Catholic Beneath The Skin

According to a recent survey, more than a quarter of American adults have changed their faith to another religion or no religion.

I had a full Catholic upbringing: parochial school, alter boy, mass twice a week. Soup to nuts. I haven't changed my faith or left it behind; you could say instead that I've put it on a shelf.

Today, I found myself in church for the first time in a long time, attending the first communion of my goddaughter. I am aware of the irony of a nonpracticing Catholic being tasked with the proper religious upbringing of a completely respectable little girl.

The words and the rites all came back to me. I stated the confession of faith word for word with the rest of the parishioners, although if you'd asked me two seconds prior how it went I would have been at a loss for words. I knew when to genuflect and when to stand.

All of this is a roundabout way of getting to my central point. I was talking to a friend once about something completely unrelated to religion when he interrupted me, asking "you're Catholic, aren't you?"

We can leave our faiths behind, but that doesn't mean that our faiths leave us behind.

Religion, and other ideas too I suppose, change us in profound and unpredictable ways. Can we ever fully understand the scope of their influence?