen that burst. She went through chemotherapy and radiation treatment at this time. She was better for a while but became sick with leukemia when she was four. She needed a bone marrow transplant and at this time my mother discovered she was pregnant with me. They tested my brother for a match and luckily he was. He donated bone marrow for the first time to my sister when he was eight years old. Gradually Jen recovered but again when she was ten she became very sick with leukemia and was in need of another transplant. Peter donated again at age twelve. At this time I was old enough to have an idea about what was going on. I was five and a half...