There is nothing stronger than the power of good old-fashioned Catholic guilt. I understand that most people think love is the most powerful abstract idea. But I’d argue that more people who go to church every Sunday are driven by guilt rather than love. And ever since I could remember, I felt a pressing fear of Jesus.
2 Peter 3:10
But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.
To a six-year-old, that meant once Jesus returned, the world ended. And I still had an entire life to live. Every Easter service, I would hold my breath and pray that Jesus didn’t come bursting in through the stained-glass windows. I wanted to at least make it to high school and drive a car before he came back and ended the world.
Realistically, I should have been reassured that I would be okay should Jesus decide that 2004 was a good year to come back. Who knows, maybe the Red Sox breaking their world series curse was a sign of the second coming. Whatever the reason, at six I hadn’t broken any major sins that would bar me from the gates of heaven.
At least, I didn’t think so, because when I took on the daunting task of my first confession, I was reminded that Catholic children aren’t protected. Before we can even hold our heads up, we are riddled with sin.
It was a fun journey down to the lower chapel. We followed our teacher behind the altar, past the armoire that held the priest’s vestments, down the winding stairs, and across the god-awful yellow carpet. There were two confession boxes where second-graders were being herded in to talk to a priest. My teacher reminded us to be honest and I trusted the priest to know that I was a child and not a forty-year-old adulterer/gambler/alcoholic/abuser who needed some religious cleansing.
I entered the room and found I was not afforded the luxury of a screen and instead I sat right across from the ancient priest who I had never had the displeasure of meeting before.
Act of Contrition
My God, I am sorry for my sins with all my heart. In choosing to do wrong and failing to do good, I have sinned against you whom I should love above all things.
I firmly intend, with your help, to do penance, to sin no more, and to avoid whatever leads me to sin.
I read the prayer off the piece of paper taped to the wall, not really sure what the words meant. And when I couldn’t think of anything particularly egregious that I’d done in my short life, I became shy and clammed up.
“Do you think you’re a perfect angel?” The priest asked when it was becoming clear I wasn’t going to fess up to anything.
For a brief moment, I was relieved. This guy wasn’t so bad and I had been called an angel before by my grandparents, so I nodded with a smile.
“No.” He simply chuckled and shook his head. “No, you’re not.”
My smile disappeared. I remained quiet as I left the confessional and went to kneel at the altar.
Hail Mary…full of grace…the lord is with thee…
Still, I maintained my faith until I was about to enter middle school. But when my guinea pig passed away, I was starting to rethink the intricacies of the afterlife. And when the priest visited our catechism class, held every Tuesday night, I thought I had a good question.
“My guinea pig just died; will he go to heaven?”
“No, animals don’t have souls,” he answered without a lick of sympathy in his voice, “You need a soul to be accepted into heaven.”
I lowered my hand, lesson learned. I wasn’t expecting such a blunt answer. I know it’s not ethical for priests to lie, but it wouldn’t be the first time one had and it might’ve preserved my faith for a few more years.
I became confused about the basic tenants of Christianity the older I got. In the beginning, Catholic kids are taught to love everyone. Christianity is nothing but love and acceptance. But the further you get into the sacraments you start to see the cracks in the pillars. I felt like I had agreed to a Terms of Service without reading the fine print and it was starting to haunt me.
Seven years later, Pope Francis would say that dogs have souls and can go to heaven. He didn’t mention guinea pigs but I’d like to believe Oreo had more soul than most politicians did. And if some of them got into heaven, then he was bound to get in.
Genesis 1:21
So, God created great sea creatures and every living thing that scurries and swarms in the water, and every sort of bird-each producing offspring of the same kind. And God saw that it was good.
It was good, animals were good but soulless. I was good but sinful. I was loved but would be punished.
I felt like some disillusioned figure from the Bible who had strayed from God. Not many Bible stories still stick in my mind but the one about Lot’s wife stands out. When a kid hears that someone who disobeyed God was turned into salt, it’s hard to forget. Quite literally.
