Catholic – From Us To Them

Finding Identity in Kansas City

For 18 years, Anthony had grown up in Austin, Texas. He recently moved to Kansas City, Missouri to go to the University of Missouri- Kansas City, to get his Bachelor of Arts in Journalism. I am also a student at the University of Missouri- Kansas City. Unlike Anthony, I have lived in Kansas City, Missouri most of my life. I was also born in Texas, and shortly after I was born, we moved to North Carolina for my dad’s job. My dad was unhappy with the job in North Carolina, so we moved to Kansas City, and we couldn’t be happier. Kansas City is such a unique city where you can find a place you belong very easily. Anthony and I have one thing in common, and that is that we were both raised Catholic. The one big difference is that we both had very different experiences with the church.

When I was 4 years old, I was baptized Catholic. I did not get a choice, nor did Anthony. The big difference between our stories is that I went to catholic school for 16 years. I was surrounded by people with the same beliefs as me, and at the beginning of every class we start the class off with a prayer. Anthony did not get this. His parents made him go to Religious education class once a weekend because he went to public school. Anthony then came out to his family as gay when he was around 16 years old. Our faith journeys are very different.

Anthony was born into the Catholic Church; his parents chose his religion for him. He was baptized as a baby and went through the sacraments (baptism, first communion, reconciliation, confirmation). Anthony has always thought of church as being a burden. When he was younger, he never wanted to go to church and, since he went to a public school, his parents made him go to religious education classes and youth group. When Anthony turned 16, he realized he still was not interested in church and decided that his ideas did not align with the Catholic church. Since Anthony was so young, he did not get any say in if he wanted to be a part of the Catholic church or not. When asking Anthony if he wished he got the choice to decide if he wanted to be Catholic or not, he responded by saying, “I would say probably no. Being raised in the Catholic church has opened my eyes to this and is something I don’t really want to be apart of. Even though I might have had a few struggled and I felt a little awkward at times to be part of the church. I think growing up that way really made me realize that I had my own viewpoints separate than my parents and family had,”(3:44). This, for me, was very hard to hear because I was also raised Catholic and went to 16 years of Catholic school. It was heart breaking to hear that Anthony didn’t appreciate Catholicism as much as I do.

Anthony came out as gay in 2015 when he was 16 years old. For Anthony this was hard because he knew that being Catholic and gay was something that was difficult to achieve . A lot of old fashion Catholic’s do not support gays, and Anthony knew this. Anthony knew he had some struggles coming his way. The first people Anthony came out to were his parents. In the interview Anthony said, “My mom was really upset. She started crying and talked about how disadvantaged I was going to be. But my dad could tell. He had an idea and he was more okay with it, I guess you could say. As far as my extended family, I really did not feel like it was necessary because they all lived outside of Texas so I felt like it wouldn’t have made a difference if I came out to them. I really didn’t see a point,” (4:03). Imagine not having your mom not totally on board with your sexuality. That in itself must have been extremely hard. Anthony’s mom since then learned to accept him for who he really is. No one in Anthony’s family knows that he is gay besides his parents and his sister. He isn’t hiding it from his other family he just doesn’t see them and doesn’t find it super important to tell them. In the interview, Anthony said that he waited a while to tell his sister just because they are 15 years apart and he is not that close with her.

