my mum went to a catholic school run by nuns and told me that when she used to think there were three kinds of people - males, females and nuns, because they wore the full on outfits with habits and everything back then, so she never realised they were women. im not sure where she thought priests fitted in...

Alex

When I was in junior high, I was asked to be an acolyte at church. That meant walking behind the pastor and lighting the candles at the start of the service, and then extinguishing them at the end. There was a special robe I got to wear, which meant that after the service, I would follow the pastor to his office where we would hang our robes back up in the closet. He was chatting with me, and taking his robe off (fully clothed underneath, of course). It was the first time the thought crossed my mind that 'Pastor Ed' was a regular person. I was disturbed by the thought that he went home and ate dinner, watched t.v. and yelled at his kids just like everyone else.

Don't get me started on the time when I walked into the church kitchen and saw a big, industrial size bag of wafers from some warehouse store, and realized that they were the 'body of christ' I was given at communion.

Jessica

I was very shy in my 4th grade catholic classroom. One day the teacher was describing the religious feast of pentecost and she asked if anyone knew what this was called. Being extremely shy I would only answer a question when i was one hundred percent convinced i was right. To the shock of my teacher, i raised my hand and proudly blurted out "the holocaust". i dont think anyone else knew what it meant but judging by the "No - God NO!" we all knew it was bad. She never explained it and i always thought twice about answering questions in class after that.

My Ignorance

when I was little I thought that everyone was the same religion.

Anyway I'm Roman Cathiolic, and before Easter we have this thing called Lent, and we don't eat meat on Fridays. One Friday When I was in second grade my best friend started to eat a balongna sandwhich and I nearly tackled her...I was screaming, "What are YOU DOING?? That's a baloney sandwhich! It's meat!" Needless to say she was very confused and freaked out. It turned out she was a Baptist!

Lindsey

My 4th grade daughter recently spent the night with her friend who is a member of the Church of of Latter Day Saints. She then went with their family to church the next day.
Upon returning home the next day, and knowing that her father grew up in this church (not practicing now though) she asked him,
"Daddy, where you do YOU keep your Book of Norman?"

We are bad parents and still haven't told her the correct name.

aviano_2004

i used to think that it was god ringing the church bells... no one told me otherwise...

misty

We never went to church growing up, nor were we religious, but all my friends did, so I heard about God. I always imagined God reading a story, and we were just the characters in his mind. When the book was finished everything just ended, or a new world would be created by a new story with new people. So I assumed that when we die that is it, we no longer exist.

karnin

I grew up Catholic, and there is one part in the Mass when the line "Jesus, Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world" is sung. When I was a little girl, I misheard this. I thought it was either "cents" as in pennies. This made perfect sense to me, because we always passed the offering basket around and put money in it.

Lacy

In Sunday school. we were once taught to recite the phrase "the vicarious atonement of Jesus Christ". Once when it came my turn to repeat that, I couldn't quite think of the word "vicarious". The closest word I could come up with was "vituperous". So I said "the vituperous atonement of Jesus Christ". But I don't know why it should really make a bit of difference what I said then, as I was utterly clueless as to what either "vicarious" or "vituperous" meant.

Marcia

I used to believe that all nuns were men when I was 4 years old.

SS

I used to believe that I was Christian, even though I'm Jewish and I went to a Jewish day school and I speak Hebrew.

Madi

Going to parochial school from 1st-4th grade I used to believe kids who attended public school didn't believe in God. Nevermind that I attended kindergarten in public school.

It wasn't until I attended public school in the 5th grade and I met a kid who I saw in church every Sunday that the belief changed.... I still remember asking him "Hey what are you doing here?!"

Rey

The priests in my catholic church rotated duties weekly, I thought they must be interchangeable robots, programmed with a sermon, and hung up on a wall when done. So the only constant person I saw on sundays was the musical director, -who it was clear to me, must be the head of the roman catholic church (the pope being an Orwellian figurehead) and the musical director was also caretaker of the robots.

James Campbell

I used to believe that if you dropped the Bible all of the words would fall out and if you didn't put them back correctly before you died, you would go to hell.

Mrs B.

I used to think that my parents loved me more than their other children beacuase they named after God. Every week in church we said "Thanks, Peter Go". Imagine my disappointment when I finally realized (age 6 or 7?) that it was "Thanks be to God." Bummer

Peter in Holland

that God lives in the roof of our church and makes electricity to light the chandeliers

M

i used to believe that if you had the panphlet at the start at mass whaen the mass was near the end then the priest would start again

Anon