See, I wasn’t just “raised Catholic.” My family would never countenance “potluck Catholicism,” the term applied to those parishioners who only attended mass at Christmas and Easter and who were perceived as picking and choosing what portions of the doctrine suited them. And I had loved my religion. I attended Catholic grade school, and when that was done, I embraced everything I could outside of mass: I attended Confraternity of Christian Doctrine classes on Wednesdays; I helped clean up the bingo parlor every Sunday night (the smell of sour donuts and burned coffee to this day can bring me straight back to that old gymnasium); I counseled at the church’s summer camp; and I was president of our Catholic Youth Organization. I even sat on the state CYO board and helped plan the annual youth conference. I was Catholic.
And so, on that morning when everything seemed upside down, when my heart was broken and my soul shaking, I went to the one place I believed could help me find my way through this terrifying maze of reality, or where, at least, I could find comfort. I prayed. I sat in that soaringly empty church and prayed. I cried all the tears that still somehow remained in me and I begged to feel safe again. And when I was all prayed out, I stood and found my way to the rectory. I thought surely someone there could help me.
It was early, the clock just reaching past seven. Morning mass had yet to begin. Even I, in my foggy, mournful teenage state, knew it was too early to knock on that door—on any door, for that matter. But this place—these people—had always had the answers before, and I was desperate for some now. So I knocked.
Father Emil answered the door in the humor you would expect, though honestly, he was never in what one would call a “good” mood. In my experience, Father Emil wasn’t at his strongest as a priest of the people—at least not to those of us under the age of crotchety. I admit I was a bit intimidated when he was the one to answer the door; he had been with our parish less than a handful of years, and I didn’t know him all that well. In fairness to him, though, he listened patiently as I stood on the stoop pleading my case, asking all the questions he could not answer: the whys and the hows and most especially the what-nexts. It seemed the world insisted on continuing to spin. How was that possible? How could I keep up?
And Father Emil, calmly and quietly, put his hand on my shoulder. “Child,” he said, “there is only one thing left to do: pray for his soul. He has committed a mortal sin.”
And then he closed the door.
If he had said to me in that moment, “I will pray with you, and God will help you through this sadness,” I think my whole life might have been different. I used to wonder: What if he had taken me in to pray? What if he had offered any comfort at all, if he had shown me the compassion I had always associated with my church? When I look back, that moment is such a crossroads, where a small breeze might have been able to blow me back on my familiar course, even if just for a while. Instead, as the door to the rectory clicked into place, something inside me also closed. The world tilted and blurred, and I found myself sitting on the cold cement steps outside, looking with new eyes at what surrounded me.
I envisioned the years I had spent in that place. I remembered the Easter egg hunts on the green, perfectly manicured lawn, in which filling your basket was more a contest in speed than a test of your skill in discovery; the midnight masses on Christmas Eve, when the windows of the church glowed magically in the dark from the candles lit inside; the joy of the acoustic mass, where I sang as loud as I wanted without worrying who could hear my not-so-wonderful voice; the All Saints’ Days when, as young children, my fellow students and I dressed up as saints in all manner of sheets, cardboard wings, and giant paper pope hats to parade across the parking lot between cars from the school to the open doors of the church. One by one, my entire lifetime’s worth of memories so far wrapped themselves up and moved to a distant part of my heart.
Father Emil was right, of course, according to old-school Catholic doctrine. In that moment, however, I realized that Catholicism was no longer my doctrine. The God I believed in, the God I had thought existed, was merciful and kind. He was meant to love unconditionally. How could I possibly kneel to worship at the feet of a God who would turn away someone whose heart was broken? How could He condemn my friend for breaking under the weight of a world God himself created? I reeled under the sudden realization that the answers I had found at St. Mary’s weren’t the ones I had sought.
I understood then that if the world would insist on continuing to spin, I would have to make the decision to live as it did so. And if that were the case, I decided, I would need to find a new path to walk along in the indifferently spinning world. This one would no longer work.
I slowly turned away from the building and I left it all behind.
I spent the next few years gradually letting go of many of the things I had once believed. I went through a type of mourning, bidding good-bye to traditions I admit missing to this day. There is something imminently magical about the ritual of Catholicism, the mystery and ceremony of it. Is there anything more transcendent than midnight mass on Christmas Eve? Even after all the years that have passed, I can still close my eyes and feel what it was like in those wee hours of the morning, carols wafting through the great space of the cathedral: the sensation of something surreal happening, the great anticipation of the dawn and all it could—would—bring, the feeling of standing at the precipice of something beautiful and pure.
I longed to find another path whose rituals would speak to me as those moments had, and I tried to come to terms with the fact that while I held dear the moments I’d spent standing in those places, raising my voice in praise, I no longer truly believed in any of it. I began the painful work of sorting through what I believed because it was what I was taught and what I believed because it felt right. It was a messy process.
Part of that process was a sudden and overwhelming feeling of loneliness. I had lived my life up until then accompanied by an omniscient father figure who constantly watched over me, someone who had a plan for my life in its entirety and who never left me. If He happened to be occupied, I had the Holy Ghost or Jesus himself to turn to. And if They were also busy with other things, I still had a legion of angels and a host of saints to call on. I was brought up to believe I was never truly alone, and so I hadn’t been. In my head and in my heart, I had found comfort in knowing I had my own personal saintly squad. Now, like being unable to clap Tinker Bell back to life, I found that without the faith to power this mighty host, they dropped away. I stood truly alone for the first time.
I wanted to find comfort, to find a place in my world where I would feel less alone, even if that meant having to learn how to be at peace with my own company. I began the difficult process of truly looking inside myself. I needed to know my own heart in order to move forward; I needed to figure out how to live without a legion behind me and to find the power of protection and security I had always sought from those angels and saints within myself. I felt as if I were standing at the bottom of an infinitely tall mountain. Yet slowly, I began my climb, reminding myself that even the great Mississippi River starts, somewhere, as a body of water just steps across. I tried to make at least a temporary peace with my lonely heart.
In doing so, I became annoyingly curious. You know how you’re not supposed to talk religion or politics in civilized company? Oh my lord, I was so uncivil. I asked everyone what they believed and why. Tell me! I couldn’t get enough. I borrowed and bought an endless stream of books. I revisited the Bible; I read parts of the Torah and the Koran. I became acquainted with what seemed like endless numbers of Eastern philosophies.
It didn’t take me long to realize that the spiritual path I had come from and its closest relatives weren’t for me. While I adored the rich myth and allegory of the Abrahamic faiths, their larger organizational structures lost me every time. I had a hard time believing, really believing, that there was something outside of myself in charge. And I couldn’t come to terms with the notion that there was a select group of people who had more right to call on