I have a strange religious life. I was raised catholic in a church, that was from what I've surmised from other catholic friends, more protestant than catholic. The Marist priests who ministered at my church were college educated and intelligent, and preached mind boggling, serious half an hour to an hour sermons every Sunday. They sermonized about how to still have faith and believe in God and still live your life. They preached sermons that were complicated, and for people who were well educated. In the Sunday catechism that I attended, we read the bible and played "Bible Hunt", things that my other catholic friends never did in their Sunday schools. My catholic priests stressed that bible reading was important to religious life, and talked every Sunday about we should read the bible every day.

When I stared attending catholic services in my adult life in California, I was shocked at how different the service was from what I remembered as a child and a teenager. The priests either didn't preach, or when they did preach it was awful. They didn't talk about why it was important to have faith and believe in God. They didn't talk about the difficulty of having faith in today's world. Instead, the catholic priests at the churches I attended in San Francisco preached simple sermons like we were all 7 years old and living in third world countries, who didn't have to wrestle with our faiths. It was so disappointing.

When I started to attended protestant churches, I felt more at home. The ministers reminded me of my childhood catholic priests. They emphasized the bible and its importance to christian life. And most importantly, they had long sermons about why have faith and belive in God in today's world, just like my childhood catholic priests.

But now, my protestant church is becoming more catholic. For the Lenten season, they announced that there will be a Thursday class on personal confession. How catholic, personal confession. I'm going to attend the class just to see what they have to say about "personal confession", which I consider a "catholic concept". Then, they're going to suggest that the congregation find a "confessor" during Lenten week, who I assume will be someone you will confess all your sins too. And the minister mentioned a confessor is a "priest, a minister, a therapist, or a friend". I think he was actually suggesting you could go to a priest and confess your sins. What a trip. I'll have to get clarification if he was really suggesting going to a priest.

Many in the congregation are like me, cradle catholics. In fact, my church is made of all people from various denominations. There's definitely a southern baptist group, and I know there's methodists, episcopalians, and I think a few jewish people as well. Is that where theh priest reference came in?

It's weird how I attended a catholic church, which was kind of like a protestant church, and now I'm attending a protestant church, that's now adopting catholic type rituals. They even play catholic monk music and gregorian chants during the Wednesday prayer service. Talk about me feeling right at home.