A cradle Catholic considers her church
by Stephanie Piper
There's a scene in On The Waterfront where the crusading priest, played by Karl Malden, plants himself in the hold of a cargo ship and delivers a fire-and-brimstone speech about standing up to the forces of evil. Halfway through, the mob bosses start pelting him with garbage. A beer can bounces off his head. Rotten eggs run down his black raincoat. He wipes off the slime and turns up the volume.
When I first saw the film, that scene was the most shocking cinematic moment I had ever experienced. In the world I knew, priests were Olympian figures. The pastor might share a manly laugh with my father in the church vestibule on a Sunday morning or toss a football to the kids on the playground, but everyone understood the boundaries. Priests were set apart. Priests were chosen. Priests were untouchable.
I am a cradle Catholic, raised in the mammoth, sprawling house on the rock that was the church of the 1950s. Vocations to the priesthood and religious life flourished back then; seminaries and convents were bursting at the seams. Parochial schools multiplied to accommodate the baby boom. Uniformed children sat in neat rows, 50 to a classroom, and learned flawless cursive and perfect grammar and the unassailable answer to the vagaries of life here below: Keep the rules, and the rules will keep you.
That was the deal, and it seemed to work as long as the people who made the rules also kept them. When it became clear that some of them did not, the house on the rock began to tremble.
It has been shaken to its foundations in recent weeks, as new cases of abuse by clergy and cover-ups by church authorities are reported daily. Shaken to my own foundations, I alternate between rage and sadness. Some people ask me how I can continue. It's a question I have asked myself, and the answer that keeps coming to me is that I stay in the church because of churches like mine.
My church is a modest brick building named for a pope who reigned briefly and memorably in the early 1960s. John 23rd announced his intention to open the windows and let the fresh air in, and it is fresh air that I breathe each Sunday morning. Mine is a small parish, students and faculty, some families who live nearby, some who drive 30 miles and more. I have seen their children baptized and married. I have helped them bury their dead. They have walked me through the darkest hours of my life. When people are absent, I miss them; there is a visible gap in the circle.
The priests come and go. I've known four pastors, good men with vastly different gifts. The gift they share is an understanding that they are not here to make us holy. We are in this together, all of us flawed, all of us chosen, each of us essential. We bear each other up. We stand against the night. We keep talking, even when we feel too sad to speak. We weep, and begin again. We keep the windows open.
March 28, 2002 * Vol. 12, No. 13
© 2002 Metro Pulse
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