Ah-men.

Every Christmas Eve I take a great risk to my personal safety and attend Catholic Midnight Mass with my Dad. The risk I'm taking is that one of these years I'm going to burst into flames upon walking through the front doors.

Saying I'm a lapsed Catholic isn't nearly adequate enough. This implies that me not being a good Catholic girl is somehow due to carelessness, as if I left my faith lying around the house somewhere and I can't quite remember where I put it.

One simply doesn't cease being Catholic - it's more of a long, slow recovery process. Recovered Catholics are lucky if all they escape with is a sense of paralyzing guilt and shame. The not so lucky get the guilt and shame and a purveying sense that God is still watching them personally, all of the time.

As God and I have been feuding since 1998, I know I'm being watched and messed with on a regular basis. Should it all turn out to be true and I find myself locked outside of the pearly gates (likely due to some sort of ridiculous turn of events involving a blind date, a tainted cheeseball and a flame-thrower), then God is going to have to step outside so that we can have a very serious conversation -- topics will include why good people die, my lack of metabolism and love life, and if Jesus and Mary are so fantastic then why do they only appear on toast or mildewed ceilings belonging to people in the southern U.S. states.

Every day I add new topics for discussion, but for another year I just wanted to not draw attention to myself by either spontaneously combusting upon entry or having my head spin around while the choir warbled through Angels We Have Heard On High.

Ironically, the choir is always terrible enough to make me take the lord's name in vain at least 72 times before the mass even starts, thereby undoing all the goodwill I hope to buy myself just by showing up.

I try to affect a look of piety, or at the very least, wakefulness. During every Mass the priest asks the congregation to reflect on and ask forgiveness for our sins which always makes me uncomfortable. Having broken at least four commandments on the drive over to the church, I get panicky when I run out out of time to properly reflect let alone beg.

To make things worse, I sin throughout Midnight Mass. Without anything better to do, my mind wanders and somehow it never wanders into thoughts of how I can better help the homeless or if only there was a way I could live with lepers in India. Jesus no.

Having achieved a look I hope will pass as pious I started to think about when the next time I'll see the firefighter might be, and how much fun we can...and Oh. My. God. I'm in church! How sick and twisted can I be?

I try to straighten myself out and pay attention again but then the choir starts warbling which makes me think about suffering which makes me wonder if things will work themselves out with Alex and that's when I know I should just give up and accept the fact that if I was born centuries earlier I would have surely been burned as a witch. And so I feel guilty, and therefore a little less lapsed.

When I was little I took going to church very seriously. I made it as far as taking my first communion, and let me tell you, had I known that was likely going to be the last time in this life I'd be photographed in a white dress and veil I probably would have milked that moment for all it was worth.

I'm not sure when it all changed. I know my most basic personal beliefs are at odds with the doctrine of the Catholic church. I'm pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, pro-me, pro-birth-control, pro-women, pro-married-fire-fighters-and-their-adventurous-wives. By rights, I should have been ex-communicated a long time ago.

Instead, I go to church once a year and it makes my Dad happy. I even take communion while I'm there. (The least the Church can do is provide a snack). Besides, there's nothing wrong with being in a state of holy grace for a few hours a year - God knows I wear it off fast.