This is as good a time as any to start talking about religion, the second leg of my youth. I was raised Catholic. My mother was devout. Starting in the 3rd grade I went to parochial schools through my junior year in high school. I have no idea how my parents afforded it, but they did. My mother thought protestant religions were bad. So did the Church, I was told. I would literally go to hell if I attended a protestant service, or so said the Irish nuns of the Sisters of Charity. Now that I think about it, those Irish nuns also may have something to do with me thinking Catholics were persecuted although that might be a bit of a stretch. Still, Catholics weren’t much trusted in America from the founding right through until we elected John F. Kennedy and that was a thing.

Anyway, another group that began to feel as though they might not be part of the collective “We”, was religious people, and I don’t know how else to describe them. It seemed to start when the Supreme Court banned prayer in public school in 1962, accelerated when anti-abortion laws were struck down in ’73, and got even testier when gay rights became a thing. Again, I’m not a social scientist, but I have eyes and there’s a lot of turmoil in the churches of all stripes these days over gays, abortion, and prayer in schools. And for good or bad, politicians are trying to harness that energy.

As for me, I never knew why it mattered if we prayed in school. I knew abortion was wrong, because the sister’s told us so, although it was okay to save the life of the mother, but we also were taught, judge not lest ye be judged because God would sort it out. As for gays, well, I never knew any until I found out my youngest brother was gay, and the nuns never mentioned it. So, it occupied zero space in my mind. And all of this was covered by the idea that I should render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's, which seems to be summed up neatly in the idea behind the separation of Church and State in the first amendment.

Part 10, Living in America, An Old Man’s Journey into His Past