Where I Belong

by Alan Doyle

  The robes we wore were the perfect cloaks for disguising mischief. You could smack, pinch, poke or have a full-on fist fight with the kid sitting next to you, completely out of public view. And we did. Some of the older altar boys got good at dragging their feet on the carpet and electrifying each other during mass. Every once in a while, you’d catch a kid suddenly yelping, which would earn the electrocutee a scowl from the priest, which would cause laughter amongst the others, which would anger the priest even more. It was an endless cycle of forbidden fun.

  Despite all the shagging around, I aced my role and eventually could set up the entire mass before the priest arrived. I poured the wine and water. I placed the hosts on the communion plate. I placed the Bible ribbons on the appropriate pages to mark the readings.

  For some odd reason, one of my favourite tasks was sliding the cardboard numbers that indicated the hymns into the sign on the wooden wall behind the pulpit. I have no explanation for how much satisfaction I took from this. Perhaps my obsession with getting this sign just right added to my disappointment and annoyance the first time Great Big Sea played in downtown Toronto many years later. We were to play a club on Queen Street. When we arrived for sound check in the afternoon, there was a sign with sliding letters that read:

  2NITE FR NFLD

  GREAT BIG SEA

  It was the coolest thing I’d ever seen in my life. We had most certainly “made it.” But when we came back later that night for the show, the wind had blown some letters off the sign, so it read:

  2NITE FR NFLD

  EAT BIG SEA

  Two letters from living the dream—so close to cool.

  At church, once I got the sign right, my next task was to check the PA system and microphones. I’d walk with purpose to the altar and say, “Check, one, two” into both mics. I’d seen people on TV doing this and heard my uncle Ronnie do this into his mic many times at band practice and at concerts. I had no idea what this was supposed to accomplish. I just knew that’s what you did.

  By the time I was a teenager, the thrill of being an altar boy had worn off somewhat, and that’s when my latent curiosity took over yet again. It’s also when the trouble with the Catholic Church started for me. I was not content to serve the mass without understanding why we conducted it.

  One Sunday on the altar during communion, one of the younger altar boys stumbled with the plate of hosts, that is to say the flat little round communion wafers that are given to the parishioners to share in the body of Christ. When the kid tripped, all the other altar boys, including me, giggled. Father Cox’s face went red and angry. After mass, Father Cox did not stay by the door to greet the congregation as he normally did. He was so furious at us that he stormed into the locker room and slammed the door behind him.

  “How dare you boys laugh at the fallen body of Christ!” he whisper-shouted. “The flesh of Our Lord almost got stepped on,” he added while blessing himself with his eyes closed.

  No one answered. I eventually spoke up. “But, Father,” I said. “Isn’t the host just a symbol of Jesus’s body?” All the boys nodded in agreement.

  “No, my sons! The host is not a symbol of the Body of Christ. It is the Body of Christ, transformed in substance by the holy mystery of transubstantiation. And don’t forget it, boys. This is not a laughing matter.”

  He gathered himself by the door, taking a deep breath before leaving. It was the kind of thing an actor would do before walking off stage.

  At Sunday supper, while I reached for the gravy, I asked Mom and Dad, “What’s transubstantiation?”

  “Some kind of railway in Russia, isn’t it?” Dad offered.

  Mom just shook her head. “Alan, my son, why are you asking such an odd question?”

  “Just something the priest said,” I replied and let it go.

  Later that evening, I went across the dirt road to my grandparents’ place. There were usually a lot of people there on Sunday engaging in debate with my ever-spirited grandfather. The chats were often loud enough that you could sneak in and out with the other dozens of grandkids without being noticed. On this day, I needed to get to the back of the living room where my uncle had shelved a complete set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica he’d purchased. I loved those books and used them for school projects all the time. In a pre-internet world in a fishing town that was a hell of a drive to a library, encyclopedias were our Google. I found the volume of T and leafed through until I came across this entry:

  “TRANSUBSTANTIATION, in Christianity, the change by which the substance (though not the appearance) of the bread and wine in the Eucharist becomes Christ’s Real Presence—that is, his body and blood. In Roman Catholicism and some other Christian churches the doctrine, which was first called transubstantiation in the 12th century, aims at safeguarding the literal truth of Christ’s Presence while emphasizing the fact that there is no change in the empirical appearances of the bread and wine.”

  I read the entry six or seven times until I figured it out. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the father was right. Frig. I went to my devout Catholic aunt and asked my question: “Is the host wafer a symbol of the Body of Christ or is it the real thing?”

  “Just a symbol, honey,” she said. “And why are you worried about that anyway? Go run up and down the hill.”

  I asked my uncle Ben the same question. “Just a symbol, b’y. Don’t be so stunned. You knows it’s not real Jesus meat. He died a million years ago or whatever. Go run up and down the hill.”

