Journal #9 Organized Religion

Organized Religion? What am I supposed to write about? Ummm, I am Catholic. I go to a Catholic church. We believe in God. We believe in the Bible and that Jesus was resurrected from the dead so that our sins could be forgiven and so that we could go to heaven. That is pretty much the base of our religion. I do not know pretty much anything about any other religion. Except for that weird "religion" that just believes in science stuff. Whatever religion Tom Cruise is, that is what I am talking about.

So an hour at church goes as follows:

We walk in and bless ourselves with holy water with our right hand doing the sign of the cross. Then before we get into our pew we genuflect. Genuflecting is getting down on your right knee and doing the sign of the cross again. Then you sit in your pew until the music starts. When the music starts everyone stands up and the priests and alter boys/girls walk down the aisle. One priest is holding the Bible at the level of his head, and one alter boy/girl is carrying a pole with Jesus on the cross at the top.

The priests and alter boys/girls stop before the go on the alter and they bow. Then there is an introduction thing then a first reading then a second reading then a reading from the Bible then the priest says some story they made up. In between a bunch of these the choir sings some pretty boring songs. At some churches the songs are cool, but my church is super boring. At some point we all kneel. Then we finally get communion. Then mass is over.

I guess some of the main points of the Catholic church today are to help other people. Obviously. We have fundraisers to help people in 3rd world countries. We try to make our church better too. We pretty much just do things to help the community.