Childhood misconceptions about Catholicism and what you "thought" they meant. (humorous)

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A confused bird got trapped in our church once, flapping around during some kind of group catechesis for the children. They were all convinced it was the Holy Spirit, since He had been known to take the form of a dove, after all!
 
RE class at primary school: teacher mentions the Virgin Mary. Six-year-old child (me) who has never heard the term before, puts up her hand and asks, “What’s a virgin?”
I recall a lot of humming and hawing at that point: the teacher apparently hadn’t been taught how to answer that in an age-appropriate manner. (A few years later, one of the older boys was going round asking all the girls if they were virgins, and my response was, “I don’t know.” I figured that if Mary was a virgin, maybe it was something out of the ordinary…)

In another RE class, I got her a second time.
“Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus…:”
Hand goes up. “What does “womb” mean?”
Teacher: “Um… I don’t know.” (I kid you not.)
But I figured if it belonged to Mary then it was probably a good thing, so the next prayer I wrote in my RE book included the phrase, “I love your womb.”

Looking back at it as a twenty-year-old, I now boggle at the thought that I was ever that unworldly.
 
Rose71 said:
I got confused by the Monstrance too!

In our church, in the evenings when cars went past with their lights on, it somehow got distorted through one of the windows and cast a really strange, almost octopus-like shaddow that seemed to slip out from behind the statue of St. Peter, move accross the wall and then disappear into the corner:confused:
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I grew up Lutheran, but in my old church, it had a similar effect in the morning. The sun was already shining through the stained glass windows, but a passing car would distort the light. You could see stained glass reflections of what looked like abstract angels all moving in unison towards the altar. So, I always said they looked like angels every time a car went by. 🙂

Anyway, most of my family is (or was - some not praticing much anymore) Catholic, so I had some interesting experiences…

Some things I used to think -

When my great-uncle (or some other Catholic family member) passed away (I might’ve been 6-8 at the time), I decided to kneel on the kneelers because that’s what the rest of the family was doing. They were doing this thing with their hands that looked like they were spinning it around in front of their faces really fast. I also saw a rosary - didn’t know it was a rosary at the time - on my great-uncle’s hands, I thought it had something to do with the crown of thorns. (The rosary was dark brown)

I thought “Catholic Church”, “Baptist Church”, “Methodist Church”, etc were names of actual church buildings. It never occured to me that these were totally different than my Lutheran church.

First time I saw a Holy Water font, I thought it was a water fountain and tried to drink out of it. After all, at my old Lutheran church, when you open the side doors, you can go upstairs to the church, or downstairs to the Sunday School where there was a water fountain at the bottom of the steps. So, naturally all churches had water fountains! 😃

I thought nuns were something done in the 1960s. (Read too much “Madeline”) I didn’t know they were Catholic. I thought it might’ve been some French school thing. I probably thought the Vatican was a building like the US Capitol building and Washington Monument, after all, they both had round buildings, and a long tall thing.

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Come to think of it, on that Madeline cover, when I was a kid, I think I did think they were in Washington DC, and not the Vatican.
 
I was young in the 60’s, but I remember being confused by the confessionals. I thought maybe they were like doll houses for grown-ups.

I taught my daughter that Mary followed Jesus everywhere he went during His ministry, and she accepted this and thought it was pretty cool. She was immensely impressed by such devotion that Mary even followed him when he descended to the dead. I told her I was sure she didn’t, and this confused and deeply troubled her. “Why do we call her ‘Hell Mary’ then?”
 
My 8 year old once asked, "Mommy, why should we be on guard against the Devil’s snores? (snares) St. Michael prayer. Just too cute!

To Jesus through Mary!
 
My Sister, who just started going back to Church with her kids was really embarrassed a few weeks ago as her son, (5 years old), **shouted out loud **during the consecration “Mom, isn’t Jesus dead?”. My sister said she could of crawled under the pew.

I don’t really remember any misconceptions when I was a kid, I am sure if I thought about it hard and long enough I could come up with some.

I do remember however, being petrified of going to confession, and of the nuns while in grade school, that would throw the erasers across the room and hit you in the head with it when you were not listening (i had a few marks of eraser chalk left in my hair many days). And then there was the paddling when you were supposedly bad :eek: .