  Over the following week, I asked several other people my question, and the only person who agreed with the encyclopedia was Mr. Kelly, my school principal. He closed his eyes and smiled. “Oh yes, Alan. That is Jesus in the flesh. It is a wonderful miracle that we get to see every Sunday. Bread and wine becomes flesh and blood while still appearing to be bread and wine. Isn’t it beautiful?”

  He sounded perfectly sure about this. I was not. Moreover, I thought it was kind of gross that we were eating the body of a human being. Wasn’t that some kind of cannibalism or something? And if it was, shouldn’t the priest make sure everybody at mass knew about this real-flesh thing, because almost nobody did?

  All the altar boys went to confession each week, usually at a special student confession session on Wednesdays or Thursdays at the church. When my turn came to confess, I walked into the small room and went through my usual routine. I knew it by rote.

  “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been one week since my last confession. I was disrespectful to my parents again and I lied about my homework again. I punched my brother in the face, but he kind of asked for it. I did not help around the house as much as I should have, according to my sister Kim.”

  Father Cox went about his usual routine as well. “And, Alan, are you truly sorry for these transgressions and do you hope to do better in the future?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  He laid his hand on my head and said some silent prayer. Then, out loud, he asked God to forgive me. After, he waited for a second or two like he was on hold during a call with the bank. He announced, “Alan, you are forgiven these sins. Go now and say ten Hail Marys and ten Our Fathers and do the Stations of the Cross.”

  I blessed myself and said, “Thank you, Father,” the same as I always did.

  But I did not get up as I normally would have and Father Cox must have noticed the pause.

  “Is there something else, my son?”

  “Father,” I ventured. “I looked up that transubstantiation thing in Granda’s encyclopedia.”

  He looked troubled. “Did you? Why did you do that?”

  “Because I was not sure what you meant, I s’pose,” I said.

  “And what did the encyclopedia say?” Father Cox asked.

  “It said the host becomes the real flesh of Christ and is not a symbol.”

  “Yes, Alan. It is a Holy Miracle. Do you doubt it?”

  “No, Father, I suppose I don’t,” I lied, “but I asked some other people this wee
k about this, and I don’t think the congregation understands that the host is not a symbol, Father. I don’t think many people know they are eating real flesh, and I wonder if we should make that clear to everyone.”

  “Don’t you worry about that, Alan. I’m sure everybody knows enough about this miracle.”

  I was growing bolder and more insistent now. “No, Father, that’s just it. They don’t. My principal is the only fella who got it right.”

  “Well, like I said, Alan, you don’t need to worry about that. And we needn’t get all the congregation worked up. You should occupy your time with those ten Hail Marys and Our Fathers and make sure you get all your homework done.”

  “But, Father …”

  He stood up and ushered me out the door.

  I did as I was told. I said my prayers. But as I kneeled, I wondered why Father Cox had not praised me for discovering something that the parish didn’t know. The more I thought about it, the more I wondered why he did not seem pleased with me for looking up transubstantiation in the first place. As a matter of fact, not only did he not praise me, he discouraged me from going any further with my research.

  As I walked along the Stations of the Cross, I continued to wonder what else I was not encouraged to know. What other questions was I not supposed to ask? I looked up at the image of Jesus falling for the second time and wondered what He would make of this. Would He be pissed to learn that I was looking up transubstantiation in the encyclopedia? Would He be cool with it if He suspected His people were confused? For that matter, were we sure that at the Last Supper He really meant for this wine and bread to actually become His flesh and blood? Maybe this was just a way of reminding people that we were supposed to remember His sacrifice for us? Maybe He meant for the host and wine to just be symbols or reminders of His flesh and blood? I was not sure we had this right at all.

  I let this go for a while, and then the weirdest thing of all happened. I started to feel guilty about ever thinking about transubstantiation. Why did I feel guilty? Why did I feel like I had done something wrong when I also knew that I hadn’t? It was really, really strange.

  All through my young, curious Catholic life, I constantly wondered why we were not allowed to ask questions. I remember a conversation in a religion class in Grade 10 between a Sister of Mercy and one of the smarter, nicer girls in my class. The sister told us that birth control and abortion were bad and we should never consider using either method and should actively protest against those who did.

  My classmate raised her hand and politely asked, “Sister, I wonder if you and the priest and the Pope feel this way because most likely none of you will ever be faced with being pregnant or getting someone pregnant?”

  It was a fair and honest question, I thought, and asked in the most respectful manner. I could not wait to hear the learned and thoughtful answer. But no answer came. The sister grabbed the girl by the collar and dragged her, an A student, to the principal’s office. I was gobsmacked. I wanted to march down to the office myself and protest at how badly this girl was being treated. To this day, I am ashamed that I didn’t do just that.