I asked Anthony if he would consider himself Catholic and his answer was, “At the moment I do not know. This is something I have struggled with for the pasted few years whenever people ask me what religion I am or if I am Catholic. I just don’t think I should entirely separate myself from the church. I am afraid to do it honestly,”(6:53). Anthony admitted that it is hard being gay and Catholic because he said when he came out, he started to judge the people in his church because he assumed, they were judging him. Anthony now has learned that no one is really judging him and that he is invited and welcomed into his church. Anthony, throughout his life, has struggled being gay. In the interview I asked him how being gay effected his self-image and he said, “I think for a while even after I came out I guess I really didn’t want to be perceived as gay even though I had come out. I just didn’t want to be looked down upon me. I didn’t want people to see me and be like that person is gay. I didn’t have a problem with being gay, I was just afraid of the perception people would have of me. I was afraid people would look less of me or they wouldn’t want to be friends with me because I was gay,”(2:30). This interview was so interesting to me because I have never had to experience wondering if I was accepted in my church or not. I have always just thought I was loved and accepted by my church community. Anthony is a very strong person to have to question whether or not he is accepted at such a young age. Since getting to college, Anthony has realized that he does not get treated differently because of his sexuality. He feels like he is accepted and welcomed at the University of Missouri- Kansas City.

The Persecution

Religion can be found at any point in history and can either bring people together or break them apart. In history, we can see that millions of people gave up their lives because of their faith. Religion can be a complicated topic, but it can also be a topic that brings people together. At one point in time, people used the Church to hide behind it. There was only one time where the Catholic Church rebelled against the Nazis. Hitler wanted to get rid of Jews and people with disabilities. Nazis tried to find the best way to kill a human being. That is when they began to kill people with autism. Morphine was being injected into their bloodstream and they just slowly started to die. The Catholic Church rebelled against this and, eventually, the Nazis found different methods to end someone’s life. That is when the real destruction began. Millions of people were just slaughtered by the Nazis. Religion can be a difficult topic to talk about because of everything that has happened around religion. People don’t think about this, but your religion can determine your future unless we change that.

The person I decided to interview wanted to be left unknown, so her nickname will be eight. Eight was born in Vietnam and is 100% Vietnamese. “I moved here when I was 5 with my family. My dad died when I was a month old, and my mom got remarried when I was like 4,”(00:11). Her mother wanted to move to the United States to give her and her siblings a better life than she has had in Vietnam. Eight’s stepdad was an immigrant, but he was able to receive his citizenship. That is how Eight and her family were able to get their citizenship and come to the United States. One of the hardest points in her life was losing her father. If her father was still alive, then she would have had a different life and she probably wouldn’t have had her daughter. “I have been through a lot. I really have. I am way older than anyone in my classes because I took two years as a gap year after high school. I didn’t really like that because people my age or people I used to go to high school with that now come here aren’t in classes that I am in. My old friends from high school are all in a different time schedule, and now I don’t get to see them as often. It was funny because while I was in high school, I felt like I was younger than everybody else and now I am older than everyone else [laughs],”(22:27).

Eight believes in religion but “I don’t put a label on anything,”(14:00). Eight’s mother will be known as Maria. Her mother wanted Eight to become part of the Catholic Church. After her first husband had died, Maria wasn’t sure what was going to happen. A couple of years later, she became a Catholic to get accepted into her new husband’s family. After Maria had remarried, her husband decided to try to give Eight’s family citizenship in the United States. Eight wasn’t sure about what religion she believed in at that point. Maria and her husband would try to push her into Church School, but Maria didn’t have any idea of what religion was. That is when she began to dislike all types of religion. Maria wanted her to go to Church School on Sundays for five hours, and I just thought that was just too much for a little kid. The topic of religion can be hard to explain, and it can be interpreted in many ways, good and bad. As time went on, she slowly stopped believing in God. Eight had completely closed God out when she was 16 years old. There were times where Eight felt like she was never left alone, at any point in time in her life.

Eight’s mother wanted to find new opportunities for her kids, and to be able to provide for her kids. Eight and her family didn’t have enough money to buy a house, so they had to move around a couple of times. Throughout Eight’s life, elementary school was the most difficult time. She wasn’t able to live the “normal life” everyone else had. When there was any type of event at school, no one was there for her. She remembers when it was Valentine’s Day and her school had an event. Maria and her husband were supposed to come to the party, but her parents showed up. Her parents were always working and never had time for her. During high school, she began to have a better relationship with her step-father. During this time, it was very difficult for her to communicate with her parents. It was even harder when it came to talking about religion. As time went by, Maria and her husband began to understand her. That is when Maria realized that she was the one that was wrong the whole time. Eight’s relationship with her parents has gotten better and she tries to keep an open relationship with her parents now.

