How I Broke Up With the Catholic Church
My grandmother was an Olympic movie-theatre-snack-sneaker: king-sized candies from the dollar store, entire two-gallon bags of home popped popcorn, and once a foot-long Italian sub that we split while watching The Lion King. “Snacks at the movie theatre are too expensive,” she’d say, and I agreed. I have not bought concessions since.
Then, she’d bring me to church where I’d bide my time until Communion. I’d walk with her down the aisle when it was our pew’s turn to go. She’d place her left hand over her right, the priest would say, “Body of Christ,” she would say, “Amen,” and then she’d pretend to eat it while Father Someone made the sign of the cross on my forehead with the blade of his thumb. Once we rounded the corner past the blood of Christ, I’d lag behind to veil her hands while she cracked the wafer down the perforated crucifix middle and handed me half. I’d kneel next to her and pray while trying not to make obvious chewing motions.
I had not been properly catechized to receive that sacrament, but Sittoo didn’t care. It was very no-Christian-left-behind of her and it made me feel like a rock star.
I had a habit of getting into screaming matches with my CCD teacher en route to becoming a confirmed Catholic. The topic of gay marriage came up the same day that Mr. M told me my parents couldn’t receive communion at confirmation because, while technically Catholic, they were divorced.
“It’s man, woman, and child, it’s a holy trinity. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. It’s the same thing!”
“Woman, woman, sperm bank! It’s still three! You don’t get to pick which trinity is holy!”
I told my mother I wasn’t down with committing to forever with a religion that alienated everyone I loved the most. She said that I should as insurance, should I fall for someone who cared about getting married in a church. “It’s more of a political, bureaucratic thing,” she said, and I went through with the sacrament.
Sittoo was a woman of faith. She crossed herself when she passed cemeteries and only stopped going to church when she was too sick to drive. Shortly after, she got too sick to leave her house.
As part of her end-of-life care, my mother had arranged for Father L to come to the house every Monday afternoon.
Father L had been the priest at my first communion, and after taking a sabbatical to work with my mother’s school district teaching Spanish, he was now in my grandmother’s home giving her last rites.
On his first visit, he asked my mother, “Are you still at St. Joseph’s?”
“No, we stopped going when Aliee got confirmed,” she said. “This was just really important for her,” and gestured towards my grandmother’s sleeping body.
Father L was the priest at Sittoo’s funeral. I sat in the front pew of the church she used to take me to as a kid. I ran out of tissues before the responsorial psalm finished.
He had very warm, specific words to say about my family: how we all truly cared for each other, the love that was present in the house, how Sittoo was a good Christian woman.
After his homily, he paused before launching into the Liturgy of the Eucharist, something that typically required minimal preamble. He explained that the body and blood of Christ, while some of us may partake in communion in our individual churches, was only for active and practicing Catholics, and you’d best forget about it if you weren’t even Christian to begin with. I watched him avoid making eye contact with the heathens in the front pew that had been watching her die for the past three months. It was abundantly clear that my family and I were not worthy, as we had already confessed to him our lapsed faith.
(Technically we all weren’t worthy. There’s a whole prayer dedicated to telling us exactly how unworthy we all are.)
He made brief eye contact with me, then closed his eyes to intone the prayer in minor chords as if to say, “I’m sorry, I didn’t make the rules, mea culpa.”
Father L knows how Ehid women deal with death. We preemptively grieve like an elephant herd; we form protective circles around our ailing, touch them gently, and it makes us all a little more OK with dying. We take on caregiving like another full-time job. Recipes for rice and knitting patterns are learned for preservation. We joke to keep laughing and laugh to keep from crying, which happens quite often. We pray in passing, in flippant throwaway sentences, each time we change an adult diaper, upon the discovery of dry shampoo, and when we invite a priest into our home every week and offer him leftovers.
However, this was not good enough, so said the Catholic Church.
Nothing feels good about triple dog daring a priest into being a Christian, especially when you’re both unsure about what that word means, exactly. When I got to the front of the line, I placed my left hand over my right and looked Father L in the eye. He knew I didn’t have a place at the front of the altar as much as he didn’t have a place policing mortal sins of grieving granddaughters.
As a final act, Father L raised the sacrament above our heads and said, “Body of Christ,” and I said “Amen.” I watched something in him slacken after I forced his hand. I felt like a bully, like I had taken his lunch money.
I whispered a quick, “Thank you,” and made my way back to the pew, past the blood of Christ, kneeled and talked to my grandmother for however many seconds I estimated it would take in prayer to be absolved of my spiritual transgressions.
I have not had communion or been to mass since.
