Innervisions: Once, and Always

Last week, I traveled to the Washington, DC area for a Parents' College Weekend at Foxcroft, the boarding school my daughter attends, and which I also attended. I arrived on Thursday, the final day of Pope Benedict XVI's historic visit to the Nation's Capital.

I'd arranged to stay at the home of my friend, Martha, an elegant late-40s corporate administrator from Hawaii. During the thirty-minute drive in the rental car from Dulles International Airport to Middleburg, Virginia, where both the school and Martha's home are located, I listened to reports on a local news radio station about The Holy Father's activities while he was “inside the Beltway.”

Journalist after journalist excitedly recounted the Pope's stated commitment to facilitating the healing of the church's sexual abuse victims. I couldn't help but notice how especially impressed the media seemed with the private meeting and prayer session The Holy Father had with several of these so-called victims inside the chapel of the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See. I was not as impressed.

“Too little too late,” I said aloud. “That should've been done years ago. So typical of the Catholic Church.”

“It is important,” the pontiff was quoted as having said, “that those who have suffered be given loving, pastoral attention.”

“Ha!,” I sneered. “Yeah, that's exactly what they need, more 'loving, pastoral attention.' Let's hope this time it's from priests who aren't perverts and pedophiles.” My anger and cynicism were palpable. And once I'd gotten started, I couldn't stop.

“And why exactly does the Catholic Church have its own embassy?” I asked the empty passenger seat.

“Because it's not just a church, that's why,” I responded, my voice rich with accusation. “It's a huge, money-making multinational corporation.” And the solo conversation continued until I'd reached my destination.

That evening, Martha and I stayed up yacking with Ruth, another friend who was spending the weekend. Ruth, another Foxcroft alum, is a stylish, feisty woman, also in her mid-40s, who lives in a tiny, predominantly Mormon town in Idaho.

At some point early in the conversation, one of them asked me that question which every writer dreads: What are you working on these days? I told them about my quest for a spiritual home, about how it's all being documented in this column.

In an attempt to explain what has been a lifelong frustration and fascination with religion and spirituality, I shared with them a story, which I'd all but forgotten, a story about one of my first freelance writing assignments. Much to my surprise while telling this story, I also unearthed the root of my strained relationship with organized religion, my very real fear of hell, as well as my occasionally vitriolic reactions to all things Catholic.

First, the story:
When I was in my early twenties, an editor at a local weekly with whom I was casually acquainted told me that he was considering running a series of articles on the Occult; he said he was trying to find a writer to attend and report on an upcoming Satan-worship meeting.

Desperate for a byline in that publication, I volunteered. (I know, I know; what on earth was I thinking?!?)

At first I was scared about going to such an event, but when I called to RSVP, the fear vanished. I got an answering machine with what sounded like the voice of a pimply-faced male teenager. The message began, “Hail Satan!” The voice went on to list the location and other details of the meeting—6 pm at room 366 of a popular hotel. All this made me suspicious, made me wonder if I was going to encounter a group of rebellious young people, the sort who wear black clothing and corpse makeup a la the Addams Family, sitting around a cauldron holding plastic pitchforks. “Yeah, right; Satan-worship,” I laughed. “As if!”

Still, to be safe, I asked my friend Frank to come with me. In addition to being the most vocal atheist I'd ever met, Frank was physically intimidating, a big biscuit-eating German man. He readily agreed, no questions asked. Then three days before the meeting, Frank called to cancel. “You know I don't believe in God,” he said. “But the devil, that's another thing altogether. I don't know if I wanna mess with all that.” I couldn't believe it; he was actually scared.

I mean really and truly frightened. Even over the phone, I could hear it; I could feel the fear, traveling through the wires, reaching through the façade of strength and open-mindedness I'd constructed to quell my own apprehensions.

But I was determined to write that article, so I tried to get someone else to go with me. I went through my phone book and called every atheist and agnostic I knew. As one might expect, the moment I mentioned the description “devil-worshipping,” they balked, offered excuses, immediately remembered some prior engagement, or simply hung up without explanation. Nobody, no matter how mad they were at God or doubtful they were of religion, was willing to go near that Satanic meeting, not even in the interest of journalism, or as a favor to a friend. So I decided I'd go alone.

The night of the meeting I got dressed, threw a pocket Bible in my purse, put on a necklace with a crucifix charm and drove to the hotel.

