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

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

When I was a kid, my mom always threw the left over quarters from the past week in to the collection basket. I always thought the preist used them to go play video games at the arcade.

Someone.

when i was a little girl i believed that the veils on a nun's habit were nailed to their heads and that they were all bald underneath it and that they slept in it and never took it off! that is what my brother told me. at religious instructions class i asked a nun if it hurt when they pounded the nails in. she took me aside into a cloak room and took off the veil to reveal her beautiful long hair

annie

In church, I used to believe that after the donations were made, the priest would go outside and hold the plate up, then a light would shine from the sky and beam it up from heaven. Then God would use the money to pay the angels for their services. I was afraid that if we didn't donate enough money, all the angels would go on strike and the Earth would spiral into chaos. I was an odd kid.

A Confused Kid

At my church, about halfway through the mass, everyone will shake hands and say "peace be with you." If you say it real fast, it comes out garbled. For some reason, for years I had this bizarre thought that people were asking what the other person had for breakfast, and the other person almost always responded with Rice Krispies. It was beyond me what cereal had to do with God, but my family still teases me about that to this day.

Kathryn

When my sister and I were about 8 and 10 years old we overheard some adults talking about Martin Luther nailing his thesis to the door. My sister decided to show off at Sunday school and told the teacher about Martin Luther nailing his feces to the Castle Church door. The teacher about wet her pants laughing as did a few of the older kids. We were bewildered until only a short time later when the real meaning of the word was explained.

Anon

I remember being told that priests had a direct line to God. In my head I imagined this to be some sort of microphone which was attached to them .
I often wanted to talk to God so after mass i'd go and stand behind the priest and try to talk to God. I didn't want the priest to hear so i'd go and stand close behind him and whisper very quietly in the hope that the 'God microphone' would pick up my transmission.

confused of Pembrokeshire

I thought they used to make the wafers for communion during the mass and that the oven was at the alter in the front of the church. When the priest would kneel down (which happens often right before the handing out of communion), I thought he was checking the oven to see if the wafers were done. I guess I grew up around too many cooks.

jd

I used to believe a lot of things about church. One thing I used to think was that God literally LIVED in my church, but was invisible when anyone walked in for mass. When no one was in the church, he would eat communion at the altar, read the hymnals, take baths in the baptismal font, and basically live in the church like one would live in a house.

I also used this belief to think that the reason that so many bad things happened in the world because God would sleep on the pews, which are so uncomfortable that anyone who sleeps on them would be cranky in the morning!

Jenny

I had a belief about priests as well-- they had their own homes, which were like mini-churches. I believed for a long time that every Sunday after mass, the priest would take all the leftover communion home and eat it himself. Not only that, but he would also have to say "The Body of Christ... amen" before eating each wafer and "The Blood of Christ... amen" before taking each sip of wine! I thought that was in order to make it last all week and it was the only thing priests ever ate.

Jenny

When I was little, my grandma sang at Sunday mass, so we always sat up front to watch her. At the front was a huge crucifix with a bloody Jesus hanging on it that I thought was really bleeding. I would bring band-aids to church every Sunday for Jesus and leave them on the pew when we left. It took me a long time to figure out why he never used them.

Katchoo

My dad once told me that when the bells rang in church it meant that Jesus noticed some child misbehaving and was getting angry at them. Whenever the bells rang and I was bored or being bad I was convinced that Jesus had noticed that I was not paying attention and was mad at me. So I would immediately sit up and attempt to be on my best behavior. When the bells rang and I knew that I was not misbehaving I always looked around and attempted to find the other child that Jesus was repremanding.

To this day bells still kinda put me on edge.

Anon