It seems as if some of us are luckier than others. In my own case, I was born into a Catholic family, and as I was later informed, only baptized Catholics are able to enter into Heaven, which happens to be the only place you would want to spend eternity, given the limited options currently being offered to our species. As a child, I occasionally pondered: was it a mere accident of birth, the luck of the draw, like picking the right straw, or was I somehow destined for heaven by virtue of a magical water splashing ritual performed on me, long before I even had a say in the festivities?
I didn’t know the answer to that question, but I was eventually informed that I had been officially baptized Catholic, in the name of the Deities — Father, Son, and Holy Ghost (although the concept of a Holy Ghost never sat quite right with me). Furthermore, and even though I could not remember the alledged event, I did have a baptismal name to prove it, which I would never actually employ, nor was I ever requested to do so, although God is a comedian, so it might be a kind of clubish password to open the final pearlish gate to Catholic Paradise.
Given that glad splash and stellar start, I was sanctified by the unfathomable grace of salvation earned for our species by the gruesome torture and death of the second Deity, who auto-regenerated and now sits in Heaven keeping an eye on me. All I had to do for the rest of my life to pay back my portion of the incurred debt for being born was to just avoid falling out of the state of sanctifying grace (the prerequisite to enter heaven) by committing a mortal sin (such as murder, eating meat on Friday, or masturbating), and that was it — I would be guaranteed a place in heaven forever after. That seemed easy enough — there was nobody I wanted to kill at the time, and as for the other things, well, I didn’t like meat anyway, and puberty was still over the horizon somewhere, so no sweat!
Initially I didn’t give the matter much further thought. Knowing I was safe was apparently sufficient. Nor did the idea of spending eternity surrounded by other Catholics trouble me much at the time, because Catholics were all I knew. I went to a Catholic school, played in a Catholic playground, attended Catholic Church, and wasn’t even aware of how many non-Catholics there were in the world until I heard that there was a public school about a mile away, where all sorts of non-Catholic children went.
To my surprise, I learned that there were actually hundreds of them. Nobody talked about it at the time, but it seems that we were all part of the “Baby Boom” generation which was spawned during the burgeoning prosperity ensuing after World War 2, and non-Catholics were avidly reproducing too, bringing lots of children into the world who would, alas, never be able to enter the gates of heaven. What a sorry state of affairs!
The more I thought about it, the more I began to pity these hopeless people. It just didn’t seem right that they were excluded from heaven, merely because their parents didn’t belong to the One True Religion. Finally, I asked my second-grade nun where the non-Catholics went after they died. She informed me that they either went to hell or else to limbo, if they were really good, like teachers, doctors, or presidents for example.
Limbo, it was explained to me, was essentially like a big waiting room that you could never leave. I imagined people sitting around, reading the same magazines over and over. Maybe they had a Coke machine, and soft piped-in music, like at the dentist office. Well, better than burning in the fires of hell, I figured, but look what they’re missing, what a shame! It wasn’t that I really understood much about heaven, except that souls were supposed to be happy to be there, as opposed to the alternative. Limbo, however, was an indeterminate locale where you could never really be fully happy, but nor could you be really sad (like if you were burning up perpetually). It generally sounded pretty boring, though also strangely poignant. I would have wanted to help those souls, but the rules were the rules, or so I was schooled.
When I finally met some non-Catholic kids at a baseball game, I was careful not to bring up the subject of their unfortunate destiny. Some of my Catholic friends tended to brag about it, but I figured, why rub it in? It was bad enough that they had to live a whole life, only to end up in a perpetual waiting room at best.
I thought about writing to their school, sending a lot of anonymous letters explaining the situation, in hopes that some would read and convert to the true religion. When I mentioned the idea to my parents, however, they advised against it. They suggested I wait until I was a bit older, and had a better handle on the intricacies of theological discourse.
Little did I realize at the time, but this one issue was to become a wedge in my childhood belief structure that would eventually culminate in my renunciation of the whole package. If one pillar of faith began to weaken, a total collapse was inevitable, because for me, it was a matter of all or nothing. The more I began to question the tenets of the system, the more I recognized the partial truths, ambiguities, or outright lies.
As time went on, I was to exchange one belief system for another, until I began to question the value of beliefs altogether, including the secular belief that my country was a bastion of liberty, and a force for truth and justice in the world. That’s all for another story, however. For now, let’s just say that my concept of the so-called afterlife has gone through a few revisions while making my way through this limbo called life on Earth.
Travels in Dreamland 