Luke 17:32
Remember Lot’s wife.
So, I remembered her but played fast and loose with my faith. I soon found myself caring less and less about the supposed consequences of my actions. I was starting to understand why Lucifer rebelled. Let’s be honest, being godly is tedious.
My friend seemed concerned for my eternal soul when I mentioned off-handedly that I was thinking about skipping confirmation. My family had stopped attending regular mass service after my parent’s divorce. But my path was still somewhat set as I was meant to complete another sacrament.
My friend stared me down in our high school cafeteria. “You know you can’t get married in a church if you don’t get confirmed.” She warned as if it were a fate worse than death.
I went over the ten commandments in my head, the rules written in stone at one point but I had always read them off a poster in one of the church classrooms. To my knowledge, getting married anywhere other than a church wasn’t a sin. So, I shrugged. “I don’t ever see myself getting married in a church.” This was around the time when I was coming to terms with my sexuality but knew that it was frowned upon by the majority of the church.
But instead of the usual Catholic guilt, I felt when faced with potential sins, I felt angry. Why wouldn’t God be pleased with me if I found a woman who I loved with all my heart?
1 Corinthians 13:4-7
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
If I was going to be judged by who I love, then why should I bow to that judge? Bitterness reclaimed any space that had been reserved for Jesus and I turned away from the church. But I had found some healing in a priest through a Zoom screen. Attending a Catholic college required a few class credits dedicated to religion. My jaded attitude caused me to complain at any given moment about the time I was wasting on a class called Exploring the Bible.
“I’ve already done my time,” I argued with my family when I added the class to my schedule. “I learned all of this.”
But I hadn’t. And there’s surprisingly a lot you can learn from a class when a normal question was along the lines of, “wasn’t Mary Magdalene like Jesus’s girlfriend?”
What was radical was Father L’s trip through the Bible and how he highlighted passages that had been used to justify racism and homophobia.
“They’re wrong. The way people read this passage is wrong and it does not justify hatred.”
It had been a long time since I came across a Catholic who was willing to stick their neck out for someone like me. The usual attitude is a type of muddied homophobia, “I don’t mind that gay people exist, but it is forbidden in the Bible”. It’s the cold, condemnation that is disguised as lukewarm, faux acceptance and usually accompanied by a I’m-Going-To-Heaven-And-You-Aren’t smile
Still, Father L’s class did not attract me back to religion. But when you come from a Catholic family, you always have some tie to the church. I found this when I spent one hot afternoon looking up the steps of St. Cecilia’s in Boston. Oh Lord, it had been a long time.
And as I entered, it unearthed long-neglected feelings of Catholic guilt.
There’s something hollow about churches. I used to be filled with peace and hope whenever I entered, the lofty ceilings above reminded me of the promise of heaven. Now the open space had a feeling of abandonment. What had changed from when the priest baptized me and I was offered blessings and protection. I thought God’s love was unconditional. But I forgot the little clause at the end of these professions of love that he favored those who followed his path. And some would argue that I had been barred from that path.
I felt displaced by the hard, unforgiving pews, tormented by the statues of the stations of the cross, and belittled by the saints painted on the walls. What was once my home for an hour every Sunday now had no place for me, despite the emptiness.
The priest at my brother’s wedding, read a common passage.
John 15:12
This is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you.
I sat with the Catholic guilt that had been etched into my ribs, the ones borrowed from Adam. Had Jesus loved me all this time and I spurned him? Feeling like I was being watched, I scanned the church, my eyes found a statue of Mary placed high above the altar. She always had the same expression of what I can only describe as joyful mourning. Her eyes lifted to the heavens, her hands clutching rosary beads.
The pressure on my shoulders was relieved only by the idea that I had tried. I trusted that Jesus was preaching love and that somewhere along the lines, people skewed his message of acceptance. I trusted that he would understand.
I tried, Jesus. I tried to love you, but your devoted flock wouldn’t love me.
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