After Eight’s high school graduation, she received a weird feeling in her stomach. The feeling was something unexplainable. Eight went out to eat McDonald’s with a friend after graduation. They both started eating and driving around the neighborhood they were in. After a while, they realized that they had gotten lost. Eight kept driving, hoping that they would see something that was familiar to them. At a stop light, they realized where they had been the whole time. They were just a few blocks away from her high school. They both knew exactly where they were. Eight said, “I felt a spiritual feeling that I couldn’t explain at all,”(14:32). The rest of the night, they had seen tons of nice cars, and she felt that spiritual feeling again. Eight and her friend both had the same feeling. They both felt like they were in the presence of God himself. While she was being pushed to become a Catholic, she began to turn her head towards Christianity. At that time, she believed more in Christianity then Catholicism. Eight argues that everything has a label now. I actually agree with her on this point. There are people that agree with certain aspects of religion, but then there are people that don’t agree with something specific about a religion. One thing that I never understood was the Holy Trinity. God, Jesus, and Mary are known as the Holy Trinity. It is said that God, Jesus, and Mary are all one person. That is something specific that I don’t believe in my Catholic religion. There are just some things in different religions that people don’t believe in. Eight said, “I feel like I believe a little bit of each religion and it’s not all one yet. I am still trying to figure all that out,”(16:22). I couldn’t agree with her more.

Millions of Jews were being persecuted for their spiritual beliefs. Jews fled or hid because their lives were on the line. Hitler specifically targeted Jews and wanted them all killed. Just like Eight, Jews just wanted to live their normal everyday life, and not be persecuted for their beliefs. Maria kept insisting that Eight needed to be Catholic and nothing else. Maria was losing her daughter over religion. Anyone should have the rights to have faith in what they believe. No one really knows why Hitler had so much hated for the Jews. Jews were basically slaves to the Germans. They had to do everything that was told to them. Eight was forced to believe in the Catholic Church by her mother. Eight has the right to believe what she wants, just like the Jews should have been able to believe in what they believed in. I believe that God has to do with various things that happen in our lives. I ask myself why God put so many Jews’ lives in Hitler’s hands, but I guess that is how it is. Eight believes in God and so do I. Eight is now living a better life and the situation with her stepdad and mother has improved. She is getting better at opening up with her parents. Everyone could learn something about Eights story. People could see the real-life problems people face. Everyone deserves to be able to believe in what they want and not be persecuted for it.

Religion in the Midwest

I grew up in the suburban Midwest just outside of Kansas City. I went to school, played sports, had friends, and just about any other thing you could imagine a typical American kid doing during their childhood. I learned about people from all over the world and the kind of differences they had compared to me, being anything from their race or religion, to their diet and health. Being raised as a Christian with the usual set of morals and principles, I was taught to respect all people no matter how different they are from me and it became a very normal thing for me to do. Since I have grown up, I have met many people from around the world and their differences are what makes them unique and special. So, imagine my surprise when I learned about a boy named Jimmy, who grew up just a few hours away from me, that was discriminated and harassed for being Catholic.

Photo by Pixabay from Pexels . All rights reserved.

In my Anchor 214 class, we are learning about Nazi-occupied Europe and the Holocaust. My professors challenged us to find an individual who had experienced hardships due to their differences and see if we can relate the modern story to what the victims of the Holocaust might have felt. This is when I met Jimmy Higgins. Jimmy is a freshman at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, where he is majoring in jazz performance. He grew up in Wichita, Kansas and went to a Catholic grade and middle school. During high school, he transferred to a public school for an opportunity at the music program. This is where his trouble began.

