IN GOD WE TRUST?
By Johnnie Carrier
Sometimes I feel like the anti-Bing Crosby- sharing his movie title “Going My Way”, only we went in opposite directions. It started for me when I was a 22-year old young man, recently divorced and now living with another woman, and was told that I could no longer receive the sacrament of communion. Sure, my marriage was a mistake on my part. I was young and thought to be in love. But I wasn’t ready to take on the responsibility that comes with married life, and neither was my ex-wife. I realized this when I found her and my best friend, Jeff, busy in a certain biological ritual that was sure to end with someone screaming, “Oh Jesus”. Little did they think it would come from me, as I walked in, home for lunch early one day.
But in the eyes of the church, their transgression of adultery paled in comparison to my transgression of divorce. “Divorced people have no place receiving the Lord, son,” Father Weldon said with a wisp of a brogue. I asked this Barry Fitzgerald with a bad attitude to explain the purpose of organized religion. “How can you smite those of us for falling in love with someone who applies a trade similar to Mary Magdalene herself?” The silence and icy cold stare of my Jesuit Moriarty led me to ponder just what the church and organized religion were all about-for me.
Growing up in a working class Irish family that revolved around the fellowship of church life- a family in which the oldest studied proudly for the priesthood-was a lot of pressure for someone who always found our Sunday morning ritual a huge waste of time. I never understood any of its repetition. Week in, week out, year after year, the Bible acted as a calendar for those who didn’t get one free from their bank every December. With all the duplication of the church’s liturgy, I often thought that my house of worship looked at me as if I had lost my short-term memory in some pre-teen hockey accident.
Church never held my interest, until that one fateful day I discovered movie time. With the congregation gathered on a warming April morning, the sexton rolled a projector down the aisle to play a movie about the bishop’s charity. Instead of the usual boring sermon about what Paul left out of his first two letters to the Corinthians, they showed us a film. As the flick flickered, we were taught the proper way to ask our Protestant neighbors to support the Bishop’s Relief Fund, feeding starved third world villagers the corned beef and cabbage they so craved. Our church leaders showed our Catholic fathers how to solicit funds and how to do so without coveting their neighbors’ wives- who undoubtedly sat on the couch with heaving chests and liquid smiles, something Protestant women are famous for.
As the rest of the parishioners were engrossed in the educational and motivating movie, I slipped down under the pews, as a 6-year old was likely to do, just to look up the dresses of all my parents’ friends-mainly because, like Woody Allen, I never had a latency stage. It was the early 60’s, when Catholic women of the bourgeoisie wore garter belts that held up those black nylon stockings I’ve come to know and love. In the darkness of my forbidden sanctuary, I saw chubby inner thighs and shapely fat calves that only a cowboy could love. And those shoes! Black velvet pumps that were enhanced by spiky 2-inch heels- with the women’s toes tucked in tight, forming what appears to be in my mind’s eye as four little cleavages. To me, that was the best day I ever spent in church, so it wasn’t like they were losing an ecclesiastic wonder boy when they gave me the boot.
But what about the devout Catholics-those who really got something out of the worship? If Jesus were around today, would He ban the divorced from receiving his body and blood during communion, or would he be cool and give us heathens a free pass?
I was schooled by nuns, I thought to myself: sadistic, good smelling creatures, who could have fought themselves out of the toughest gin mills along the Barbary Coast. Now that I have been shamefully excommunicated, as if I were a 15th Century heretic, was I to forget the caring, compassion, and good penmanship they tried to beat into me. My lessons started out with a stinging ruler, slapped across the knuckles for abusing the Palmer method, and ending with a deadly thwack to the back of my head from Sister Mary Corporal Punishment’s set of janitorial keys fired from 5 pews back during the Stations of the Cross. This was because my friend at the time, the diminutive Red Garrety, pointed out that Jesus must have been a poor math student, which was the main reason he got nailed to a plus sign, his joked caused that forbidden mortal transgression of laughter in church. A sin worse than murder it appeared at the time. But in the name of charity, in the name of all of those who faced that same shoddy rough treatment, was that the best way to represent God on earth in an educational setting?
The same could be asked in regard to the numerous lawsuits hammering the Catholic Church over the repeated sexual abuse by certain priests upon the underage men of their congregation. Was this the will of God? And what was wrong with me, since I came out of the Catholic school system with my virtue intact? Was I an ugly child, unattractively walking around with my grammar- school milk mustache? What did those other poor unfortunates have that I didn’t? Not that I wanted the unwelcome advances from a priest-like sexual predator, but I would like to think I was at least cute enough to be considered.
The Church is built on the foundation that everyone is a sinner, and I never really had a problem with that principle. But was I guilty from the moment I was born, lathered with the stain of original sin? Legend has it that someone had to pay for the sin of free choice that Adam and Eve committed in the Garden of Eden, but to pin it on a newborn seems a little cold.
Even as a budding agnostic, dressed in my Kelly green school uniform, my thinking was that original sin was incredible bunk. I based this on the fact that I just got here, how the hell could I be in trouble already? Couldn’t I find all the things that church was suppose to give me within the depths of my own heart? Couldn’t I find the absolution needed for everlasting life within the goodness that I knew was in me? Was my refusal to abstain from consuming meat during every Lenten season since 1978 a venial or mortal sin? (Don’t laugh; I could be facing eternal damnation over a hot dog.)
For real Catholics, Lent is the period preceding Easter. It’s a time of self denial that represents the suffering the Lord endured during his last days on earth. So let me see if I get this. If give up candy, porn and liquor for a month, that represents getting savagely beaten by a bastard gang of ruthless Roman soldiers? Are my earthly sacrifices akin to being nailed to a cross by my arms and legs in front of Mother and my friends while begging forgiveness to my Father, the one who orchestrated all of this-just so he could show the world he loved us? Sounds like someone has a bit of an ego problem, if you ask me.
Still, let me see if I got this correct. He killed his only begotten son to show the world he cared? It’s funny: There is a guy in Texas on trial for doing the same thing but no one is claiming he’s the Almighty Father, he’s getting the chair. Needless to say, I left the church when Father Weldon asked me. I did so without a fight or worse yet, beseeching exoneration for marrying an immature woman who, for whatever reason slept around on me behind my back. I have been excommunicated as if I were Galileo or Martin Luther.
My image of God is not of a grandfatherly looking chap in a white robe, but of the brightest light you can imagine- a light I saw the last time I got insanely drunk 21 years ago- a light that told me to seek help, which I did and haven’t had a touch of the creature since. I go to the church of my God now-in the woods, the mountains, on a snowy hillside. While on my weekly fishing trips, I thank my God of Light for the gifts that have been bestowed upon me, for they are many. And I ask for the forgiveness and the strength to remove my shortcomings, for they are many, as well. There is no collection plate passed and no Sweepstakes tickets to buy for that same crazy quilt that was raffled off last year. There are no men dressed in robes, chanting, burning incense, or having cookies with old ladies afterwards. There is just me, with what little faith I can muster, hoping that I do his or her will. I don’t have the answers; I only have the questions. And all I know about God is that there is one; but what his will for me is I would never be so arrogant to say. This is what really separates me and my older brother- the priest. Ever the anti- Bing Crosby, I go my way, down a path that leads to the unknown that is God’s mansion on the hill.