This is J. Colin’s public history with the Catholic Church. This is what happened to his faith.–Hello, my name is Colin, and I am a Catholic. I wear this traditional, though modified, 12-step greeting as a badge of honor.I grew up Catholic, in a large extended Catholic family. My maternal grandparents were from Hungary, and my mother is first-generation Canadian. The church my grandparents and my mother attended, long before I was born, had the tradition of “selling” their pews. Each family had to register with the parish and agree to pay its weekly contribution. If the family members fell behind in their contributions, when they showed up on Sunday for mass, their pew was locked, and they could not sit there.

Source: Pope Francis, Why Am I Confined to the Back Pews of My Church? | J. Colin Collette