In a message dated 10/13/00 10:45:44 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
<< This ties into the Catholic experience thread for me. >>
Although Kakki's post was humorous, adultery ties into my Catholic experience
in a different way.
As a kid, my mother used to tell me stories about movie stars. She'd see
George Montgomery pitching furniture polish and tell me that he used to be
married to Dinah Shore. We'd see Patricia Neal in "The Fountainhead" and I
learned that she had an affair with Gary Cooper. Get to Katherine Hepburn and
Spencer Tracy and I learned that they were "in love," but couldn't get
married because Spencer, (she was on first name basis with all of them as if
she hobnobbed with them everyday), was married to Mrs. Tracy and he was a
staunch Catholic.
Staunch Catholic. Screwed around, (swertagod, my mother's euphemism), the
clash of the two drove me nuts. Didn't the "screwing" negate the "staunch?"
There were other examples as well: the aforementioned Gary Cooper and
Patricia Neal, various movie and book plots. And always, the main character,
male or female, would "screw" and then hold back from getting married because
of this staunchness. Wouldn't get divorced because they could not get
remarried in the church or receive the sacraments. And yet, they continued to
screw. What was with that?
Drove me bananarama to say the least and the priests and nuns could not help
me. If they answered at all, it focused on the "well, if they divorced, they
couldn't remarry in the church," with no answer to "but adultery is a mortal
sin and they are not in a state of grace already."
I couldn't reconcile that one at all and it marked one of the first and
deepest cracks in my belief in the religion. It was years until I had the
maturity to understand that religion, while divinely inspired, is interpreted
and practiced by humans.
MG
