I've had a tumultuous relationship with God since my late single-digits.

As a young child I remember the joys of Sunday; perhaps one thousand feet from my home was a stunning piece of architecture where my grandfather, my brother and I would walk for 10:00 mass. I still regard those as some of my happiest memories from childhood. The beautiful building that let me in for no good reason, unbelievable stained glass,the wonderful incense aromas, Latin, Polish and English in one-and-a-half hours, all this talk about love and the good things we should do to each other. It inspired me to learn the name of every church in town by sight. At five I considered becoming a priest.

On one of these trips to church with my Aunt Anna when I was six I was given an album of Van Cliburn playing Chopin. I listened to the Ab "Heroic" Polonaise about five hundred times before I broke the record. I still intertwine the two entities in memory, and the piece still touches something way down inside that gets me blubberingly and uselessly happy.

I'm not sure exactly when this all changed, but I am only now coming to realize how it changed and what it has become. I know as I grew older and attended public school my fellow parishioners were not-so-fellowly as they used to be. I could understand the sermons more and more and the priests sounded peculiarly like that guy on TV, what with his pledge-driving and all. One sermon used three boxes of laundry detergent in an attempt to campaign for what God washes his clothes with. Believe it or not, God washes with Cheer. He has boycotted Tide and Gain.

I began to search for the answers myself- without a guide, naturally, but is there any other way? The bible is a scary fucking book to a kid of 9. It's a highly contradictory tome, with some beautiful stories and ideas and some really Moroccan-Leather-Tanning-Works-dirty stuff. Concurrently being a science geek as well I found that my faith and my reason were completely divergent.

I'm embarrassed to reveal how The Name of the Rose came to be my favorite book of all time. I saw the movie. I was eleven. The murder mystery aspect was enticing, but the implications against the organized church were astounding to me. Brian Dennehy presented it on The Movie Channel and liked the book very much. I saw him as oozing brains and wisdom, so I read the book. My relationship with the church was never the same. How dare you hold information! All people have the right to know all things that affect all others! I've since read the book four more times and I pull something different out of it at each sitting but at that time that's what it told me.

Father Joe didn't want to hear a fuckin' word about it. "The avarice that men display," he said, "is no more evident than in intellectualism for that must necessarily unseat God." So, I got Confirmed and got the hell out. Perhaps I confused the Church with God for a long time, and I hope there is some redemption in that.

But when assholes like this start running their mouth off I have to wonder if I should call myself "Catholike."