[that old time religion]

I  was raised Catholic, went to Mass every Sunday until I was too old for my parents to force me to go :P

Mind you, I'm not a frequent churchgoer(despite being godmother to two of my nephews-one officially and one unofficially) but I do do the no meat on Friday thing during Lent and I try to give up something for Lent every year(this time it's chocolate.)Some things are so ingrained in you you can't NOT do them. It never leaves you no matter how old you get.

When I was a kid I had a friend who was Mormon-she lived right across the street from me and I would go over to her house for Family Home Evening(for those not familiar with it Family Home Evening is a Mormon thing-on a set day-usually Monday or Tuesday-the family spends the evening playing games, reading scripture..there's usually some sort of snacks involved, too!)

I definitely found myself wishing that the Catholic Church had something similar-I mean we had CCD which was pretty..dry and boring. I was forced to go to a youth group that was part of the local parish(which was also prep for Confirmation). I went for a while but then rebelled and refused to go after a certain point.

A lot of people have been turned off by the church in the past, which is why Pope Francis is so good for the Catholic Church-he is a reformer, which pisses some old-school Catholics off, but is also why people like me, who are turned off by the Church, LOVE him. He is a very humble man, who says what he thinks, even if(as I said earlier) it pisses some people off. He'll have been Pope 2 years in March and I think it's fair to say that he is already beloved of a lot of people,and if you ask me he reminds me very much of Pope John Paul II. and when history records such things, he will be remembered as one of the greats.

To be honest, I never liked Pope Benedict all that much.. LOVED Pope John Paul II(he was Pope pretty much the whole time I was growing up.)