"Recall
then that you have received the spiritual seal, the Spirit of wisdom and
understanding, the spirit of right judgment and courage, the spirit of
knowledge and reverence, the Spirit of holy fear in God's presence. Guard what
you have received. God the Father has marked you
with his sign; Christ the Lord has confirmed you and has placed his pledge, the
Spirit, in your heart."
"Deinde
leviter eum in maxilla caedit, dicens: Pax tecum."
"Then he strikes him lightly on the cheek, saying: Peace
be with you."
Every
Thursday night of my Sophomore year of high school, I carpooled to Catechism with
this awful girl named Kristy and her mother, who was a teacher at the church.
The only way she could get her spoiled daughter in the car was to suggest the
possibility of stopping at the Cracker Barrel for an Icee afterwards. When two
hours was over, Kristy's mother was predictably stressed -- from what, I never
learned -- and the maroon Buick's ignition was Kristy's cue to flip on her
whine switch.
I
remember entertaining the thought that she didn't actually want the Icee,
because even though she'd get the "bucket" size, she never finished
it -- the car's cup holders were stacked full of melted, leaky cups that would
have to be tossed to make room for the fresh one. I didn't care for Icees, but
I got a small one every week anyway, on Kristy's mom's dime. It was the least I
could do to inconvenience those awful people for being who they were.
On
the extra-angsty Thursdays, I'd even leave my full Icee in the backseat cup
holder, in hopes that Kristy's mom would sleep a minute less at night wondering
if her family's bad habits were rubbing off on me.
I
was a monster.
Catechism
at 15 years of age is generally in preparation for the Catholic Sacrament of
Confirmation -- the ritual honoring a young Catholic's passage into adulthood.
It's supposed to signify a conscious choice to enter the church, after having
been primed for the Sacrament in a Catholic household. The normal bible studies
of younger years shift into a Q-&-A-style forum, and the point was for us
to ask the tough questions about our faith before we became permanent thorns in
Jesus' crown.
I
took this opportunity very seriously, as I had skimmed a book on Buddhism at
Barnes and Noble that year, making me an expert in Eastern religion. Every
Thursday at 6 p.m., I showed up to Catechism armed with a battery of logic
ammunition.
For
example:
If
God loves me unconditionally, why do I have to ask for forgiveness? If someone
living in African-level poverty is never told that Jesus Christ died for their
sins, where do they go when they die? Why is God such a dick in the Old
Testament? If Jesus was a Jew, shouldn't we be Jewish, too? What kind of God
would torment his children with the option
of not living a Godly life? And, perhaps most importantly, how exactly did
Christ's death open up a new portal to heaven? What kind of God would flaunt
the death of his only son -- surely, he could have had more sons, had he wanted
them -- in front of billions of sinners, claiming that his child's death was
more important than the demise of any of their children?
Perhaps,
I thought, that kind of God is one who has never known the pain of being
mortal.
I
thought I was brilliant. I'd hurl these gems at my poor, unsuspecting, devout
volunteer teacher once a week, spending them frugally just to keep her on her
faithful toes. I wanted her to question herself, sure. But more than that, I
wanted her to fear me. I was a monster on top of a mountain of questions that
Catholicism could not answer; and every Thursday at 8 p.m., I would descend
from my existential mountain and enter a maroon Buick that ran on Kristy's
melted Icee buckets and the fumes of bad parenting.
The
rides home weren't that bad, because I had won.
It never occurred to me that my path of destruction through the Confirmation
process, with little to no belief in the Catholic dogma, meant that I was
participating in doublespeak. I didn't believe that Confirmation meant my soul
would forever be Catholic, anyway -- it was a game to me, and the ritual meant
more to my mother than it ever would to me.
The
next year of classes were purposely more intimate, and the teachers were
carefully selected for that final phase of preparation. We met once a week, in
the instructor's home, for three intense hours. Our eleventh-grade class was
intentionally split into thirds, to fit about eight people in the host's living
room. My host was a celibate, 42-year-old lesbian named Terry, who made a mean
batch of twice-baked potatoes.
"I
just haven't met the right man," she said. "I'm waiting until God
leads me to him."
