My high school scholarship was revoked after my failing religion and getting a D in German during the first semester of my sophomore year. My mother could understand the D in German. The only person in my family capable of speaking a foreign language was my Irish grandmother. Her native tongue was Gaelic. Nana took my brother and me into Boston once a month. Our first stop was St. Anthony's shrine. We lit candles for the dearly departed and then ate hog dogs at WT Grants before viewing a film a the Paramount Theater.
"What will Nana think?" my mother asked while waiting to speak with my religion teacher. Their conversation lasted about two minutes. She hung up the phone and looked at her second son with disbelief. "He said he failed you, because you don't believe in God."
"I got all As in the tests and did all my homework. I don't deserve that F."
"You don't believe in God." She was shocked to the core. The Church had burned heretics for challenging the divinity of Jesus. Atheism was an anathema for Cold War America. "Your teacher said if you recant your apostasy, he will give you a B and your scholarship will be reinstated."
My high school offered a good education. Better than the town school, but it was all-boys. Failing religion seemed like the fastest way to end my Catholic schoolboy career.
"I don't believe in God." I hadn't since my best friend Chaney drowned at the age of 8. A caring God would have helped him to shore. Te Christian god had exterminated non-believers. Genocide was wrong.
"Wait till your father gets home." These words were my mother's threat of last resort. I was scared of my father. Mostly because I wanted his love and had a tendency to fuck up. Not too much, but enough to annoy him. He was an engineer. They liked order. I waited for his arrival on the front steps. It was December. The air was cold. I almost thought about running away, but the low sky was promising snow.
Walking up to the house, he saw my face and groaned, "Now what?"
"I failed religion."
"How did you fail religion?"
He was stunned by my admission yet listened to my explanation without anger. He had converted from the Episcopal Church to marry my mother. His faith was born of desire. Shaking his head he lifted me to my feet.
"If that is what you believe, then that's up to you, but don't expect any Christmas gifts this year."
I got some anyway and I refused to recant my apostasy. The brothers pleaded for my soul.
“Come back to the faith and we’ll give back your scholarship.”
“I don’t believe in God.”
The school suggested that I see a psychiatrist. He had an office on Commonwealth Avenue. On his head was a bad toupee. He worked for the Cardinal and wanted to know why I didn’t believe in God. His hands were soft as butter. I pushed them off my lap.
“Why should I say anything to a man who doesn’t know he’s bald?”
He threw me out of the office and I told the brothers about his touching me and the high school re-evaluated my stance after my uncle, a lawyer, instructed them on the freedom of speech and religion offered under the Constitution. His intervention prevented my attending a coed school. My teacher changed the F to a C. I was told to keep my atheism to myself. I never lost my faith in no god. I can’t see myself as a Biblical figure, unless it’s as an extra in Ben-Hur’s chariot race.
Talking about non-belief is difficult in America, which has IN GOD WE TRUST stamped on coins. Friends and family are deeply religious. I tell them my lack of belief does not subtract from my spirituality. I have visited some of the most holy sites on Earth. I've read countless books on devotion. People have tried to reconvert my. I have remained true to my non-belief and was proud to hear President Obama include non-believers in his inaugural speech. Our numbers are not a few weirdos. We are at least 20 million strong.
Earlier this summer I was at a pool party at my doctor's house on Staten Island. Two parents overheard my discourse against organized religion and said that their 10 year-old son was a non-believer.
"Could you talk to him, so he knows he's not alone."
"No problem."
I said a few words, because few 10 year-old want to hear anything for a man in his 50s. I certainly didn't at his age. Of course many of my once=profane friends are finding religion as the years add up. One, an ex-model from South Africa, had been extolling the tenets of a snake-eater cult fin Oklahoma. I announced my non-believer status and she accused me of being spiritually lazy.
Sloppy maybe.
Well maybe lazy too.
Here's her last epistle in response to my discounting the dangers of 666.
Peter Nolan Smith
Seventh-day Adventists believe that the "mark of the beast" (but not the number 666) refers to a future, universal, legally enforced Sunday-worship. “Those who reject God... Read More’s memorial of creatorship — the Bible Sabbath — choosing to worship and honor Sunday in the full knowledge that it is not God’s appointed day of worship, will receive the ‘mark of the beast.’”[34] "The Sunday Sabbath is purely a child of the Papacy. It is the mark of the beast.
Actually some divinists consider the number should be 616
666 in its first century context refers to the Emperor Nero
Ex-Model from Paris.
getting off the straight and narrow with endless theological discussions, who cares, we got our good sense and Gods word, God created all this and I think in view of this is capable of guarding his word intact, no denying things are not going to get better just prepare to meet your creator, its between you and him, detractors are not whats missing and for good reason.... if you don't believe in God and his message all this is POPPYCOCK
Sounds like I'm headed for damnation.
Baby do you want to come along.
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