Catholic Religion and its Trappings

In recent years religion has lost all its meaning for me. Through high-school I created my own type of religion. I believe in a being and not necessarily God, but a mix of a supreme being and science (I am NOT a scientologist). I practice it my own way that is not dictated by the Bible and in fact I do not believe in Old Testament or New Testament. Basically I don't believe in the Bible. Rather I think the Old and New Testaments are incredible stories that are fiction. They never happened and it is just used as a device to bring fear and conformity. I think of it as a story with a moral you would tell a child so he would do something nice instead of something bad.

Anyway, let me give you a brief history of religion and me. I was raised Catholic, went to Catholic school from the ages of five through fourteen. I was an altar boy but was never asked if I wanted to be an altar boy. I was some what forced into it. Later when I realized I wasn't obligated to participate (like a priest) they tried to guilt me into it.

In the classroom I had to deal with nuns who taught most of the classes and had a blatant favoritism toward girls. One of the scariest, vivid memories of that time was a nun actually screaming at the top of her lungs at a friend of mine for passing a note to a girl in class during reading time in or around 3rd grade. Needless to say my friend broke down into tears and had to stand in the corner for remainder of the day.

The older I became I noticed more problems with the Catholic church like the "local drunk" who helped out with the collection plate. The priests knew as well as everyone else that he was a drunk yet after every mass they would give him twenty to thirty dollars from that mass' collection plate. He would in turn run to the local bar, which was half a block away from the church, and spend that money. My friends and I would later see him passed out in front of the church steps every Sunday at 3:00PM like clockwork.

Then there was the time there was a new priest who decided that the church needed to update the rectory. So the church decides to renovate the kitchen, which is fine except they decide they need a kitchen like a restaurant; with a live-in chef. Another decision was made to trade in the church's Oldsmobile for a Mercedes Benz 300 SDL Turbo Diesel, fully loaded, which I still remember being silver with tan leather interior.

The nuns got into the act, too and added a huge sewing room with a large screen television. I found this out when a classmate and myself were sent over to the convent to deliver a note to Sister Aloewishes (I think that's how you spell her name). We knocked on the door, but no one came. We turned the handle, discovered the door was unlocked and let ourselves in. We entered and went towards what we thought were people talking in a room. We knocked on the room's door and opened it. There sat Sister Aloewishes watching the afternoon soap operas on her 60" television, sitting in an air-conditioned room in a La-Z-Boy recliner. Once she saw us, she jumped out of the chair and moved us into the hallway, read the note and gave us another note in response.

Those are some of the reasons why I no longer belong to any religion. There are many more stories to tell but maybe for another day. With that, I really want to know: Do we really need religion? And without it, would the world become evil?

I really doubt it.