A Prayer For Owen Meany Analysis

In A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving expresses Owen Meany in a certain way in order to portray his hatred for the Catholic Church for his personal reasons. In contradiction, later in the novel Owen remarks, “ ‘I DIDN’T SAY ANYONE DID IT ‘WELL,’ SIR--I SAID THE CATHOLICS DID IT ‘BETTER’; THEY DO IT BEST’ “ in order to show that he agreed for once with the Catholic Church (Irving 594). Though my situation is not the same as Owen’s, we would both agree religion holds the largest weights in our lives. When my parents got married, they agreed on everything except religion. My mother grew up in the Protestant Church, First Covenant Church to be exact. My father spent all of his life in the Catholic Church. Both religions focus their motives on

“Will quit. He’s gone” she remarked. Will, our youth pastor of 18 years at First Covenant Church, the person who led me to my strongest faith, was gone. We all thought he resigned because he had been there for 18 years and desired a change in career. Boy, were we wrong. Two weeks later, it was revealed to the whole congregation that Will really did not want to resign. He was forced to resign by our church’s Lead Team. My congregation took this news badly. People started turning on each other, blaming other members and leaving our tight knit congregation in search for a less complicated church. I started to lose all hope in my church. I questioned my faith in so many aspects; I even wondered if there was a God out there. If there really was a God, I thought he would protect my church from all destruction. After my youth pastor left, then our pastor made it even harder for our youth pastor to find a job. Later that month, our Lead Team found that he was also committing a crime that could shatter his career, so in order to not lose face, he left quietly. After that mess, we were a broken church who had lost more than 200 members and neither had a youth pastor nor a pastor. From then on, I believed that the Catholic Church was right. The Catholics, no matter the tragedy or destruction, stayed a