Has your religious or cultural upbringing affect the rest of your life ?

I was born into a family who were Church of Scotland. We all went to church on Sunday. Me and my brother went to Sunday school until we were too old. My dad was an elder of the Kirk, a member of the Deacon's court and heavily involved in church activities. Mum ran the church teenage youth club. My brother rang the church bells on a Sunday morning and I was a Sunday school teacher as a teenager. The minister was a regular visitor to our house. The notion of duty and service was strongly imbued in us. I stopped attending church as an adult. I didn't feel it meant anything to me anymore and I've never really gone back. I love church music, however, and would happily sing old hymns. As I age, I'm no longer sure if I have a faith or not. That doesn't upset me, rather it fuels my curiosity about what happens next.

Trueloveways

I was brought up Catholic, it’s given me a good sense or morals, empathy and responsibility but I do overthink things and feel guilty when I shouldn’t.

Ditto Trueloveways. My husband says I was born with an A level in guilt courtesy of my Catholic schooling. We made sure our children do not have this affliction. You can never quite shake it off.

Strict Methodist up-bringing, although both my parents had been brought up Anglican. Sunday school and chapel twice on Sundays. My DF's family remained devout Anglucan, and I often used to go with an aunty to Matins and Evensong. I loved it, the candles, the dress, the ritual and the music.

I went to a C of E teacher training college and was confirmed; have remained Anglican ever since. Then my brother converted to the C of E, and was called to be a priest, and then my sister was confirmed; there was, I felt, something in the Anglican tradition that Methodism lacked. My DM in her later years went back to the Church of England. I went to church and took my children to Sunday.school, but neither of them are in any way religious now, and the GC are not christened. The principles of the faith have remained with me ever since.

My late DH, by the way, came from a very devout Catholic family, but he was a very lapsed Catholic!

Have tried to follow the Christian faith ever since -

Sasta

Trueloveways

I was brought up Catholic, it’s given me a good sense or morals, empathy and responsibility but I do overthink things and feel guilty when I shouldn’t.

Ditto Trueloveways. My husband says I was born with an A level in guilt courtesy of my Catholic schooling. We made sure our children do not have this affliction. You can never quite shake it off.

I had a through catholic unpbringing, but this guilt trip aspect completely passed me by. I was speaking to a friend recently and she had no memory of being made to feel guilty either.

In total I went to 6 catholic schools, convents and lays schools, in London, the north of England and in Hong Kong and I can never ever remember any attempts at guilt tripping. I also had a childhood of church going and sermons, which i do not remember as guilt inducing. Nor do I rmember it at home or among my extensive catholic family.

I was brought up going to church regularly (CofE), but stopped when I married at age 20. Now it`s just weddings, christenings and funerals which draw me into a church, although I respect other folks` need of religion. Sometimes when I see black churches and gospel singing, I think it would be fun to attend there.

Every Catholic I've ever known has made a big thing of the whole guilt trip ethos.

Catholicism does seem to carry an awful lot of guilt with it, from what I've seen.

MissInterpreted

Every Catholic I've ever known has made a big thing of the whole guilt trip ethos.

Except me and almost every catholic I have ever known.

I know plenty of non - catholics who are constantly obsessed with guilt. It is a bit like being convinced that children get hyper if they eat a lot of sugar. It is all in the mind. There is no evidence that eating sugar makes children hyper, but parents are convinced it does so they see it.

People have been rabbitting on about catholics and guilt, even though it is nonsense, so catholics think they suffer from it. Some catholics do feel guilty, it doesn't follow that their religion caused it.

MissAdventure

Catholicism does seem to carry an awful lot of guilt with it, from what I've seen.

Yes MissAdventure it does when as a seven year old child you are taught by nuns and priests that if you commit a mortal sin eg tell a lie, be rude to parents or teacher, miss Sunday mass and Saturday confession then when you die you will not go to heaven but spend your time in purgatory to atone for your sins before you can be admitted to heaven. This has stayed with me all my life, it didn’t stop me sinning because life is like that but I do think about it 80 years later and if there is purgatory I will probably be in there, that’s Catholic guilt.

Two posts, two opposing views regarding the guilt factor

MissAdventure

Two posts, two opposing views regarding the guilt factor

Interesting init?

I'm Catholic.

Guilt if I sin by doing something my Bible tells me is wrong/sinful. No guilt not observing 'peoples rules' (things not written in my Bible).

The Pope is not in my Bible, he's human. My Priest is not in my Bible, he's human. Purgatory is not in my Bible. God judges - not humans.

The Pope is wise, prayerful - wonderful. Still human.

My friend is Catholic; she said that apparently she has lived in sin for 50 years, even though she is legally married, because the man she married had a brief, disastrous first marriage and then divorced.
It doesn't bother her.

OMG Celieanne86, ‘scus the pun. I used to have awful nightmares about purgatory. What a hateful vile thing to tell young children or anybody for that matter. It used to scare the life out of me. And I used to be upset about the people who were not baptised because that meant they would never get to heaven and would be in purgatory for eternity. I really used to worry about them. And all this when I was just 6 or 7 🤦🏻‍♀️.

Exactly, Sasta - I was told by a few people that I would never go to heaven as I wasn't baptised. It never bothered me personally, but I can see how many would be very troubled by the notion.

I've no doubt it would have frightened me.
I was very nervous, and suggestive and sensitive a pain in the bum when I was little.

