Like I said, I traveled to many holy sites in Europe and took my children with me. I could likely say that I may have visited more Catholic churches in Europe than JPII! We were in the very first audience of JPII which was quite by accident. I'd purchased our pilgrimage tickets before PVI and JPI died. That was a holy concidence! I shook JPII's hand as he walked down the aisle, and somewhere in a box in my attic, I have the photo of my family taken with JPII. After visiting all the holy places, after being touched and blessed by JPII, after believing as fiercely as I did in christianity, I still could not reconcile everything that I had believed and experienced to give me the confirmation to continue to believe that Jesus had truly died for me! It just seemed so surreal to actually be in St. Peter's in the flesh!
The doubt first came while in St. Peter's. It was the most magnificant place I've ever seen. I didn't understand my feelings and sensations at the time -- that would come years later. There was an overwhelming sensation of evil to the point of where my skin crawled. Among all that glitter and gold, and people were still starving in the world. All the wealth the Church held, and people were still dying in the world from disease. And, I observed the human behaviors of pilgrims from other countries, and it made me sad. All the pushing, shoving, cursing, trampling over little children to get to St. Peter's statue to kiss his foot! There was something very Pagan about St. Peter's Basilica, and this was upsetting to me. I soon realized that everything I had been taught by my church was nothing but a cover-up for Paganism. Not that I believed that there was something wrong with Paganism, but I had a hard time separating the two in my mind. Roman gods were everywhere. Mithras legends were everywhere. Where was the truth to be found if it wasn't what I had already learned from christianity? Did I dare question it? And, of course, I did.
I asked a priest in St. Peter's about the crucifixion, and he told me I shouldn't be questioning such things. In France, I talked to a priest about the influence of Mary Magdalen. And back in Germany, I asked my priest questions regarding the resurrection. He simply referred me to the Christian library to study about whatever it was I needed to learn. Back in the USA, I asked my parish priest to explain the "missing link" to me. My quest for knowledge of my church ended there when he told me, "women shouldn't be asking such questions." Now, for the past 20 years, I've been doing my own research and, not surprisingly, I have finally come to know what I believe to be the truth. It was a personal loss, and I grieved for my loss because I had given it my all, and it was the most important part of my life. Then it was gone, but I survived, and now I understand that humans have a need to believe in something more powerful than they are -- a safety net for all our human frailities. As long as we delegate our own mortality to a god who isn't there, we live falsely in the denial of our own existence. We are all we have. There is nothing greater.