Friday, April 10, 1998
Lifelong belief in ideology overpowers past
CATHOLIC: When parents fail to practice what they preach, turn
to truth in your own heart
By Andres Chang
Have you ever seen the movie "Gandhi"? There’s this great scene
in which an Indian says to a white priest, "You’re a Christian. I
know a Christian. She drinks blood! The blood of Christ, every
Sunday." I laughed when I saw that because, put that way, it sounds
barbaric. As a Catholic, I do believe that I eat and drink the
flesh and blood of Christ – not some representation of His flesh
and blood, but the real thing. To the non-Catholic, that sounds
crazy, doesn’t it?
Ever wonder why people believe in their particular religion or
philosophy or practice their own spirituality? In my case, I was
raised a Roman Catholic by two pious parents. When I was 5 years
old, my father, a Chinese business man like his father, told me
that I should get good grades in school so that someday I would get
a good job and eventually make a lot of money. Looking back at my
childhood, my father always defined success in terms of money.
Growing up was very painful, not so much for me, but for my
brothers and sisters … and especially my mother. My dad was cruel
and devoutly Catholic. The house that he ran was blatantly sexist.
When my older sister got into a car accident that was not her fault
at all, my father took away her license for two weeks. When I
crashed the car, causing damage to city property, my dad didn’t do
a thing (other than pay for the damage).
When my older sister wanted to go to college, my dad told her
that she shouldn’t because she would get pregnant. But it was
expected that all of his sons would go to college. And through it
all, he made sure we went to Mass every Sunday.
Then there was my mom. My dad would put her down, tell her that
she was worthless and tell her that he rescued her from her poor
family when he married her. And through it all, she also made sure
that we went to Mass every Sunday.
It was awful. The worst part of it all was that we could never
tell my father how we felt about anything. My father saw emotions,
especially sadness, and any kind of sentimentality as a sign of
weakness. If we were hurt we had to hide it from our father because
he would only use it to hurt us more. I hated living at home and I
was happy to leave when it came my turn to go.
When I was 12, I told a priest something very personal related
to my sexuality. He responded in a way that perhaps any priest who
knows the teachings of the church would respond. I felt very
ashamed and even avoided talking to that priest as much as I could
for a time, though he continued to invite me to chat with him.
Back then all of us remember seeing our parents praying or
reading the Bible. Today, of the six children raised by my parents,
only one of them is still a practicing Catholic: me. You might ask
why. Why would I still go to church after being raised in a
dysfunctional environment of church-goers? Why am I still Catholic
after my devoutly Catholic father caused me so much pain? Because,
that’s not why I go to church in the first place.
When I was in high school, many Protestants came to me and,
using the Bible, began to challenge the validity of my Catholic
faith. It was then that I asked myself, "Andres, why are you
Catholic?" I began to listen to those biblical challenges and
started going to priests and other Catholics well-versed in the
dogmas of our faith. Eventually I came to realize that I’m a
Catholic not because my old man was nice or a jerk, not because a
priest or a nun treated me a certain way, but because I truly
believed in the ideologies of Catholicism.
Yes, the Church permitted slavery at one time. Yes, the Church
burned people at the stake. Yes, some religious person hurt you in
such a painful way that you have every right to be angry at them.
But do any of the crimes committed by Christians invalidate the
belief that 2,000 years ago a Jewish carpenter claimed to be God
and died so he could be raised from the grave three days later?
No.
Stalin killed more people than Hitler did. Castro put people in
jail just because they went to church. Ho Chi Mihn killed thousands
of his own people. Yet many communists are still around today. Why?
Because communists believe in ideals, not those who hold these
ideals. Communists understand that people are ultimately at fault
for their own actions, not their ideologies. We as Catholics
believe the same.
There are a lot of nasty people who believe in God (Yasser
Arafat, Saddam Hussein, Pat Buchanan). There are a lot of great
people who believe in God (Martin Luther King Jr.; Mother Theresa
of Calcutta; Mohatma Gandhi). I’ll be honest. I don’t like a lot of
Catholics (like my dad). But that’s not why I go to Mass.Chang is
third-year theater student.