Why Write About Religion?

My Catholic high school was the kind that you see in old movies. Big brick façade. Nuns ambling about. A 50s-era fallout shelter sign tacked to the side entrance. All set under a cloudy sky.

Our newest religion teacher, Mr. M., had his Master’s degree and sometimes taught at the local university. That made him the most academic person in the religious education program, as far as we students could figure.

The textbook for his class was as old and worn as most other Catholic high school textbooks. We were assigned an exam from the book one day that asked us to list five or six categories of virtue. Kindness was one. Loyalty may have been another. The list grew hazier after that. Was Peace a virtue? Or was it Nonviolence? That sounded too modern…

“Mr. M.,” I said after that class, “Why are we doing this? What does it matter if I can list all of the virtues that the textbook thinks are important? What about other virtues? What about synonyms? Why these six words?”

I have to imagine that I said that in just about the tone that you would expect from a recalcitrant teenager. But it was an important question for me, and it was something that I had asked before in every other religion class: Why? Why? Why?

I wouldn’t even take a Bible citation as an answer. (Those poor nuns.)

Mr. M. didn’t blink though. “How about we have you come after class instead?” He gave me some of Pope John Paul II’s encyclicals and asked me to write essays on them. I still attended class during the day, but my grade shifted to my performance during our theology sessions.

A few weeks in, I broached the topic of other religions. “Every religion says that they are the true religion,” I said, “and any religion can ask their people to accept it on faith. So what’s special about Catholicism? Because I was born into it?” I would have mentioned “implicit bias” if I had known the term at the time.

Mr. M. thought about his answer for a moment. Then he wrote the names of other religions on the blackboard in a big semi circle.

“Every religion has a piece of truth. And we can and should respect them for that,” he said. Then he wrote “Jesus” in the middle of the semicircle. “But only Jesus can lead us to the full truth.”

“…why?” I asked.

“Faith,” he said. (I about threw my hands up at that one.)

Mr. M. was let go after school budget cuts. I hadn’t always agreed with him, but I deeply respected his willingness to engage. Most of my religion classes had stifled questions. His had added more.

Why am I writing about religion now, so many years later?

Growing up in Catholicism, I had been told several times that Judaism is simply Christianity without Christ. (“ianity”?) Like Mr. M.’s big semicircle of religions and cultures, but with “Jesus” scrubbed out with an eraser.

After reading books on Judaism, speaking with rabbis about Judaism, listening to podcasts on Judaism, speaking with Jewish lay leadership, visiting Jewish museums, reading Jewish newspapers, listening to Jewish music, and visiting several Reform synagogues for services, I can say unequivocally that Judaism is not the same thing as Catholicism. (Shocking, I know.)

So what is it then? And if I think back to Mr. M’s big wheel, what is special about it? Why focus on one star in that constellation? Why am I writing about religion?

That’s a lot of questions.

Good thing that Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel once said that “we are closer to God when we are asking questions than when we think we have the answers”.