At sunday school we were shown an illustrated children's book about "the Prodigal son". He was wearing a "dress" so for a while I thought that "prodigal" meant transvestite and that was why he had to leave his family, but in the end they decided to accept him. Ridiculous!

Barbara

when I was about six I remember asking an Adult what Mary did before she was a statue....

anon

when I was little, in the first grade, I thought the nuns weren't human, they were just 'beings' with arms, feet and a head, who wore weird 'hats' and long black dresses. I was tramatized one day when the skirt of one of the nuns was lifted by the wind, SHE HAD LEGS!

Joan

There was a certain drinking fountain at my church that I always drank out of from the time I was a toddler. There was a plaque mounted on the wall next to this drinking fountain that had the Bible verse that said "Whoever drinks this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst again."

I remember when I learned to read, I read that plaque and I thought that the reason I ever got thirsty was BECAUSE I had drank from that drinking fountain. I remember thinking that it was too bad I drank from it before I learned to read-- if I hadn't, I would never get thirsty ever again!

Marie

When my sister was very little, before she could see over the pew in church, she thought that it was actually God speaking during the mass...

~Katie

I used to believe that God lived in the men's room of my childhood church. This was mainly due to my Sunday School teacher telling our class that he lived at our church, and my not being able to find him in any other room. The only room I couldn't enter was the men's room, so I assumed that because I didn't see him anywhere else, that's where he must live. I think I was 6.

Jupiter

When I was very small the Catholic Church used the old LAtin liturgy, and the priest celebrated mass with his back to the congregation. During the consecration, a lot happened. The priest washed his hands, poured some water into a chalice, then he would make the sign of the cross over the chalice, which seemed a sort of stirring motion when seen from behind. A few moments later he opened the tabernacle, and took out a chalice full of already consecrated hosts. Naturally, I thought the tabernacle was a small oven, and the priest had stirred up a batch of communion wafers and baked them on the spot.

Mary

At the end of the mass,the priest says something along the lines of "The Mass is ended...let us go in peace" and everyone says "Thanks be to God".When I was a kid,I didn't realise this was actually part of the mass:I thought it was a spontaneous thing that once the priest said the mass was finished and everyone could go home,they were so happy that they said "Thanks be to God".

Frank

I have no earthly idea why I believed this but when I was a very small child and my parents first started taking me with them to mass, I didn't know the priest was a real person. I thought he was a robot.

Charles Maurer (Pennsylvania)

I used to believe that the ringing of the bells in the Catholic church service were to wake people up.

It seemed very plausible to me. I was bored stiff.

HSB