I found it difficult to understand and accept this concept...

I found it difficult to understand and accept this concept at any time during my upbringing. Later in years as I was growing up, I became more introverted. I felt trapped and alienated in this environment with continued anxiety and depression building in me. I was very unhappy with having to live my life here. I remember crying both inwardly and outwardly in my frustration. I felt I did not ‘belong’ here. I hated where I was, and longed desperately to go ‘home’.

I was living in a “concrete world.” I detested having to pray before statues and I hated the idea of going to the weekly confessional for which I had to tell the priest all the sins that I had committed in the past week. This was done in order to be forgiven by him, so that we would be able to receive the Holy Communion every Sunday morning at Mass.

Holy Communion represented the body of Jesus Christ and we had to be in a pure state of mind before we could take communion, which is a thin white host made from bread. This host represented the body of the Son of God. However, we did not drink the wine - it was only for the Priest performing the Mass at the time.

Later in life, after spending some time with the various Protestant religions, I did learn that the other Christian faiths drank wine at their ceremonies as well however their wine was made of grape juice and had no alcohol in it. This bread and wine were a representation of the body and blood of Jesus Christ, and was meant to remind us that Christ was the Son of God, who had sacrificed his life for us.

He had made our escape from the Jews, and created the ‘real’ religion of God, which we were to follow and live throughout our lives. I had never been taught, nor had I ever heard the word Muslim. I never knew that Islam existed. We were led to believe there were only Christians and Jews born into the world by God and that they were rivals of one another in a sense. Our books were all chosen and programmed in advance for our curriculum.

We studied only what we were given to read by the school and the church for our learning, and the world history we studied was limited to American and British. Being of Italian descent, it was an accepted part of our culture to drink wine with all of our meals from early childhood. It was a part of the food and the procedure at meal times, except for breakfast. The wine was made by all the families in the church and shared with others who came to eat with them.