The Morbid Curiousity of Prostitutes, redux

In a recent email, I was asked to share more catholic school stories, so here is a re-post from another site:

I grew up on a farm that's been in our family since the mid 1800's. My great-great grandfather arrived here from Germany, bought a hundred acres in 1847,built a few houses, and the family has been there ever since. Growing up, my brother and I had free reign of pastures, streams, ponds, and forest. We had more than a lot of people could ever dream of.

For the first several years, before my formal schooling began, I took it all for granted. It just was. But then I was enrolled in catholic school. It was there that I learned that God had made everything. The trees, the deer, the fields, the lakes, the sky. Everything.

I was very, very impressed by God.

One day, after school, I remember running through the fields, rolling down a hill, jumping up, and breathelessly yelling "I love God!". I was seven, and many would interpret this as my first religious experience. However, during a recent existential crisis, while questioning everything I knew and believed to be true, i told my mom this story. She recalled that was the day I had led my toddler brother into the hayfield and left him there, stranded, in yet another one of my many attempts to regain full control of the household. So, she didn't see it so much as a religious experience as it was a victory dance.

They did eventually find him... just for the record...

In addition to learning that God made everything, you learn other very important things in catholic school, especially as you approach the time in which you will be making some of your first holy sacraments. I took this incredibly seriously, because I loved God and everything he had made very very much. So, when anticipating my weekly visit to the confessional after receiving sacrament #2 (confession), I made sure that each week I would have something to talk about. If it made God happy to forgive people, I wanted him to be giddy with joy over forgiving me.

Next came the sacrament of first holy communion. While all christian denominations consider this sacred, Catholics take it to a whole other level. They believe that the bread and wine actually become jesus' body and blood. Now, when you are learning about this as a third grader, the first thing you learn is that the sacristy is sacred, and only the priest can go into it, because that is where jesus' body and blood is.

Whoa! The one thing you should NOT tell a defiant, god loving, farm raised 9 year old is don't go in that, jesus is in there.

I HAD to get in there.

For about a week I considered my options, and after carefully obeserving the playground monitors each day at recess, I settled on the "distract and run" tactic. With proper speed, I could detach myself from the group fight i started, run across the playground, and get into the church.

It was flawless in plan and execution. Trembling with awe and anticipation, I approached the darkened altar, (which was immense when you are four feet tall.) It was so quiet, and so holy feeling. Mary staring at me from one corner, St. John from the other. They were encouraging me, I could tell by the look in their painted eyes. The lingering incense made me dizzy, and there was an extra special lightheaded feeling because in mere seconds, I was going to see Jesus!
I approached the never-to -be -opened -by -a -non -priest sacristy, slowly pulled back the curtain, closed my eyes, and opened the door...

...i could hardly wait!...

Eyes OPEN!

WTF!!!!

EMPTY. Completely freaking empty!

At this moment, as I stood speechless, trembling now not with awe but with full fledged 9 year old rage, Sister Rosalia and Sister Alice Marie entered the church. As they pulled me from the alter, I informed them that Father Bartley was a liar, and that I was in no uncertain terms pissed about the divine betrayal I had just experienced. OK, I did not actually use the words "divine betrayal" but the words father, liar, and pissed were used.

I was taken to the principals office, where now several nuns gathered around me, looking very, very stern. The lecture began. The nuns were just flabbergasted at my disobedience.There was talk of hell. There was an emphasis on the direct relationship between hell and morbid curiosity, which apparently I had demonstrated.

Sister Alice Marie asked, "How could a child of such good catholic parents do somethign so vile?"

"MY MOM IS NOT CATHOLIC" I screamed, because i was really pissed now,

"SHE IS PROSTITUTE!!!"

Dead silence. Stone cold silence.

Of course, they knew she was not a prostitute. She was something worse.

She was Protestant.

She was one of the ones that had undermined the authority of the catholic church with their morbid curiousities. Like science, and astronomy, and physics. She and others like her did not believe in the same sacred laws and rituals, yet claimed to believe in god. But they did not believe in the real true god, theirs was a false god. they were misguided and doomed to hellfire. Plus, she was in a lot of trouble for posing as a catholic to get me into the school...

Oh, how the joys of religious abandon can be so quickly dashed. Mere moments earlier I was blissfully ignorant of hell, protestants, false gods, prostitutes, and science. There was one thing and one thing only: god who made everything and who eventually led my parents to find my brother when i left him in the field.

I can say with some certainty that i have never recovered from that day, from that disappointment. But every now and again, at the oddest yet most appropriate time, I'll get that feeling of awe, and I'll catch a whiff of frankincense that comes from out of nowhere, and I'll think to myself, "maybe I was looking in the wrong sacristy..."