Coming Up Catholic

Coming Up Catholic

I always hated Sunday school. But I had to go because I didn’t attend Catholic school. That’s what they called it back then; not Parochial school, not Private school, it was Catholic school. Anyway, the whole purpose of Sunday school was to prepare you to receive the Sacraments.

First, there was Baptism–which I don’t remember, even though I was there, and then Confession, Holy Communion, Confirmation and eventually Marriage in that order. There are a couple more, but they’re set aside for doctors, nurses and Priests. You know ... good people.

Through it all was the ever-present Catechism; a dog-eared book that contained all the knowledge I would ever need to make it into Heaven. It was simple, really. All I had to do was retain everything it taught for my Confirmation, and then behave myself for the rest of my life.

No sweat.

My earliest memories were of preparing for my first Holy Communion. I remember the Nuns were mean; always with the ruler and the knuckles. My mother said they were just strict, but I knew the difference between strict, and mean. I often wondered how they would get into Heaven, even if they did know the Catechism.

Then there were The Ten Commandments, or, The Rules. I got most of them. The “… honor thy Father and thy Mother,” rule. The fourth Commandment. That was an easy one. And the “… keep the Sabbath Day,” rule. The third Commandment. That one, too. And I understood most of the rest of the “Thou Shalts.”

But the one I could never understand was the “… not covet thy neighbour’s wife,” rule. The ninth Commandment. At eight years old, I didn’t know what “covet” meant. But as an adult, I did. I had enough trouble with my own wife. Why in the Hell would I want someone else’s? Besides, I’ve seen my neighbor’s wife. Covet is not a word that comes to mind.

We learned about Confession and how it cleansed your Immortal Soul. That’s just fine if all you’ve done wrong was told a few lies and maybe took the Lord’s name in vain. But what if you killed somebody? (the fifth Commandment). Would the cops be waiting just outside the curtains of the Confessional? I decided not to take the chance, although I really wanted to kill my little brother at times.

Then, years later, came Confirmation. The Bishop showed up in his flowing robes and his big pointy red hat and asked some really hard questions. Then he slapped some kid in the face for getting the answer right. That worried me. If we were slapped for the right answer, what happened to the kids that gave the wrong answer? Burning in Hell, I supposed. We were all sitting in the pews as the Bishop ambled around waving his sceptre. Then, he asked a really difficult question.

“Who was Noah? Who were his sons? And what did they name the chickens?”

That’s not fair. That’s three questions. Getting only one right was .333%. If I was a baseball player, that meant a million a year. If I was in english class, that meant an “F.” But this was Confirmation. I could smell the Brimstone.

He looked for some doomed thirteen-year-olds who hadn’t yet peed themselves. Before he could pick one of us, from the rear of the church arose the voice of an Angel. It was some kid’s aunt. She was devout.

“Oh…. I know! I know! Ask me! Ask me!” Then, she blurted out the answer. The woman couldn’t contain herself.

It was a good day.

As I remember, there are three kinds of Sins, all with varying degrees of severity.

Venial Sins: you could have a bunch of these and still get into Heaven. I guess they’re more like training Sins, or practice Sins.

Mortal Sins: these are the big ones. You don’t want to be lugging any of these bad-boys around when the lights go out.

And Deadly Sins: Of which there are seven. Why they separated those from the rest was beyond me. I guess they thought them up later–you know, as an afterthought to cover the stuff that wouldn’t fit on the Tablets.

I didn’t remember all of them. But, I knew the Bishop did, so I wrote those on my hand. That wasn’t a Sin, though. That was just cheating.

I do remember when the Church considered limiting Mortal Sins to just murder and adultery. After much discussion, they decided against it to the relief of many. It stood to reason that if you were at Confession—and not wearing handcuffs—it wasn’t hard to figure what you did in your spare time.

There was Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, Palm Sunday, Easter Duty, Christmas Midnight Mass, and the occasional Novena. There was Purgatory, Limbo, Hell, and of course, Heaven. Penance and Prayer would keep you out of the first three, but I wondered why there were more bad places to go than good. The odds were four to one against you. But gambling was a Sin too, so I didn’t push my luck. Cheating was bad enough.

Throughout my teen years, it was no meat on Fridays, Confession on Saturdays, Mass on Sundays, Genuflecting and Signing yourself with the Cross. If you don’t know what that is, just watch any major league hitter before he steps to the plate. It protects him from getting beaned by a fastball.

When I reached my twenties, I married a Catholic girl much to the delight of my mother. But as time passed, the marriage failed and my Faith waned. I stopped practicing.

Then I married my second wife, the mother of my children. She was Lutheran. Therefore, so were the kids. The Reverend stopped by the house one evening to discuss Baptizing them. I answered when he asked as to my Religion.

