So Who Do We Blame

[curious]

I am beginning to blame the bible...it is the bible that has launched multitudes of people into the world with a message of fear.

[Seeker630]

4 years ago I began working on the genealogy of my family. Little did I know what I would find. Things I had no clue about, both good and bad. One of them on my paternal side stunned me and most of the rest of the family-----------we had always assumed that our family had always been Catholic. I mean my grandparents on both sides were Catholic. There was no reason for us kids to think otherwise since my Dad in particular never spoke of anyone in the family who wasn't Catholic. I had never met any of my Dad's Aunts or Uncles on his father's side. They were in Canada and we were in the U.S.

 

The bomb I dropped on the family was this--------------up until my Grandpa married my French-Canadian uber-Catholic grandmother---------his whole family line all the way back to Germany were PROTESTANTS! He converted to Catholicism so they could get married in the church. And that is why I never heard my grandmother talk about any of his side of the family. He died 9 months before I was born, so I got entirely one sided input about anything to do with my Dad's paternal ancestry. Also, I have since learned that my grandmother had a major case of the ass for anyone who wasn't a Catholic. A real fire eater.

 

So who do I blame? Should I try to trace all the way back to my first Protestant in Germany and blame them? Or maybe I should go all the way back to France and dig up my first Catholic ones? Both sides were equally culpable. My parents raised us strict Catholic because that's how they got raised.

 

This project has given me a unique perspective on the effects of hereditary religion. It is simply passed on as a social construct. The churches, Catholic, Protestant or otherwise, were vitally important institutions that formed a cohesive part of the local community in earlier times. Often the old records of births, deaths and marriages were kept by churches because there simply was no one else to do those kinds of things. You got married in a church because there was no place else you could get married. There weren't always civil magistrates handy to conduct ceremonies. So even though I don't give a scrap about the actual religious beliefs, I have to grudgingly grant the devil his due, so to speak. Were it not for church records, I wouldn't have found nearly the amount of information I have so far.

 

I have come to this---------------my religious upbringing, and that of all who came before me, is part of my personal history. My generation are the first really to break the chain. I have cousins who are mainline Protestants now, another is a Unitarian, I am an atheist. My brother and sister I would call deistic or maybe pantheistic. Few are left in the family that are strict in any religious views. Mostly they are the older ones who aren't going to change no matter what.

 

I see the blame game as quite pointless now. It accomplishes nothing, and only serves to feed a residual bitterness over the whole thing that I'd just as soon not carry around with me any more. The question to me is no longer who to blame. It is how do I learn to cope with and understand the past, and then move on?

 

Sounds more like a plan to me.

[Guest QuidEstCaritas?]

4 years ago I began working on the genealogy of my family. Little did I know what I would find. Things I had no clue about, both good and bad. One of them on my paternal side stunned me and most of the rest of the family-----------we had always assumed that our family had always been Catholic. I mean my grandparents on both sides were Catholic. There was no reason for us kids to think otherwise since my Dad in particular never spoke of anyone in the family who wasn't Catholic. I had never met any of my Dad's Aunts or Uncles on his father's side. They were in Canada and we were in the U.S.

 

The bomb I dropped on the family was this--------------up until my Grandpa married my French-Canadian uber-Catholic grandmother---------his whole family line all the way back to Germany were PROTESTANTS! He converted to Catholicism so they could get married in the church. And that is why I never heard my grandmother talk about any of his side of the family. He died 9 months before I was born, so I got entirely one sided input about anything to do with my Dad's paternal ancestry. Also, I have since learned that my grandmother had a major case of the ass for anyone who wasn't a Catholic. A real fire eater.

 

So who do I blame? Should I try to trace all the way back to my first Protestant in Germany and blame them? Or maybe I should go all the way back to France and dig up my first Catholic ones? Both sides were equally culpable. My parents raised us strict Catholic because that's how they got raised.

 

This project has given me a unique perspective on the effects of hereditary religion. It is simply passed on as a social construct. The churches, Catholic, Protestant or otherwise, were vitally important institutions that formed a cohesive part of the local community in earlier times. Often the old records of births, deaths and marriages were kept by churches because there simply was no one else to do those kinds of things. You got married in a church because there was no place else you could get married. There weren't always civil magistrates handy to conduct ceremonies. So even though I don't give a scrap about the actual religious beliefs, I have to grudgingly grant the devil his due, so to speak. Were it not for church records, I wouldn't have found nearly the amount of information I have so far.

 

I have come to this---------------my religious upbringing, and that of all who came before me, is part of my personal history. My generation are the first really to break the chain. I have cousins who are mainline Protestants now, another is a Unitarian, I am an atheist. My brother and sister I would call deistic or maybe pantheistic. Few are left in the family that are strict in any religious views. Mostly they are the older ones who aren't going to change no matter what.

 

I see the blame game as quite pointless now. It accomplishes nothing, and only serves to feed a residual bitterness over the whole thing that I'd just as soon not carry around with me any more. The question to me is no longer who to blame. It is how do I learn to cope with and understand the past, and then move on?

 

Sounds more like a plan to me.

 

 

That's kind of where I am at and I think once I fully accept that there truly is nothing I can ever do to save my immediate family from what they are in, then I will be able to let them go completely and move on emotionally from that aspect of things. Then it will be more of coping and understanding my past. I think I will pursue more CBT at some point, because my mind still compartmentalizes things. I still push things to the back of my mind, fragmented emotions and memories and thoughts.

 

At the end of the day there really is no one to concretely blame, including myself. I can't even blame the guy that started it, he's dead and was dead before my parents even joined the group. Rather than being pissed off that there is no one to blame it's just better to try and move on.

[Neon Genesis]

I think one way to look at xtianity is to compare it to a cold. It really sucks when you get a cold but it's hard to blame the people who caught the cold because they're likely a victim that got it from someone else who was also a victim of the cold. But it's hard to blame the cold too because the cold has no control over who catches it. The only thing you can do is to fight the cold and pity the victims who caught it.