I turned into a drinker almost overnight, and among my partying friends were some Catholics who didn’t seem to live by the teachings of their Church. I wasn’t sure why they bothered to call themselves Catholic when they didn’t take their faith seriously. Though I didn’t believe in God and disagreed with the Catholic Church myself, I was struck by their lack of intellectual honesty.
A Different Way to Live
Late in my freshman year, I began dating a nice Catholic boy. Early in our relationship, Jon asked me what I believed. “Nothing,” I had to say. “I’m sorry.” I thought he’d drop me immediately, but when one is eighteen and falling in love, such differences don’t always matter. Jon was a serious Catholic who went to Mass, prayed, talked about God, got excited about the pope visiting the United States, and went to confession. That last fact confounded me because I couldn’t get him to do anything that seemed confess-able. He placed firm limits on our physical relationship, boundaries I had no choice but to respect. He sacrificed personal desires and pleasure for the sake of his faith. I was stunned by his fortitude.
While I was dating Jon, I was also friends with Stephen, another Catholic. Stephen was a quintessential “old soul.” Although he was only a couple years older than the rest of us in the theater department, he was a grandfather figure. He took an interest in everyone’s well-being, chided those who didn’t passionately throw everything into “our work” (theater majors can be grandiose), and doled out advice on a regular basis.
Sometimes over coffee, Stephen soliloquized to me in subdued, mystical tones about God and about the future of my relationship with Jon. Peering over the tops of his glasses, Stephen assured me that even though I was not Catholic he held me in the highest esteem and thought I was “worthy” of Jon. But he insisted I would have to change if I wanted the relationship to be long-term and serious. Jon, he frowned, shaking his head, could never commit to a woman who didn’t believe in God. I should have been insulted, but I was amused and touched by Stephen’s concern. In spite of his blunt assessment of me, his odd brand of respect shone through. His “spiritual direction” fell on mostly deaf ears, but I was making mental notes.
Jon and Stephen were also friends with Kim. Kim was tall, thin, and beautiful, with a sunny smile and an even sunnier disposition. Why did she have to be Catholic, too? I hated her for it. Kim was kind, virtuous, esteemed by Stephen as some sort of Madonna, and was a close friend of my Catholic boyfriend. Standing next to her I felt like a dirty sneaker kicked too close to a gleaming glass slipper. Sometimes at parties, Kim nursed one beer all night while brushing off the crude comments of flirtatious drunks with a blushing, “Oh, you guys, you don’t mean that.” I wanted to kill her. I made fun of her, but I also made a mental note: There’s a different way to live.
Jon eventually transferred to another school, and we broke up; I knew we would never survive long-distance, but I filed Jon’s goodness away in the Catholic registry I was subconsciously compiling. I’d certainly seen hypocrisy that landed in the debit column, but I credited Jon, Stephen, and Kim with showing me that serious, religious young adults who lived what they believed were not mythical creatures. Such a life was possible. Not for me, I thought, but it’s possible.
Their Actions, Their Impact
Over the next few years, my drinking increased and depression worsened. I quit school, planning to move back home to get my life together, but my parents had just accepted jobs in another state. I didn’t want to move, so I was on my own, and fumbled my way through the next few years. I took an entry-level job at a marketing company and worked my way up the corporate ladder. That led me to the next set of Catholics I would encounter, women who surprised me with unbidden acts of bravery.
My management position required occasional travel to trade shows. On one trip, my colleague Caroline and I didn’t have a meeting until late Sunday morning. She rose early, showered, dressed in her crisp navy blue suit, and made a phone call. Through the haze of my hangover I asked what she was doing. “I’m going to Mass,” she said simply, pulling back the curtain to keep an eye out for her cab. I had nothing to say as I burrowed back under the covers. I wanted to mock her but suddenly nothing about what she was doing seemed funny. She was in control; she stood for something. I felt a glimmer of respect.
Sometime after that, one of my employees, a single woman, became pregnant. Martha told me that she was Catholic. An abortion was not an option. She would have the baby and put it up for adoption. I was stunned. “An abortion would be so simple,” I said. “Why let one mistake ruin your life?” I reminded her that both her mistake and her choice could remain private. That’s what Roe v. Wade was all about. But she was steadfast. Her love for the child she carried reached a place deep inside me. I was shaken. What did I believe in that deeply?
By the time I was in my late twenties, I admitted to myself that I was a desperately unhappy woman. Years of drinking hadn’t erased any of the pain I’d battled, and though I couldn’t imagine continuing down the same road, I didn’t know where else to turn. I had no belief system, nothing I could cling to in a crisis. I lacked a cohesive philosophy of life, but I realized one thing: I wanted a rock. I yearned for the strength and bravery I had seen in others.
When I pondered what it would be like to have a concrete set of beliefs instead of the fragile mosaic I’d created from the sand of secular culture, I considered the lives of people I’d known. How did other people live? What had I learned from that subconscious registry I’d compiled?
There was Jack, with his Catholic upbringing. He’d taken a dramatic detour from his faith in his twenties, but eventually returned to the Catholic Church. From the moment we became friends, Jack was there for me, no matter how removed I was from the faith and morality he embraced. I thought of Jack’s mother, Loretta, her gathering-in of the lost, the family’s acceptance of strange, heathen me. There was Jon, solid, unwavering. Stephen and Kim. I remembered Caroline, calling a cab from a hotel room as I slept off too many Bloody Marys. And Martha. Oh, the thought of Martha made my heart hurt. Having her baby no matter the cost in time, dollars, or peer ridicule. Martha touched me at a level so deep, I didn’t know I could feel that way anymore.
Other pictures sprang to mind, too: the mockery of classmates when I realized I was “nothing.” The manipulation of someone I’d trusted, attempts to trick me into salvation by pizza. Catholics who slept around on Friday nights and slipped into pews on Sunday morning, as if life was a box of tidy compartments that didn’t touch one another.
In the trial for religion, I’d filed away all sorts of testimony. I’d known genuine practitioners and transparent posers. At various times, I’d been hurt, angered, repelled, indifferent, and attracted.
I knew now what I wanted.
I had been watching people, consciously or subconsciously, all my life. I had tallied points without knowing that’s what I was doing. In the final analysis, the witness of people whose faith was honest, sturdy, and real swayed me. They had faith that they openly lived, faith real enough to change lives, as it was changing mine. These witnesses had faith that challenged and sometimes scared them, made them blush, put them in positions of ridicule. They stood tall and held fast, and their faith in God was so radiant it couldn’t be dimmed, contained, or compartmentalized.
That was the faith that shone on me, made me squint and blink, and initially look away as it blinded me with its oddity, until one day when I realized something about these people. Theirs was a light I wanted to soak up. I wanted that kind of brilliant conviction to burn away my pain and transform my soul into something dazzling and new.