Except A Man Be Born

“Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” (John 3:5-6)

In preparing to write this story of my spiritual journey in, from and back to the Catholic Church, my mind weighed several ways to begin this text. Being a fan of the works of Charles Dickens the first words that came to mind was the opening chapter of “David Copperfield”…”Chapter 1: I am born”. Then being a student of the Bible the verse from John’s Gospel immediately sprang to mind…and I think provides a good outline for what follows. To speak of the spiritual, we must first look at the physical.

I was born in the small upstate New York village of Ilion in the beautiful Mohawk Valley. That’s the town in the picture that accompanies this tome. Being born on December 18, 1952 I was, of course, born in a hospital, not in that house. But that white house in the center of the pic is indeed the house where I grew up, at least to my teen years. The barn, the chicken coops and most of the land in the foreground belonged to our next door neighbor, Mister James Mackin. More about Mister Mackin later, for he bears a part in the influences of the Catholic upbringing of my formative years. Those hills were my playground in which I wandered all day long. Those were simpler times when Moms didn’t have to worry about where their kids were or what might happen to them.

My family was a working class Catholic family. I am the youngest of 5 with an even split between brothers and sisters. Our parents, Mike Bugal Sr and Dorothy, were typical of parents in the 1950’s. Dad worked two jobs or more (depending on the season) to make ends meet for the family. Mom was a full time stay at home Mom…and the best cook in the Mohawk Valley (not just personal opinion. She was instrumental in the success of more than one restaurant… and their eventual failure when she left). I said “depending on the season” because during the winter he was the custodian of Annunciation School,but during the summer he had that responsibility, as well as being the caretaker of Saint Agnes Cemetery, along with running the family business, Mohawk Valley Tree Service.

The Good Influences

My Baptism, First Communion and Confirmation all took place at Annunciation Catholic Church, and I attended Annunciation School from Kindergarten through sixth grade. Before I deal with the reasons why I left the Catholic Church, it wouldn’t be fair not to talk about the positive Catholic influences on my life. The first would be my maternal Grandmother, Mabel Dykeman. She was very much Catholic. Although her advancing years and declining health kept her from attending Mass consistently, she never failed to pray her Rosary every day. I think my love of the Rosary is inherited from her. Another was the aforementioned Mister Mackin. He was our next door neighbor and had a small farm with cows, chickens and fresh veggies he grew in a small garden. I used to go over and help him…feeding the chickens and cows, helping to get the cows in that didn’t respond to his call, as well as helping to cut and bring in the hay field twice a summer. He was also a strong Catholic and we talked about spiritual things quite a bit. It was through him that I was exposed to the missionary story of Doctor Tom Dooley, of whom and by whom several books were written. In some ways, he was the Grandfather I never had since Grandpa George Dykeman had passed away 10 years before my birth. There were probably others, but these two people are in the forefront of my memory as I look back through the years.

Why I left the Church

I grew up in pre-Vatican II Catholicism, which meant that the Masses were all in Latin, the priests and the nuns were very strict (the nuns wielded a ruler like Darth Vader wielded a light saber). Those who were born into a post-Vatican II Church have no concept of how uninteresting all of those looked to a normal (?) child of the middle 1960’s. As I moved from elementary school into public junior high, I slowly began to drift further and further away from the Church. The drift really started before then, as our family began to attend Mass less and less until we were basically Easter/Christmas Catholics.

In my teen years, I began to more or less considered myself to be an agnostic. I was a very cerebral young man and versed enough in philosophy to know that I couldn’t be an atheist, as I still believed that there was a “God” but that He was basically unknowable. As I graduated from high school and left for the Air Force, my spiritual life was about to take an upturn. That will be detailed in the next chapter of my story.