As I approached the entrance of the parking lot, my heart started pounding. My palms were so sweaty I could barely maneuver the steering wheel. I imagined myself standing in front of room 366, poised to knock. Did I really want to find out what existed on the other side? I asked myself. What if it wasn't a joke or some lame club? What if the people in that room really worshipped Satan, the same Satan who'd possessed that poor child in The Exorcist? Hmmm….

Frank was right. I didn't know if I wanted mess with all that. No job was worth risking my soul. I kept on driving, right past the hotel, right around the block and back to my house. End of story.

Martha and Ruth were in stitches. They were both laughing so hard they were nearly crying. “In the end,” I told them, “it all comes back to that fire and brimstone. No amount of education or logic has been able to convince me to stop believing in hell or being scared of going there.”

“Especially if you were raised Catholic, like me,” said Martha.
“I was brought up as a Catholic, too,” Ruth admitted. Since we were all confessing, I raised my glass and said, “Me too.”

“Well,” Martha reminded us, “once a Catholic, always a Catholic.” Whew, those words struck a nerve. Suddenly, a wave of guilt passed over me. I felt terrible about the things I'd said in the car. After all, the Pope was only trying to do the right thing, and every person of faith knows that it's never too late to do right by others and by God. How could I have said those things?

Martha, Ruth and I carried our slumber party into the wee hours, sharing stories about our faith, our fears, our deep desire to allow our actions and our lives to be guided by forgiveness and love.

We were a stone's throw from the campus of Foxcroft, where I'd learned those values, not as a function of religion but as a function of community, of sisterhood. By the time I got to Foxcroft, I had already stopped referring to myself as a Catholic, though I hadn't yet replaced it with another label. I had even gone so far as to change the spelling of my name, Mary, because I didn't like its association with religion. But why? I wondered now how, in what way, had the Catholic Church hurt me so. Too many years had passed since my active involvement with the Catholic Church; I couldn't place my finger on a single act of wrongdoing, a single horrid memory to justify the visceral response which the word “Catholic” often triggers.

And yet…and yet: my home is full of crucifixes, images of the Madonna and Child; I carry a necklace with a crucifix charm, the same one I wore in preparation for the devil-worshipping meeting, in the change compartment of my wallet; I cried when Sinead O'Connor ripped up a picture of the Pope on Saturday Night Live (Oh, yes I did!); I took personal offense when I learned that Minister John Hagee had referred to Catholicism as “The Great Whore.” (How dare he?) In fact, I take personal offense at every attack on Catholicism—except, obviously, when it comes from me! (Don't you just love such duplicity?)

Since the official start of this quest for a spiritual home, I've chanted with Buddhists, read The Science of Mind by Ernest Holmes and attended a Religious Science service. I've read L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics and re-read Mary Baker Eddy's Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures as well as in preparation for visits to The Church of Scientology and The Church of Christ, Scientist. I've made a list of all the religions I want to research, read about and worship with as a curious visitor. Catholicism, my original religion, was not on that list.

Once a Catholic, always a Catholic. Those words haunted me in my sleep. If this exercise was really going to be a practice in anything more than window-shopping of religions, I'd have to return to the Catholic Church. It'd been over thirty years—not counting the time, a decade ago, I'd opted to stand in the parking lot and wait it out—since I'd been to a Catholic Church. But what better time to do it? I was someplace where I felt safe, a place that had always offered me shelter from the harshness of the outside world, always made me feel that I mattered, that I belonged.

Friday morning, before setting off to the Foxcroft campus for the Parents' College Weekend events, I asked Martha and Ruth if they'd attend Mass with me. Interestingly, it felt no less awkward and intrusive than asking people if they'd attend that devil-worshipping meeting with me. I was frightened of going alone because I wasn't sure what might greet me on the other side of that door. With the devil-worshipping meeting my fear was of the unknown and the harm that it would impose; this time, with the Catholic Church, my fear was of the known and the hurt that it would expose.

Martha and Ruth agreed and we made plans to go to Mass on Saturday evening at Saint Stephen the Martyr, the nearby Catholic Church.

Somehow, it all felt right; that is, if you believe in such things: Pope Benedict XVI was in the country, I was at Foxcroft. It felt like a chance to start anew, a chance to go back and make right whatever it was that went so wrong.

“Thank God,” I sighed, throughout that day and on into the next.

“Thank you, God.”