The Priesthood

Catholicism's a tricky subject for me. I've designated myself an ex-Catholic for two years now, and I still get uncomfortable when my mom refers to me as an atheist, mostly because of the disdain she has for the word. Mind you, I've actually been to church more than her in the past two years, but I think my faltering faith kind of hurt her because I was, to certain family members, destined to become a priest.

And it almost happened. From age six to sixteen, that was the goal. Church, the bible, the ritual mass--it mesmerized me. The two priests I grew up listening to every Sunday, Fr. Child and Fr. Don, were the two nicest men I'd ever met. They helped people. They were unafraid. I alter served for ten years, could recite Mass forward and backward, and chose to learn Latin when I was enrolled in Catholic grad school. On a good day, I can still recite a few prayers.

I think Catholic school is what killed my desire to be a priest. For years, I blindly wanted to do it, not really knowing what it'd entail. The Jesuit education I'd received encouraged hard questions. I began asking them. Were it not for my earning a scholarship (to a Catholic college), I probably would have gone to a seminary and learned the hard way. Instead, I went away to school, started going to Mass on my own, and felt a loss of connection. It just wasn't there anymore. I went without telling anybody for a year. My mom found out when she came to visit, we went to Mass, and I didn't take communion. Once, she told me that I'd come back, and I've heard her use the word "phase" to describe it, but we've never really had a discussion. If she asks what I believe in, I'll quote Whitman and tell her that if I follow that quote, I'll be doing pretty good for myself:

This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants...have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.