It does seem there are an overwhelming number of disaffected Catholics on this thread, me being one. So many of these posts resonate, particularly about the Purgatory malarkey. I didn't bring my children up as Catholics simply because I think some of the church's teaching to young children terrorised many of us, and in retrospect I can't help feeling much of it was just made up nonsense to keep adherents compliant. Like me, one of my school friends also didn't have her children baptised and she said, so upset was her very Irish Catholic mother at the thought of a baby grandchild ending up in Purgatory she sneaked in with some holy water and baptised them herself.

It makes me smile now how many almost adult students have trigger warnings on so many things. Where were our trigger warnings? I can remember being very affected by some of the gruesome martydoms that were rolled out to us in graphic detail at junior school age with the implicit message always be prepared to die for your faith. In particular at one time we were studying English Martyrs in RE and some woman called Margaret Clitheroe up in York was pressed to death by heavy weights because she wouldn't renounce her Catholic religion. The nun who was taking this lesson implied, if we should find ourselves in this unfortunate position then we should be prepared to follow her example. In my head I was thinking "no way I'll just convert to CofE, God will understand". Much later I was to learn that the schism occurred because of the non acceptance of the Pope as head of the church by Protestants, and having read what licentious individuals Popes were at the time and how many presided over years of wrongs doings and corruption, well I can see that probably there was some sense in that. Though of course Henry VIII set up his church for the most vindictive of reasons. Knowing what I do now, I'm surprised, I still retain some of the vestiges of my Catholicism but as the saying goes "Once a Catholic!" reeled in too young, it's much better to take on a religion as an adult when one can make an informed choice.

TerriBull I read up about Margaret Clitheroe because the so named RC high school was next to our CofE St Hilda’s.
In my youth I envied the RC children who had somewhere to go to be absolved of their sins, but then in my late teens, I watched the wife of my abusive (to her) boss being brought back to him by the priest, when she’d gone to the church for help.
I thought how wrong that he could be absolved from his sin and carry on leaving her with bruises.

Interesting Mollygo!. Evidence of the way the patriarchy works within the church.

I was reared in a liberal Church of Scotland family and attended Scottish schools where most were the same as myself except for a few Jewish refugees.
The Catholic school was on our way where me and my chum dawdled back home from school. One day we ventured into the grounds from idle curiosity. We stood outside the heavy closed door of the church ,then a young lady came out, smiled at us and asked if we would like to come in. She showed us round the church which we much enjoyed and especially the pretty statue of Our Lady.
I am not a card- carrying Christian but throughout my life I have found each Catholic I have met ,even the stranger I talked to at a bus stop, to be kind, easy going, and welcoming The theology is not to my taste but there must be something about Catholic education that is good.

Mollygo

TerriBull I read up about Margaret Clitheroe because the so named RC high school was next to our CofE St Hilda’s.
In my youth I envied the RC children who had somewhere to go to be absolved of their sins, but then in my late teens, I watched the wife of my abusive (to her) boss being brought back to him by the priest, when she’d gone to the church for help.
I thought how wrong that he could be absolved from his sin and carry on leaving her with bruises.

mollygro to be absolved of your sins you need to be truly sorry for them and make an effort not to commit them again. It is not a 'get out of jail card'. More a 'must try harder'

M0nica
to be absolved of your sins you need to be truly sorry for them and make an effort not to commit them again. It is not a 'get out of jail card'. More a 'must try harder'

So I was led to believe. But he went every week, and the bruises continued. Just before I stopped working there, she left him and didn’t come back.
We didn’t know where she went, but it certainly wasn’t to the local priest.

Went to Sunday school and church and brought up with Christian values. Also part of a forces family so brought up with good values from that. However I feel it made me somewhat naive about the world and other people, only to find there are people out there with no morals or values who are good at lying!

Mollygo

M0nica
to be absolved of your sins you need to be truly sorry for them and make an effort not to commit them again. It is not a 'get out of jail card'. More a 'must try harder'

So I was led to believe. But he went every week, and the bruises continued. Just before I stopped working there, she left him and didn’t come back.
We didn’t know where she went, but it certainly wasn’t to the local priest.

But going to confession doesn't grant absolution if the person concerned has no intention of stopping commiting the sin they confess.

What counts is what is going on in the mind and heart of the sinner, not what form of ritual the priest might say or perform.

If a domestically violent man confesses to the sin and then goes home and beats his wife up, he might as well not bother with confession since he clearly does not regret his sin and is making no effort not to commit it.

As I said confession is not a get out of jail free card.

M0nica, I’m not misunderstanding what you are saying, I’m simply pointing out, as you just did that his confession was a waste of time, his time, the priest’s time and his wife’s time.
At the time I was more shocked that the priest brought her back, more than once.

My boss, anlong with others, evidently saw confession as the get out of jail free card you describe. The fighting and killing that went on in Ireland reinforced that idea.

The problems in Ireland had less to do with religion and much more to do with the native Irish (catholic) resenting losing their land and having their legal rights taken away by the English colonial administration and the land, almost entirely in Ulster, being given to (protestant) immigrants from the mainland, mostly Scots whose main purpose was to gradually take over all the land and impose an English (protestant)ascendancy.

Since the imgratnts and natives had matching colouring the only way they could be told apart was their religion and that the 'English' settlers usually had Scottish surnames.