Catholicism’s unspoken stories
Dialogue is needed now more than ever
In my second grade class, every kid was given the opportunity to become an altar server following the presentation of a signed permission slip and brief but intensive training — not dissimilar to the U. S. Marines — in how to help administer the Eucharist. When we were told we would be allowed to wear what essentially to me was a fun Halloween costume, carry a large candle and skip classes, it checked every box to peak my interest, offering a unique intersection of my proclivity for wearing theatrical, costumey dresses and a curiosity for pyrotechnics.
I rushed home, form in hand, and presented the paper for my parents to sign, assuming they’d be more than happy to put their John and Joan Hancocks on the dotted line. When I told them what I’d wanted to do, their faces slanted into a mixed expression of disgust, worry and pity. When they eventually told me no, I responded in a completely rational, mature way: I flushed three rolls of toilet paper and flooded the upstairs bathroom ( complete with shrieking and theatrics because I was nothing if not thorough in my tantrums). It was only later, around the age of 19 or 20, that I began to understand the gravity of their decision.
Over dinner one night, my brother and I were talking to our mother about memories we had from childhood. We laughed about ridiculous things we did and said, some of which had occurred so long ago that they felt like they were done by somebody else.
I sarcastically interjected that I still held resentment for not being allowed to be an altar server. My mother’s laugh faded from her face and she began to look uncomfortable. To brush over the awkward pause in conversation I said, “What? Were you worried about a creepy priest? I just wanted to carry the big candle and you crushed my dreams.”
She remained silent. I pressed her again over the matter.
“Mom, I was joking. Is that actually why you didn’t let me?”
She admitted that her reasoning was that she didn’t want to make me “another” — another child who was yanked away from his innocence. Another child whose first sexual experience
was with a geriatric man of the cloth shoving his hands down his navy school trousers after Mass
The priest I would’ve been serving under was a kind, cheery man of 76 with a liver- spotted head sporting very little hair and even fewer teeth. Though he was so wrinkled he looked like he was made from old handbags, he had a quasi- charming air about him, as if the Keebler Elf had a profile on a Megan’s Law website. Nonetheless, he was charismatic and welcoming. I never understood my mother’s distrust. He was harmless. An old man, perhaps a little strange, but nothing to fear.
In March 2018, he was accused of sexual misconduct in a list published in the city newspaper. He transferred parishes, retired and never faced any legal repercussions, regardless of the accusations.
I later revisited this conversation about my altar serving ( or lack thereof) with my mother, asking, “Was this obvious? Was my childhood lens so distorted I missed reg flags?”
She told me that it wasn’t a matter of the priest but of the systematic nature child sexual abuse had taken on. The lifecycle of Catholic priests is grossly misbehaving, fading into the shadows of a far- off parish in Minnesota and never being held accountable, shielded by the ranks and old- world power the Catholic Church has oft abused. She didn’t want me to become a casualty to this wheel that’s been turning since she was young.
I hadn’t been Catholic for a long time when we had these conversations. The thought of stepping into a church made bile rise in my throat and my mother was fully respectful of that.
My experience is not unique, it is universal. From an early age, little boys and girls are taught that homosexual behavior of any variety is u acceptable. You’ll go to hell. God won’t accept you. Your peers and family won’t love you. Even things that aren’t explicitly stated, the atmospheric presence and disdain of non- traditional sexualities hangs heavy in the air like incense.
I don’t mean for this to be “another hit piece against the Catholic Church” or a resignation of some kind of Catholic guilt manifested onto paper, but to make people aware.
I was lucky. I wasn’t made a target by the priests, but that doesn’t mean others weren’t. I might not know their names but I know their stories.
The change begins with the language. What we say to children, how we say it, and how we protect them rather than pass them into the wrinkled hands of predators under the guise of morality.
How we hold men accountable and not allow them to hide behind the cloth and an archaic organization is important now more than ever to prevent this wheel from turning any longer.
I feel the Catholic Church is in the eye of a terrible storm, facing decades of systematic abuse coming to the surface like an infection, festering from the inside out.
The reckoning that is upon us, as powerful as it is, cannot change years of socialization of a country and of a world religion. The dialogue is needed now more than ever, especially within religious communities where many people first learn and justify actions of abuse and exploitation.
If we can’t change our thoughts, we can’t change our people.