Biblical Ignoramus

Plotz, Page 2, Good Book

-On the story of Dinah- "...the tale of Dinah isn't hiding...It is smack in the middle of Genesis, the one book of the Bible even ignoramuses think they know."
                 -I got quite the chuckle out of this line. Having gone to Catholic School I don't recall ever reading this story. It's quite easy for one to think they simply "know" Genesis, even without having read it, simply because so much 'big stuff' happens within it. And in so many ways, the ignoramus part is very true. And I am now officially one of them. I've long known I was, but have gotten away with it because I knew all the major stories and had read and studied more of the Bible than most of my public school friends. But Plotz made me face facts. I am a Biblical ignoramus. Maybe it's because so much of the Bible was thrown at me for so long, I no longer absorbed it after a while. I ignored much of it, able to sail through the umpteen religion classes with answers like God, Mary, saint, Pope, Vatican, Rome, Peter, and the like. Review the notes, do community service, sing in chapel, and dress up on Mass day. A+ methodology right there!


And to enlighten some of y'all on the (my) Catholic school experience:

PRAYER and pledge over the intercom in home room every morning. And prayer again at the end of the day. The Catholic church appoints a passage/verse to every day of the year, so guess what! New passage today...and tomorrow...then another one...Needless to say, they didn't get absorbed very often. And I suppose it didn't help that I was consistently (very consistently) late for almost every day of high school.

So religion class. I went to CCD-I still think it stands for Catholic Catechism Dumb-through 4th grade, the entirety of my public school life. CCD involved the fun Sunday school stuff (flannel boards and the like), with realistic application added where possible, and a snack at every meeting. I remember a few things about CCD: the books we had to fill out, the sterile room in the basement of the church, snacks, being Pontius Pilate in our own rendition of the Crucifixion, and the ridiculously long and agonizing preparation for a sacrament I didn't understand (First Communion). 5th grade saw me at St. Francis Intermediate.

Then junior high. The former-nun (emphasis on former) couldn't answer dogmatic questions, still believed pre-Vatican II teachings, and had us meditate in the music room once a week (which meant having a really great nap). She had left the sisterhood because the vow of lifelong celibacy didn't quite agree with her, and she had a crush on a man named Weldon (like a steak). See where I'm going with this? So being that my Irish heritage seems to be somehow more genetically expressed in myself than others, I fought religion religiously with her. And won most of the time. Hence the mental wall of an impressionable tween.

High school. Started out with a religion teacher just out of college. A religion teacher who actually knew what it meant to have a sense of humor! And had good taste in music! And spoke our teen language! Hallelujah! It began sinking in. I guess there's just something about relating Catholicism to U2 that does it for a person. And the teachers throughout the rest of high school actually knew their stuff, believed it, and knew exactly WHY they believed it. Refreshing indeed. That said, my faith grew exponentially by the end of high school, mainly due to the Search (an intense religious retreat). I heard the parts that I wanted to hear and could apply, and let the others bounce off. I was, after all, a teenager.

So in all of that jumble, many small nuances of the Bible were lost to me, or never taught. I know the big stories and the basics of this complex piece of literature that happens to house the groundwork of my faith. But the basics are just the basics. And I am therefore a Biblical ignoramus.