“I won’t even try to convert you,” he said. “Once a Catholic, always a Catholic.”

To which I replied, “And where you find four Catholics, you’ll usually find a fifth.”

He didn’t get the pun. I guess Lutherans aren’t big drinkers. But I didn’t hold that against them. I went to church with the family and tried to be a good Lutheran.

Some ten years later, the next wife was Jewish. Oy-vey. Talk about culture shock. I learned to speak Yiddish, that a Shul and a Synagogue were the same as a Church, they paid for their seats, and none of their Holy days fell on the same days as mine. I was a Goya, a Gentile and a Mensch. So many names for one person, I couldn’t keep up. So converting was out of the question.

When that ended, I decided that three wives were enough and I elected to live in Sin, at least until I was near death. Then I’d hurry to Confession in the hope of making it to Heaven before last call.

I hooked up with a Baptist gal for about two years and discovered there was no kneeling, they had no statues, Christ wasn’t on the Cross and they dunked your whole body into a big tub when they Baptized you. I guess with a name like “Baptists,” they had no choice.

Through all of this, I elected not to partake in any Religion’s version of Communion. I felt it wouldn’t be right to keep hopscotching around Faiths like I did with my relationships. But about two years ago, I met–you guessed it–a Catholic girl. I hadn’t been to Church in years, but thought it in my best interests to accompany her.

Not much had changed: the Hymns and the guy with the really good voice belting it out from the back pew; the Hymns and the guy with the really bad voice belting it out from the back pew; the Prayers, although some of the words were different; the sound of the organ with the occasional misplaced chord; the semi-unison sounds of kneelers being raised or lowered, and my watching the people in front of me for visual cues as to what to do when. Everything was as I remembered.

The first Sunday I went with her, I spotted the Bulletins—stacked in a neat pile—as we entered. When I reached for one, she said:

“We don’t get those until after Church.”

“After Church? What am I supposed to read during the Sermon?”

They took an informal census that Sunday. The Priest asked us to fill out a form and drop it in the Collection basket. I didn’t realize this collection was for the census form only, and dropped a twenty in with it.

“We don’t want the money,” the Collection guy said.

“Don’t want the money? This is a Catholic Church, isn’t it?”

At first, I decided not to go to Communion with her. After all, it had been thirty years since my last Confession, and I wasn’t about to tell that to a Priest. The Penance alone would have been a killer (fifth Commandment).
Then recently, she invited me to her daughter’s Confirmation. Sitting next to her in the Pew, I asked if it would be all right for me to go to Communion without having gone to Confession.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “The Priest just gave everyone General Absolution and you’ve been Forgiven.”

“General Absolution? Forgiven? No shit!”

Heathen that I am, she put her hand over my mouth. She told me to say an Act of Contrition for more forgiveness, keep my yap shut, and just go with her.

My parents always taught me the Lord was a Merciful God. And since the words “Wrath,” or “Condemned” weren’t included in the Sermon—which I heard for want of reading material—I decided nothing ventured, nothing gained. I had led a fairly good life … kinda.

As I approached the Altar, I passed her daughter. She was in a white dress, her hands were held in Prayer and she had the Heavenly glow of God’s Grace about her. My dread began to fade as I beheld her. She appeared as an Angel. I knew better, of course. She was a teenager, for God’s sake. Upon realizing that, the dread returned. When I received the Host, I closed my eyes and fully expected it to burst into Tongues of Flame, but, it didn’t. I guess there’s still hope for me after all.

I had come full circle, and when all was said and done, I felt pretty good about, well, everything, I guess. And even if she is a teenager, she’s a damn good kid. The way she smiled at me, standing next to her mother at the Altar, made me think that maybe I wasn’t the Heretic I thought I was.

So we all drove home in forty or fifty cars (Irish-Catholic family) and celebrated her daughter’s achievement. The whole family was there, except her two uncles living in New York: a cop, and, believe it or not, a Priest. I wonder if he knows the names of Noah’s chickens.

***

Author’s note:

Some say God has a sense of humor. The Okapi and the Platypus could possibly be the result of a Divine practical joke. I fervently hope that is the case. Actually, Pray is more like it. Deities are not to be trifled with.
During this writing, I caught myself looking out the window; checking a clear night sky for stray bolts of lightening dancing around my house. Relieved there were none, I thanked God. Literally. So, with Praise and a healthy Fear of the Lord, I capitalized anything and everything that had anything to do with Him. I wouldn’t want to wake up tomorrow morning to find myself transformed into a rodent of some kind. I don’t know of a single rodent that’s ever been published.