Part 1

Growing up Catholic takes its toll on a person. In the Catholic church, children are born already marked with sin—the sins of Adam and Eve. People can’t enter heaven unless they are baptized. 

Honestly, that’s a heavy burden for a child to bear. Or a parent.

At the age of 65, I am looking back on my childhood, wondering how I got to be where I am today, and one force looms strong: the Catholic Church. 

I am constantly dealing with feelings of not being good enough, that I should be doing better, or that I’m letting people down. The weight can be oppressive. Where does this come from?

After 12 years of Catholic school, the first eight years with the Daughters of Charity, and then four years with the Dominican nuns, it’s a wonder I’ve survived this long.

As a young child, being told I was born in sin is pretty traumatic. No wonder so many people walk around feeling “not good enough.” How can you be good enough when before you’ve learned to walk or talk, you are labeled as a sinner? 

As a child, we were honored to receive the body and blood of Jesus Christ at our first holy communion. It was to be celebrated. 

But think of this from a child’s perspective: eating the body and drinking the blood of Jesus? The son of God? Horrific. It’s the stuff nightmares are made out of.

Then, every Friday for years, we have to go into a dark box and confess our sins. And let me tell you, we had to have sinned. I remember kneeling in the pews, trying to think of all my sins. I snuck extra cookies from the kitchen when no one was looking, or I said something mean about my sister, or I stepped on a bug or something. We had to confess to the man behind the screen. The man who we perfectly knew from going to church every Sunday. What must he have been thinking? Listening to a child confess? 

“10 Hail Mary’s, and don’t do it again.”

“Say the rosary, and tell your mother what you’ve done.”

“Is that ALL you’ve done? Are you absolutely sure?”

I was shaking when I left the confessional, but I did my penance and hoped for the best.

The worst was Lent, when we had to do the Stations of the Cross to remember how Jesus had suffered for our sins. He had to carry the cross of the hill. He had nails hammered into his hands and feet. He wore a crown of thorns. To look at the open sores, the blood, the pain on his face was anguishing. No wonder I couldn’t sleep at night. And all for sneaking a few extra cookies. 

If you read the bible, Jesus sounds like a normal guy. Good at storytelling, public speaking, and fishing. He got along with people and seemed to be very accepting of all types. He was kind to his mother. He was a bit of a magician, walking on water and raising the dead. He also had premonitions but didn’t necessarily listen to them. He took his own path. He wasn’t a bad sort of fellow. He had good friends for the most part… but there was one bad apple. 

But Jesus was on a mission, and he fulfilled it. He didn’t have all sorts of strange rules, like no meat on Fridays or only hanging out with celibate people. He spoke directly to God and didn’t have to have any priests running interference. None of his friends wore white collars… they mostly all wore sandals. 

How did we get from Jesus to where we are today? Was it Vatican II? Should we have stuck with the Latin mass? Should we have kept guitars out? Who knows?

What I do know is that, for me, the Catholic church is far away from Jesus Christ. All the made-up rules that serve to benefit a few at the cost of many aren’t right.

Pope Francis has a long road to travel to bring the Catholic church into a state of normalcy if that’s even possible. 

For me, I’ve moved on. But in trying to come to terms with my own limitations, I can see where the Catholic church, or even my mother, instilling the views of the Catholic church, have done damage.

The good point is to see this and course correct. Not to let the old ways limit or restrain my future potential. My job is to release the shackles of the past and step into the future as my best possible self. 

After giving birth to three beautiful children, I reject the idea of original sin. 

After reading and hearing about the travesties brought about by priests, I know there must be a more normal way. 

How can these men advise parents when they have never witnessed their children and wives suffer? It’s like my childless brother giving me parental advice. I, too, had perfect advice for parents before I had kids, and then I better understood the challenges. 

The way of Jesus is acceptance. Understanding. Tolerance. The Catholic church needs to move more in that direction to find new members. The church was never lenient with those they found guilty of crimes. Why is the church so lenient on its own when it has so violated the trust and faith of believers?