In high school as a freshman, I walked in the home ec. room after school (it was a cut through to the outside front of the school), and found a senior embraced in a kiss with the home ec teacher, who was a nun :yup:. I remember thinking, uh oh, I am in big trouble. Never thinking they were the ones in trouble. Then they both chased me down the hall, I hid in a closet until the coast was clear. And just thanked God they never recognized who I was.
 
When we sing the Kyrie, my daughter has a tendency not to wait a couple heartbeats after the deacon sings, to respond. So she belts it right out in that silent space. Embarrassing, but very sweet.
 
first communions this morning 10 families, several with preschoolers, and Mass was overlong for some of them, and during the fraction one yelled out, “hey I wanna get outa here!”

Father stays after Mass to pose for pictures and bless religious articles, so children all line up with their rosaries and prayer book. He is very liberal with the holy water, and one little boy was offended that his stuff got all wet. he snatched it away and started wiping it with his tie, and the look he gave Father, well. . .
 
Today is the start of the Archbishop’s Lenten Mission (decided to have it this week so that it didn’t actually interfere with Lent). The archbishop had recorded a speech that was played at the very start of Mass. The tape was played next to the microphone on the altar (you can really hear everything when it’s a Daily Mass!), so it sounded like the Archbishop was right there. There was this 4 year old kid behind me who was leaning up on the kneeler, craning his neck trying to find the Archbishop, and figuring out where he was talking from! 😃 I can only imagine what a 4 year old must’ve been thinking. (the same 4 year old was bored during Holy Communion, and decided to kick the back of my shoes after coming back to the pews while I was kneeling. I could hear his mother in the background… :rotfl: )
 
This thread made me laugh so much 😃
Sadly I can’t remember many of my misconceptions… I know I probably had lots…I know used to think that pastors were priests with farms. 🤷
 
Just remember another one I had. Since I used to go to many Catholic family member’s First Holy Communion and Confirmation (right around Easter), I remember the priests always sprinkled Holy Water at the start of Mass. Up to last year, I thought this was done every week, not just around Easter.
 
such a funny thread!

I was raised evangelical, but I remember when I was 7 or 8 asking my mom how the pope was picked. She told me that all the cardinals got together and picked the pope. So what I imagined was all the red birds migrating together, having a meeting, and then swooping down to a guy on the street, picking him up, and dropping him in the vatican.
 
Jennifer_G said:
I remember the priests always sprinkled Holy Water at the start of Mass. Up to last year, I thought this was done every week, not just around Easter.
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My parish has a big baptismal font (trough, actually) that gets put up for Easter vigil and stays all season long, with a little fountain in it to keep it fresh(er). People are invited to fill their holy water bottles from it. I thought, as a 30+ yr old adult (still a visitor at that point and not yet converted) that this is where they got the holy water supply for the whole year, so I made a fool of myself asking the deacon where they stored it after Easter and how they kept it from souring. . .
 
I found Mass very boring as a kid- thus I thought “Thanks be to God” was like we were saying “Phew thank God that Mass is over!”
 
ChristinaM said:
When I was about 5 I remember asking my dad why they rang the bells at the consecration. He must have been tired of me peppering him with questions, because he told me they were for waking up sleepy little girls. For years and years I honestly believed the bells were to wake up all the people who were asleep. :rolleyes:
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That’s funny. Those bells always reminded me of the Good Humor Man’s truck. Once in awhile I still have that thought when I hear them ring.
 
katielyn05 said:
such a funny thread!

I was raised evangelical, but I remember when I was 7 or 8 asking my mom how the pope was picked. She told me that all the cardinals got together and picked the pope. So what I imagined was all the red birds migrating together, having a meeting, and then swooping down to a guy on the street, picking him up, and dropping him in the vatican.
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Hehehe. That would make a cute kid’s book, methinks.
 
I remember reading stories about how at the Nativity, the cows breathed on the Christ Child to keep him warm in the manger.

Then our class went on a field trip to a dairy and I actually smelled the breath of a cow…

Need I say more ??? LOL 😃
 
I didn’t really have a lot of “misconceptions” about the Faith when I was a kid. My family didn’t really go to church that often and I just didn’t “get” too many things and didn’t care much then. I remember however one thing - the tabernacle at our home parish has the Agnus Dei carved on its front door. I “got it” many many years later, the following is a conversation with my mom in church as I looked back to what my thoughts about church were as a kid:

Me (20 years old): “You know, as a kid I wondered why there’s a dog on the front of the box behind the altar.”
Mom: “It’s a lamb, not a dog, silly!”
 
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