Church Shopping

So the rule is you are not suppose to talk politics or religion. So this post here is going to be a rule breaker

I grew up Catholic. I went to catechism classes for 11 years. I was baptized, made my first communion and confirmation. My parents took all 3 of us to church every Sunday morning. Well really it was more like D-R-A-G-G-E-D us to church every Sunday. Joey on the other hand grew up with almost no religion in his house. His parents had him baptized and since his Dad's side of the family is Catholic he would watch with jealousy as his cousins got to go to catechism and he didn't.

After I left my parents house and gained some independance and more education I began to question the Catholic Church and never really went back.

Joey and I have lived together now for over 7 years and our religion was not something we discussed until we got pregnant with The Phi. We were obviously not the perfect Catholics. Here we were living in sin with a baby on the way OUT OF WEDLOCK! Aye Dios Mio!

So why did we have The Phi baptized? Well 2 reasons really. Even though I was not the picture perfect Catholic I had been raised in that religion and I felt that it gave me a very strong foundation in just being a good person, period. And reason number 2 was that I wanted my kid to have god-parents. More importantly I wanted her to have Patty and Jovan as god-parents. This is a super special relationship and I know how much I look up to and lean on my god-mothers and I wanted my kid to have this relationship with Patty and Jovan because they are some really GOOD people.

So we baptized The Phi and when it was time we baptized Lou to give her a foundation and just as equally amazing god-parents to shower her with extra love and guidance. And then we never really thought about religion again. Until this school year.

See The Phi goes to a private religious school that is NOT Catholic. It is still Christian and I have loved the way that this school has not only taught her so much academically but it has also given her a loving heart. Then it came time to think about if we were going to send The Phi to catechism for her first communion. We decided that yes we would so naturally we signed her up at the local Catholic church and we thought we were done.

Oh no. Since A mixture of The Phi starting catechism and a personal family need for some faith we went to Sunday mass. We ended up at 3 churches in 3 weeks.

Church #1 Pros:

• very close to home
• baby room where Lou can roam
• same church The Phi was attending cathecism

Church #1 Cons:

• baby room is a balcony and no matter where you sit you can't see
• no stereo system and we could not hear one word of the service
• cry room is also the teenager hang-out room

Church #2 Pros:

• Newly built church
• nice baby room
• same parish as the church where The Phi is attending cathecism

Church #2 Cons:

• baby room is to the right and behind the altar and you just see the back of the priest.
• Speaker system in baby room not working so we couldn't hear anything
• The priest had a very thick accent and when we could hear a word or too we couldn't understand what he was saying. 

Church #3 Pros:

• an amazingly beautiful church
• a state of the art functioning sound system
• a giant video screen where words to all the songs are displayed
• a priest who we could understand
• during the gospel kids between 5-10 are invited into the adjourning chapel to listen to the gospel explained in their terms.

and then after church, in the parking lot was this........

Yes there was a beer truck.

Arts and crafts

BBQ

Games and Rides

We happened to go on the weekend of their big festival. So after I made sure that Joey and The Phi understood that it would not be like this every Sunday. We decided as a family that despite the extra travel time and a little paperwork in switching The Phi's catechism class, we had found a new church.

And our church shopping is done.






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