We
ate dinner with her every week, and she was always happy to take requests for
the next week's meal. But before we even sat down, we were required to grab one
of the eight rosaries hanging on the coat rack by the door. Every week, we
prayed the entire rosary. All five Mysteries, no shortcuts. That's around 50
Hail Marys, five Glory Be repetitions, and I forget how many Nicene Creeds.
The
ritual took up one of the three hours we sat in her living room every week.
Most of us knew those prayers by heart already from our lifetimes of
Catholicism, but if any of us had a lapse in memory, that tedious weekly
practice would forever seal the cracks.
"We'll
answer all of your questions, but God comes first," she said.
Going
past the recitation of memorized childhood prayers, Terry made it a point to
meticulously pick apart the syntax of every prayer during our time with her.
Hilariously, I fancied myself a writer even at that stupid age, and was more
than eager to soak up the dogmatic rhetoric like an oversaturated moldy sponge
with a bad attitude.
"So
in this prayer to Mary, I'm asking her to pray for us sinners, from now until
the hour of our death," I stated during the Hail Mary analysis. "Why
do I have to ask 50 times per rosary?"
"The
rosary is a meditation," Terry answered. "Your gift to her is
thinking about every word, no matter how many times you say it."
I
left her home every week sullen. She was different than the other Catechism
teachers they'd thrown my way -- she wasn't easily broken, and she had more
patience than Buddha. Despite her obvious homosexuality, there was this calm
about her, as if she had come to understand that her faith in God was more
important than the gender of any human being she might fall in love with. In
short, she made my mission look like Satan's work, to me, without ever knowing the torment I had previously fed upon.
For someone who didn't believe in the divine, it was nothing short of
miraculous.
"What
do we, as Catholics, believe?" she asked.
"...in
Catholicism?" I jabbed.
"What
is Catholicism, then?" she countered.
"A
room full of Catholics."
"What
is a Catholic?"
"A
person who chooses to apologize to God once a week for the way he created us,
while thanking him for doing so."
Terry
looked at me with patient, burning eyes. "Do you understand the sacrament
you've chosen to receive in a few months, Christie?" she asked.
I
paused.
The
ever-invasive Catholic dogma has survived thousands of generations by inserting
itself into wedding vows, and my parents had promised God to raise their
children Catholic back in 1981. On paper, that translates to "until
Confirmed inside the Catholic Church," which is why my mother told us that
church would become optional after we went through with it.
In
that frame, I understood the Sacrament of Confirmation as my one-way ticket out
of the religion without upsetting my saint of a mother. It was the best gift I
could ever give her: It would earn me my
religious freedom without breaking her rules, while also allowing her to feel
she had satisfied her promise to God. I knew that nothing else I would ever do
in my life would leave her with that kind of peace of mind.
Yet,
I would never let the endless amount of love I had for my mother rob me of the
unique pleasure I got out of taunting the volunteer soldiers for God.
"I
understand," I said. "I understand that my mother had to promise my
soul to God when she married the love of her life. I understand that her soul
needs to be protected, because she let God glue it back together after it broke
in ways mine never will. I understand that her faith in God made her an amazing
mother, and she made my soul unbreakable and inextricable from me. God cannot
have my soul, but technically, that's his fault."
Her
eyes burned patient holes through the silence of my classmates.
"...And,
really, I can't think of a better way to thank the both of them."
After
that, we were all assigned our "spiritual sponsors" -- anonymous
confirmed Catholics who would send us periodic words of encouragement, small
religious gifts, and decorative bibles until the day we made our Confirmation.
The mystery sponsors would reveal their identities in the church pews, and
would walk us to the altar to seal the deal.
We
were told that once we reached the altar, the Bishop would ask us questions
about our assigned patron Saints, and that we had better know our chosen
Saint's life story. If we answered the Bishop correctly, we would earn the
right to take the name of that Saint in the eyes of God and the Catholic
Church.
My
patron Saint was Saint Maria Goretti, an Italian girl who died from multiple
stab wounds incurred when she refused to submit to her attempted rapist in
1902. She was 12 years old.
"Christie,
could you start us off with the first line of the Nicene Creed?"
We
were analyzing the nuances of the Catholic prayer of all prayers -- the one
that states, in terms clear as day, every conviction held by a truly faithful
Catholic. I obliged.
