Catholic Nerd

This is so very true (via)

As I'm sure you have gathered by now, Imaginary Readers, I am somewhat of a nerd (this is an understatement) and I have a propensity to find something that you would think was impossible to nerd out about and then do so, such as PBS and NPR, Astrophysics, Organic Chemistry, and Newspeak, the fictional language for George Orwell's 1984. As I am also sure you know by now, Imaginary Readers, I owe the majority of my education to the Catholic Church, as I attended Catholic school for the entirety of my primary and secondary education, thirteen years in total (K-12) plus two years of pre-school at a local Lutheran church. I'm sure you can see where this is going. If not, I will elucidate (and yes, this was all an elaborate plan to work "elucidate" into a post): the current focus of my nerdy obsession is the Vatican, specifically the history and government of Vatican City and the preceding Papal States.  Why, you ask? I really have no idea.

I should explain that this was not just some random topic that I decided to spend several days reading about for no good reason. For my less than amazing lit class this semester we are required to give two multimedia group presentations on any topic pertaining to the class. We were assigned groups at the beginning of the semester and given dates. You now know as much about the assignment as I do. Anyways, my group of four got whittled down to two after the first three weeks resulted in people dropping the class, and my partner and I decided to do our first presentation on Vatican City, because it was one of the countries the class is looking at the week of our presentation (this upcoming week), and we didn't want to come up with anything more interesting/creative. For my part of this project I decided to do some basic background and the history of Vatican City, which is why I started reading about it yesterday. What I did not anticipate was being sucked down the rabbit hole of Church history, but I probably should have seen it coming.

More like 13 years, came out a gay agnostic, but close enough (via)

One of the main differences between a Catholic and a public education, at least between the schools I attended and the local public schools or the schools my friends attended, was that I was obligated to take religion classes, or, as my high school called them "Theology" classes. These ranged in scope from "Personal Christianity" (I'm still not sure what that means) and "Christianity in the Modern World" (read: social justice) to "Intro to Philosophy" and "Comparative World Religions" (both interesting classes taught by a scary old Christian Brother (sort of like teaching nuns but men, but not priests or monks - ordained but not cloistered) who compared Taoism to the Force from Star Wars). One thing that was a somewhat common theme in such classes, once they realized that they probably shouldn't teach us Scripture or the Catechism every year, was Church history, which I learned decently often, but never got old, simply because there is so much of it. I've always enjoyed Church history, simply because so much of it is either Roman or medieval European history, which I find fascinating to begin with. They only parts I didn't really enjoy was the Renaissance and pretty much everything after that until the 20th century, because really, once shit starts getting modern, I stop caring, history wise. And so, given an excuse to read about Church history once again, without having to take a class on it, I jumped right in where I left off in high school, and remembered why I liked it in the first place: it's a complex and integral part of European and Western history that is often overlooked and folded into European history/politics as a whole, when in fact, it drove quite a bit of said history/politics.

What I realized because of this, is that I'm kind of a Catholic nerd. I don't mean that I'm a nerd who is also Catholic, which is sort of true, but rather, one of the focuses of my nerdiness is the Catholic church. I sometimes forget that not everyone has the background I do, and thus, not everybody knows things about the Church/Catholicism that I consider basic. For example, Catholics are pretty much the only Christians who say the Hail Mary or pray the Rosary or use crucifixes in lieu of crosses, but I always forget that not all Christians are essentially Catholics without the Pope (that pretty much only applies to the Anglicans). I know far too much about the Catholic Church than is probably healthy, especially considering that I don't practice, nor does my family anymore. And I find all of it fascinating. I find the Tradition, the Catechism, the history and politics of the Church, and the specifics of the the Theology really interesting even though I don't really believe any of it. The only part of it I don't really enjoy is Scripture, and I don't know the Bible very well, outside of having read the Gospels and Acts (and Revelation like any good angst middle schooler at a Catholic school) and have a vague sense of where important bits are from. Frankly, I know the history of the Bible better than I know the Bible itself, but that isn't unusual because the Catholics aren't big on actually reading it, and I never had to memorize passages or anything like that.

I am continually amazed by my ability to find random and obscure things to nerd out about, because I never though I would be far more engaged in a relatively unimportant project about the Vatican than any other project or paper I've done this year. I guess I should except that I will always care far too much about the Catholic Church and embrace my inner Catholic nerd, although it feels kind of like I'm giving in to every religion teacher I've ever had and admitting that they're right, this stuff is actually kind of interesting after all.