The Day Of Confirmation

      The day of my confirmation was like a surreal fog. As the names of the people who were about to be confirmed are read out, each one stands up so that everyone can see them. Then, we parade ourselves in front of the Bishop.

Each one of us was asked about what we believed in.

      I cannot remember what exactly I had been told to parrot, but I do remember that I promised to reject evil and Satan.

      This promise was to get me fully embedded in the corporation. 

      The Bishop laid his hands on each of us and told us that we were being given the special task of living our lives as Jesus would have wanted and that we should show other people how to do the same. The Bishop then anointed our heads with oil, and laying his hands upon us, deliberately blew near our ear to imbue us with the power and strength of the Holy Spirit.

      I went right along with the ritual beating of chest, chanting, and genuflecting... blindly, obediently, mindlessly.

      As I did all of this, I could not help but notice that I did not feel filled with the power of God's energy. I did not feel that the Holy Ghost was now dwelling within me. I didn't feel anything, except a touch of intestinal gas and the urgent need to empty my bladder.

A part of me wanted to yell out and ask why I didn't feel any of the promised magnificence. I didn’t ask why I had to be anointed with salad oil.

      I wanted to know if I was being gypped. At the same time, a part of me suggested that I was a fraud and undeserving and that it would be best keep my mouth shut. It did not occur to me that most of the other sheep might be feeling the same way.

      So, I ignored that the Emperor was not wearing cloths. I went along with the rest of the flock and pretended that I had received the gift.

      Finally, the Bishop said my name. He gave me a special confirmation name, St. John.

Whether I had been gypped or not, whether I got it or not, I was now a member of a very powerful club. I could finally start working towards earning my wings for Heaven Amalgamated, Inc. while simultaneously insuring my place at the right hand of God when I died.

      In my Italian family, absolutely everyone was proud of me. They all commented on how sweet and pious I was. They all commented that, while James would be a devilish ladies’ man and star athlete, at least my family would have a son who would one day become a man of God, most likely a priest. They could see that I had those theological leanings. They could see that I was meant to be a part of the flock that guided the flock.

      Italian families want their children to grow up to be rich and successful. The three most respected occupations are doctor, lawyer, and priest. In their own way, each of them is considered a Pezzonovante -- people that control the strings of other people’s lives.

      Even the people who allegedly are part of the mythical Mafia, or Costa Nostra hold each of those professions in high esteem and for good reason.*

      Doctors are considered the puppet-masters of life and death.

      Lawyers are considered a necessary evil to make sure everyone is kept legally safe from the government and from hostile Pezzonovantes.

      And, finally, Priests are the puppet masters over death, since by proxy they hold the key to the Kingdom of Heaven. They are the barristers who are there for you when doctors and lawyers fail you. They help you to cleanse your soul and act on your behalf with God.

      It is said that even Mafia chiefs (if they exist) and wise guys will give large sums of money to the church to help them to erase their crimes, their sins, and to help grease their way into the great country club in the sky. Sometimes these generous donations are made to show other how pious they are, but it is also done to buy their way to Heaven.

Many goons privately donate lavishly just for this purpose.

      Yes, the priests have power. Even a lowly, first-string priest has people from all walks of life confessing to him. Even he can give blessings and pass forgiveness. A priest is the only person that even the most vicious of nuns will fear, humbly kissing his ring, if not his ass.

And so, it was for those reasons, and a few, others that I earnestly thought that, perhaps,

I should strive for above-average godliness and become a priest.

      There were a lot of things to consider, such as which order of priest should I join. Each of them had their own slant on how best to serve our CEO - God, and his vice-president in charge Earth, the pope. There are many orders within the Catholic Church. So far, I have counted about almost forty orders. The main ones that I grew up with were, first and foremost, the Franciscans, the Dominicans, Trappists, Friars, Augustinians, the Benedictines, Jesuits, and the Carmelites.

      The gene for obsessiveness contained in the double helix of my DNA kicked in. I decided to do my research. Even though I was a blind and obedient sheep, I had many questions. Disturbing questions that have plagued me my entire life. It would be twenty years before I met those people, and one in particular, who would help me to sort out much to do with these questions.

      Back then, I simply asked all the nuns and the priests my questions. I tried to interview them as effectively as a journalist on "Sixty Minutes."

      As I conducted my investigation; I grew more confused, more uncertain, and more disenchanted with the policies and procedures governing, at least, this subsidiary of Heaven Amalgamated, Inc. In response to each question, I would get many different answers from the priests and the nuns.

      And, when I questioned nuns and priests from other orders, the confusion only escalated.

      To make matters worse, I noticed that what the nuns and priests preached did not correspond to their actions.

      Further into my investigation, I checked into what sort of evidence was used to support their rather extreme beliefs. I don't know why I had never thought about it before. I had just assumed that these high priests of God had loads of strong evidence to back up what they preached.

      I was wrong. All they could point to were the reams of written text with no more proof than the many other books of mythology that I had read. It's true that scientist have to initiate certain premises on faith, but usually they end up generating loads of non-conflicting evidence that supports their originally untested assumptions. The problems of scientists generally arise from the inability to find a method or manner with which to prove their evidence.

      It was at the tender age of eight and a half that I started to see that, not only was the emperor not wearing clothes, but I also noticed that a man behind a curtain seemed to control the tricks and noise of the nuns and priests, controlling our perceptions and beliefs.

      Not only was the evidence scant, it was all based on two-thousand-year-old hearsay spouted by people who were often born a generation or more after the death of Jesus.

To make matters worse, I started hearing arguments that further stripped down this rather weak evidence that I was told to take on faith.

      I was told that this evidence that had been handed down hundreds of generations and had been translated many times (causing much to be lost during each translation). The final straw was the purposeful manipulation and discarding of true and relevant information for purposes of forwarding the agendas of many pseudo-alpha primates.

      I could not help it, faced with all of the evidence and the lack of evidence, I could no longer take on faith the dogma that I had so obediently, so blindly, trusted and followed.

      I could no longer chase with certainty the vocation of priest. Whenever I asked for further proof, they would refer me back to the Bible. It was funny how the very thing under question is pointed to by the faithful as their evidence for it’s own validity. And they expect to win people over with this argument.

      For years, I toyed with the idea of possibly following my early aspirations, thinking that, perhaps, if I made it into the inner circle, I would be made privy to some secret knowledge.

      Puberty, however, snuffed out this dwindling ember of hope. When I became a fully sexual being, I realized that the only order of priesthood I could enter would have to be the "Order of the Thorn Birds." I vowed that I would make Father Ralph de Bricassart seem like a fearful choirboy by comparison.

I vowed that I would work night and day to initiate all of the Meggie Clearys and Rachel Wards of the world into my unholy fold - "My rod and my staff shall comfort thee in thy hour of need."

As the world moved on, so did my life.