The Manual

Pretty much everybody in Belgium is Catholic or were born Catholic or say they're Catholic.

As you may know, I grew up Catholic, born Catholic . . . and Jim grew up Baptist. When we decided to marry, it was a "given" we'd be married in the Catholic church. That required more than just reserving the church for the designated day. The Church insists couples complete a little counseling course and at the end, agree to try to raise their children Catholic. We had no problem with this. We were willing to try and it was the only way we were going to walk down that Catholic aisle so that's what we did.

In an effort to do as we agreed to do, we attended a few Masses. I don't recall much about it since all Masses are pretty much the same. We didn't even have children to raise yet, but it didn't take long to realize this wasn't going to last a lifetime.

Naturally we moved on to the Baptist church and attended a few services and even Sunday School. At our first Sunday School class I had to read aloud and I pronounced Gethsemene like Geth-se-mane' (accent on the "mane"). I'm sure that gaff screamed of Bible-illiterate-Catholic. I'll admit this was quite a leap for me and we knew it too wasn't going to last a lifetime.

You know, our parents never said a word about it. Never once did any of them say they were upset or angry or disappointed. I guess they knew we'd figure it out on our own 'cause we have awesome parents like that.

I do remember this one thing. At that time, I was still a student at La. Tech and I worked in the President's Office on the 16th floor of Wyly Tower. I'd often run into our Sunday School teacher in the elevator because he also worked on the 16th floor. He was always real friendly. After we quit attending the weekly lesson he never spoke to me again. I always thought this was an interesting approach and despite my failing memory, I've never forgotten that.

I was young and impressionable then and I wondered if he just wasn't raised right or if something along the way had drawn a line in the sand for him.

We ended up joining the Methodist Church and that worked out. When we moved away from Ruston we still attended a Methodist Church in our new cities. Funny when we moved back to Ruston and began attending that same church, I remember someone coming up to us and saying, all friendly, they hadn't seen us at church in a while. Really? I didn't have the heart/chagrin to tell them we hadn't lived there for the last 5 years.

Have you ever heard of a humanist? Me neither, really. Our Flemish teacher used this word to describe how he approaches life or at least I think that's what he meant. It's not an organization with a building and a budget. There's no weekly get-together and there's no manual.

He also grew up Catholic (born Catholic, says he's Catholic, etc) and he used the analogy that although Sunday is a required day of rest, if a friend or neighbor needs help which requires work, he puts aside the rule book and helps.

I think what he was saying is he doesn't need a manual to tell him what's right from wrong and how to treat another human being.

Perhaps he had awesome parents too.