"We
believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty."
My
voice rang tinny against the silence of the motherless home, all eight pairs of
indifferent eyes on me. I had said this prayer hundreds, maybe thousands of
times in my life, and it had only ever meant one thing to me: The halfway point
of the hour-long Sunday Mass.
"Maker
of Heaven and Earth, of all that is, seen and unseen."
Maker of all that is, seen and unseen. The
prayer exited my lips like it never had before, but nobody in the room seemed
to pick up on it. My voice sounded tangible, like a thing I could reach out and
hold onto.
"...God
from God, Light from Light," I continued. "True God from true God;
begotten, not made. One in Being with the Father."
I
closed my eyes and I was in a classroom from 10 years ago, rubbing my palms
together in front of my first grade religion class at Saint Isidore Catholic
School, shaking with anxiety before I recited the Nicene Creed in its entirety.
We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty,
I squeaked out, my tinny voice nervously bouncing off the white cinderblock
walls. The last time I'd said the Creed alone was in first grade, when I was
forced to prove to the class that I'd memorized it.
"Through
him, all things were made, for us men and for our salvation, he came down from
Heaven," I recited. "By the power of the Holy Spirit, He was born of
the Virgin Mary, and became man."
There
was a moment of simultaneous shock and dread as the words turned into a
familiar story I didn't believe. Words that I had repeated at least once a week
for most of my life, in indifferent solidarity with the Sunday congregation.
Until I found myself sitting in that lesbian's home, preparing to walk
willingly into adulthood as a confirmed Catholic -- in all my years of silent
protest, tactical logic, and intellectual hubris, I had failed to see that it
had never been a choice at all.
"The
first line is all we need right now, Christie," Terry said.
"For
our sake, He was crucified under Pontius Pilate," I went on. "He
suffered, died, and was buried. On the third day, He rose again in fulfillment
of the Scriptures. He ascended into Heaven, and is seated at the right hand of
the Father."
"You
can stop there, we're going to go through it line by line," she insisted.
But
I couldn't stop. I didn't know how to stop.
"He
will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and His kingdom will
have no end."
I
was handed a one-size-fits-all, blood-red robe and confirmed on a Thursday
evening. Terry was my sponsor -- she stood next to me in the pew, smiling kind
of like she always had.
"Who
is your patron Saint, Christie Matherne?" the Bishop asked.
"Saint
Maria Goretti," I replied.
"Oh,
Saint Maria," he said wistfully. "She was such a young, devout martyr
for Christ. And how did she die in her faith?"
"A man tried to rape her
when she was 12, and she chose to die rather than to let him have her
innocence."
"Yes,
as you will take her name in the eye of God, may you always look to her for
strength in the face of evil." He opened his book of Rites.
I thought about Saint Maria Goretti, canonized after dying at 12 years old, innocence intact. I thought of my mother, her devotion, and the guilt she must have felt -- the guilt she must still feel at the mercy of a dogma that canonized a 12-year-old for having the guts my mother couldn't find at that age.
I thought of Kristy, and her mom and all the Icees I had passive-aggressively left to melt in her Buick; all my subtle mental terrorism campaigns against people whom I'd deemed unfit for my respect. I thought of how hard it must be to raise a child -- how terrifying the world must look to a new mother when she sees her child's innocence and cannot remember her own -- and how, perhaps, Kristy will remember a soggy cupful of hers.
I wondered how many kids Terry had stood next to in these pews, how many believers and nonbelievers she has guided to the altar, wearing one-size-fits-all robes in blood-red. I wondered what she must think of her students as she watches them line up to be inducted every year -- her contribution to the faith, her legacy; her penance, her apology, and her gratitude to God, for the way he created her to be alone, in his will, for the rest of her devout life.
"You
have received the spiritual seal, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the
spirit of right judgment and courage, the spirit of knowledge and reverence,
the Spirit of holy fear in God's presence. Guard what you have received. God
the Father has marked you with his sign; Christ the Lord has confirmed you and
has placed his pledge, the Spirit, in your heart. Deinde
leviter eum in maxilla caedit, dicens: Peace be with you."
It was the least I could do.
"And
also, with you."
