Immaculate Misconceptions

By Stephen Schrum

Immaculate Misconceptions is an amusing (and sometimes serious) memoir of life growing up in Catholic grade school and high school. Why is it titled "Immaculate Misconceptions?" This designation applies to the simplistic explanations, half-truths, canonical misinterpretations, and outright disinformation received from the mouths of the author’s teachers. He entered Catholic grade school as a tabula rasa, a blank slate, upon which the nuns and priests would inscribe their version of the world on his mind. Yet, many of those placed in the role of guide were in fact off their rockers! In spite of getting strange advice from nuns on sex and being discouraged from singing in public, those experiences led the author on the path to become who he is today—a college professor guiding new young minds to find their paths.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stephen Schrum
• Release date: Mar 12, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301536917

Stephen Schrum

Stephen A. Schrum, PhD, is a theatre director, performance poet, playwright, novelist, graphic novelist, virtual worlds theatre director, and Steampunk maker. Notable past RL (real life) productions include: Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (set in 1995) and Macbeth (performed in a cyberpunk style); Moliere’s The Miser (done in period costume) and The Misanthrope (set in the era of Disco); Sarah Kane’s 4:48 Psychosis (utilizing both the Japanese dance-drama form Butoh and hallucinatory soundscapes that Schrum created). With the research area of “The Perception of Presence in Virtual Performance,” he has directed virtual productions of The Bacchae and Prometheus Bound in Second Life (SL). He began teaching with technology in 1993, and since then has been writing and presenting on the topic, including editing the book, Theatre in Cyberspace: Issues of Teaching, Acting and Directing (2000). More recently he has turned his attention to Transhumanism, with a side-detour into Steampunk. Stephen is also interested digital filmmaking; check out his work on his youtube channel.

Book preview

IMMACULATE MISCONCEPTIONS

Tales from Catholic School

By Stephen A. Schrum

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 Stephen A. Schrum

Previous version

Copyright 2008 Stephen A. Schrum

Cover art copyright 2008 Meghan Moran

Lyrics from American Pie copyright 1971 Don McLean.

Quotations from the Baltimore Catechism taken from

Connell, Rev. Francis J., The New Confraternity Edition Revised Baltimore Catechism,

No. 3 (New York: Benziger brothers, Inc., 1954).

Discover other titles by Stephen A. Schrum at:

https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/musofyr

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Acknowledgments

The creation of this book has been an ongoing process for a number of years. I would like to thank the following people for listening to the stories and giving me the encouragement to keep going with the work:

My wife, Dianna Bourke, who listened to these stories many, many times in various versions;

Jeremy dePrisco, who wrote music for the performances, and who even wore a nun costume to perform with me;

Meghan Moran for her wonderful graphics work, as always;

Audra Hearity dePrisco, who dressed as a schoolgirl to serve as box office person for our live performances in 2006;

Jeannie Dalporto and others who attended the first staged reading, and made comments and suggestions;

The audiences who attended the live performances and sent comments for the web page;

And to all the people mentioned in the book and performance, for being crazy or sane or just themselves, to give me the fodder to create this.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Introduction

Prelude: Public Kindergarten

First Grade

Second Grade

Baltimore Catechism

Lay Teachers

Fourth Grade Sing

Sixth Grade Bestiality

Sixth Grade, Sixth Commandment

Why Misconceptions?

Missionary Work

Other Random Grade School Events

Seventh and Eighth Grade

High School: Ay, Yi, American Pie

Marriage Class

A New Direction

Now: Changes

Book Numbers

Appointment With The Nurse

The High School Reunion

Postscript To Graduation

Conclusion/Ending #1

Ending #2

Ending #3

Afterword

Foreword to

Immaculate Misconceptions

(2008)

To amuse people with my experiences in Catholic school, I would routinely tell two stories, about why I don’t sing in public and about the sex advice the sixth grade nun gave us. After awhile I decided to write them down. And when I had done so, I remembered other stories, unearthed from my memory. Shortly thereafter I realized I had enough stories for a monologue performance, or a short book. Or perhaps both.

This current form of IM comes after a few years of rewriting and several of performing. The first true performance occurred in June 2006 in the Ferguson Theater on the Pitt Greensburg campus, with Jeremy dePrisco providing original music. We reprised the performance again in October of that year, and then brought it the online virtual world of Second Life® in the summer of 2008.

People often wonder if personal stories such as those found in IM are true. They are. While in very recent years I have been heard to actually sing in public and also have registered with an established political party for the first time in my political life, the rest remains as true as our human memories can make them. Since I recently performed several of these stories for people I went to grade school with, who then responded with recognition, laughter and more information, I consider my recollections pretty accurate.

Another Foreword From Another Time

(19XX?)

I look around at the people in the world, and I see many problems with religion. Some people have too much, to the exclusion of what others of us may term reality; some have no religion; and some have rejected religious beliefs and have turned their back on the whole idea. There are still others who adhere to a form of religion that, though they call themselves Christians, is so far beyond anything Christ had in mind, He'd be spinning in his tomb if He was still there.

The presentation of these stories is my attempt to try and make sense out of my own personal response to religion, in a time of my mid-life crisis.

I have entitled the work Immaculate Misconceptions because often, in my experience with religion, I have had problems understanding doctrine or dogma, not because my own limited intelligence has been unable to grasp the cosmic and metaphysical questions that plague humankind, but because I was taught my religion by clergy and religious who in earlier centuries would either have been proclaimed as saints or declared insane. The line