Jimmy is from a humble mid-western family, he is the oldest of a large family, and the only child to attend public high school. At the beginning of our interview, Jimmy talks about the differences between Catholic and public school, which as someone who attended public schooling my entire life, sounded different and surprising (5:16). Jimmy says, “We had uniforms so there was, in that regard there was sort of equalization of people.” This really painted a picture for me about the kind of environment that he was in. I experienced the same uniformity in the military and blended in with everybody else, making it hard to actually determine anything about me personally without talking to me, which also allows for a less judgmental environment due to people all looking the same (12:25). Hearing about this made me think of my childhood experience in school and how everybody had their own clothes and style, making it very easy to pick out different economic and social classes based on the quality of people’s dress.

Jimmy mentions that it was a very new concept to him that the way someone dresses is not a good indicator of who they are as a person. His experience during his first year of high school really opened his eyes to how people interact outside of his normal catholic environment (10:00). As he begins his assimilation into his new school Jimmy talks about the stereotype of Catholic guilt and how he felt about himself as he was changing. He says, “…as most people are familiar with there’s that Catholic guilt, you know. Um, so I won’t say I’m more cognoscente of my decisions but, I am definitely, the morals and values I grew up with were shaped by the Catholic church.” (15:30) As someone who has experienced guilt, as almost every person, this gave me a different perspective, and the best scenario I could imagine would be feeling guilty for just being my normal everyday self and I can help but feel how anxiety-inducing it could feel.

During Jimmy’s first year in his new school, he talks about how he, “…was in IB as a freshman, International Baccalaureate…”, and on a good track for his musical career and education which he states by saying, “I didn’t feel comfortable being there, it was the right place to be academically and musically, but it was very hard to make friends.” (25:47) The school had many performances and field trips to different locations and cities to play music. Jimmy says, “I had a fellow student who was very outspoken and constantly attacked me and bullied me for my beliefs. He kept bringing up the sex scandals of the Catholic church. That was, that was the really tough cause I was accused of allowing child molesters and attacked constantly.” He talks about how he was ostracized from a group of people that were just like him, the only difference was his religion. I have never had to experience anything like this and it was really shocking to me that someone who is Catholic that grew up in an upper-middle-class area did. Nonetheless, Jimmy went on to explain that it took a while for his fellow classmates to realize that he didn’t actually fit a normal Catholic stereotype and that he was just a normal person like them.

During my time in Anchor 214, we have read and watched many stories that tell of the persecution and treatment of the Jews during WWII. Maus by Art Spiegelman, The Butcher’s Tale by Helmut Smith – these are just a couple of examples that illustrate what it was like to have a difference that was hated by a mass group of people. The punishment and torture that they received for their religion is unimaginable, and for most people unfathomable, and seeing that there are still cases of this same type of discrimination and persecution of people who are different has really opened my eyes to the people around me every day. Jimmy’s story is just a very small example of what goes on in the modern world. People are still treated differently, and sometimes violently, just for being a different skin color, having a different religion, or even just having a different sexual preference, things that carry absolutely zero weight or consequence in any other person’s life.

Photo by Kai Pilger from Pexels, All rights reserved.

This interview has really made me sit down and look at my life from a different perspective. It has made me question a lot of circumstances and situations that I have been in and made me wonder if things have happened for a reason or did I just get lucky. There are so many things in our lives and in the world that we have zero control of. What race we are born into, who our parents are, where we live, nobody gets to pick these and we all just have to do our best to survive and live our lives. I think that in our modern society that this is a very crucial viewpoint that a lot of people tend to overlook and don’t give much thought. It is my belief that humans are inherently tribal and tend to have an “us vs. them” mentality, leading to segregation and prejudice towards people that are just trying to live their lives, just like us every day. We feel threatened by outsiders in fear that they will change our lives and try to manipulate our beliefs or culture. I hope that in time we can see who we are objectively and learn that this resentment and violence that we harbor for each other is not only harmful but primitive and childish and that we can move past it once and for all.