I am by no means a devout Catholic. By definition, maybe: I go to a Catholic University, pray every night, attend mass every Sunday evening, and sing in my school's choir. But I am catholic enough to know that these things by themselves do not mean anything. Religion, to me, is about knowing God and following him in your life, which not only means praying, reading the Bible, and doing good works, but also accepting your life as God has planned it and truly understanding the meaning of "everything happens for a reason".

The whole trusting God thing has never come easy to me, and I definitely am not there yet, as shown by my recent existential crisis I wrote about last week. But not fully trusting God is not the only reason I consider myself a not-so-devout-catholic. I have endless qualms about the Catholic Church and don't necessarily ascribe to its policies on abortion, gay marriage, or the whole women-not-being-able-to-be-priests thing. In my opinion that is a load of crap. But, I digress. I'll save those qualms for another odyssey article.