Just as I go on my personal growth journey to unshackle from the bonds of the past, so must the church move forward. 

The Impact of Nuns

I was ten years old when I walked into the girls’ bathroom at St. Vincent de Paul grammar school and saw Sister Lucy, in her crisp blue habit, walk out of a bathroom stall. 

She smiled when she saw me, then walked on by. 

It had never occurred to me before that nuns were normal people who wore special clothes. I didn’t realize they had to go to the bathroom like everyone else. It was mind-boggling to me. 

I grew up watching Sally Fields as The Flying Nun, but she was special because she could fly. Julia Andrews tried to be a nun in The Sound of Music, but she failed, probably because she was normal. 

Nuns were different. They wore elaborate habits and sensible shoes, prayed a lot, lived in community with other nuns, and had a different life. 

In The Trouble with Angels, Haley Mills tormented the nuns at St. Francis Academy, an all-girls high school.  

These portrayals of nuns were significant but didn’t rival my own day-to-day experiences. 

Nuns with rulers were used to frighten the children by cracking them over their knuckles (akin to Doris Unbridge forcing the kids of Hogwarts to write with pens that inscribed the words into their skin). 

It was a time before teachers weren’t allowed to touch the children, and the nuns were responsible for building obedient students with proper character.

Some may have been kind, but an undercurrent of terror ruled. 

Public humiliation was the norm. We had star charts, which were fine for all the kids with the gold stars but a nightmare for the rest of us, never rising to meet our potential. 

I guess if you were a nun, you couldn’t be fired for doing a lax job. Sister Martha let us watch the Giants baseball games when they were televised on KTVU Channel 2. Those were lucky days, which didn’t end well if the Giants lost. She was a die-hard fan. She also taught us music, which was singing to songs she banged out on the piano. She always asked me just to mouth the words.

One time, two of the nuns got into a fight right in front of us. Sister Lucy was very upset that Sister Paul had gone into her cabinet and left it a mess. It was an amazing sight to watch two “holy people” have it out with each other. 

When I was 25 years old, standing at the bus stop around the corner from my apartment, I glanced over and saw Sister Ernestine. But she wasn’t wearing her habit. I went up and spoke to her, “Hello, Sister Ernestine! How are you?”

“My name is Truth,” she said.

“Truth?” 

“Yes, I am no longer in the convent, and my real name is Truth.”

We rode the bus downtown. She now worked in an office as a secretary. She lived with a man. She said the convent had changed, and she no longer wanted to be a part of it. She had been there when it was uncovered, probably by her, that one particular priest was doing nasty things with the boys. The church wasn’t all it was supposed to be. 

I saw her several times after that, but I kept forgetting to call her Truth. 

Sister Celeste also left the nunnery. She had been one of my favorite high school nuns. I don’t know why she left. Seeing her in street clothes carrying a Louis Vitton purse was funny. 

Nuns don’t wear habits much anymore. There aren’t that many nuns. Most Catholic schools have lay teachers. 

The Catholic church didn’t value the work of the women to keep the church going. The women were always kept in the background. They couldn’t be priests. They couldn’t consecrate the Eucharist. There were so many rules created by men. 

Now that some of the negative patterns of the Catholic church have been uncovered,  reform is possible. But too many people cling to tradition over progress, to rules that were made for not the best reasons. 

My great-uncle was a priest who served on the front lines in WWII. Only Catholic priests were allowed there because they had to give the dying and dead men last rites so they could get to heaven. He told many interesting stories of his time serving in the Army. One story was how the nuns in Italy survived the war by washing the soldiers’ uniforms and how he smuggled them food when they couldn’t get any. He held the nuns in high regard because his sister kept his parish going back in the States. 

Nuns were never treated as equals in the church. Their numbers have dwindled. Most of the nuns now are quite old.

The lack of respect for the work the nuns, did and do left them feeling underserved and underappreciated. They have dedicated their lives to something different now—the Catholic church as a gap in service. The younger generations won’t know or appreciate what the nuns did for generations of children and in serving in hospitals as well. 

The evolution of the Catholic church continues.