  I really did not enjoy how religion played out in my high school years. I had read the entire King James Bible, but no teacher ever wanted to discuss it. Bernie and I managed to sneak a copy of In God’s Name, a book about a papal assassination, into our rooms and read it in hiding, afraid we’d get in trouble for heresy. And when a high school teacher encouraged me to study religion after I graduated, I actually took the advice. There was still an archaic denominational school system in Newfoundland at the time, and she figured a religious studies degree would help me get a job as a teacher. At Memorial University, I took many courses about the history of Christianity. I finally learned very practical stuff that I’d wanted to know for a long time. Dr. Terry Murphy was one of my favourite religious studies professors. He tried his best to satisfy my curiosity, though my lust for answers was so great that he would limit me to five questions per lecture and kept a tally in the upper right-hand corner of the chalkboard. I’m serious.

  I learned that the King James Bible was only one of many versions. I learned that the biggest developments in Christianity and especially in Catholicism were made by older white men in strong political positions. These men were not divinely proclaimed at all, and in university, I found teachers who would actually say so. I consumed the teachings of Martin Luther, and was amazed that any organization would kick out a fella as smart and devout as him, which is exactly what the Catholic Church did in 1521. Finally, I learned that my wee little town, the town where I was born and raised, was split in half primarily because of some decision some dude made a few thousand years previous and which now, no one there remembered.

  It will be obvious to those of you familiar with the songs I’ve written how much my fascination with religion has influenced my work. Religion has made its way into my lyrics and reflects at times a most uncertain fella who even today has more questions than answers. “Consequence Free” speaks of Catholic guilt and the desire to be rid of it forever. I make reference to my “Catholic conscience” and how it would be amazing to be rid of it.

  The very discussion of it, of course, explains that there still lies in me strong Catholic strains that I am unable or unwilling to shake. Other songs I’ve written seem downright atheist. Only a person who claims not to believe in heaven and hell could write “Straight to Hell,” a tongue-in-cheek look at a musician who’s done a deal with the Devil.

  But right around the same time as I wrote that, I also wrote one of the most spiritual songs of my life. “Something Beautiful” was meant as a hug of a song for a friend whose husband died of cancer at a very young age. It speaks of hope for a better time and place to come.

  I have always insisted that the “Something Beautiful” I’m referring to is life. I wanted my friend to know that her life was not over and that there was so much beauty ahead for her. But I admit that the implications of some kind of afterlife are undeniable.

  Can I still call myself a Catholic? I don’t go to mass or participate in any of the sacraments, nor do I think the gentleman in the massive cool house in Rome is any more or less than the rest of us. But can you really be un-Catholicized? I don’t know. Where I stand right now, I consider myself a religious free agent. I’m more curious than certain about everything.

  Reading this, I would not blame you if you thought I was not a Christian. But I’m not sure that would be accurate either. I’m pretty certain there walked among us a great prophet whose life and teachings are worth abiding. I just have not found a single organized Christian religion that seems to honour that legacy sensibly. I’ve walked through some of the most beautiful and ornate churches and sat through some of the coolest services in the world, and they have never moved me to be more of a believer in any particular faith.

  I would think myself agnostic, but in most cases that is defined as someone who is neither a believer nor a non-believer in an all-powerful god or force. I find the whole notion a little too vague to hang my hat on it.

  I confess to spending some time in my early thirties trying to convince myself that I was an all-out atheist. I’ve read many of the books by some of the foremost atheist thinkers and I acknowledge their logic. It’s hard to argue that believing in a virgin birth requires delusion, not faith. But the one thing that keeps me from accepting atheism is the fact that I find faith a necessary and positive human quality. Note I say “faith” and not “Faith.” I don’t mean Faith in a particular god or creed. Rather, I mean the human quality of faith, of believing in things we cannot see or prove, faith in things we are not certain will ever transpire, yet we pursue them, faith in feats and accomplishments that might never happen.

  A mountain climber is not certain he’ll be able to make it to the top of the mountain safely. But he believes in himself and has faith that he can accomplish it. Without this faith, would he even try? A shipwreck survivor has no idea if she will be rescued, but despite all e
vidence to the contrary, her faith propels her to survive each day till the ship sails round the corner. Athletes are moved by faith all the time. Sick people look to faith to help them heal. Inventors have faith that inventions which work in theory will work in practice. This small-f faith is such a big part of human achievement, and it almost never gets addressed in the atheist teachings.

  I cannot tell you how often faith has gotten me somewhere I would never have come to without it. I have faith that if I am good to the people I am fortunate enough to meet that they will be good to others, and to me. I have faith that if I am a positive person, it will pay off much more than if I’m not. I have faith that if I give myself fully to every performance, the audience, no matter how big or small, will appreciate it and this will lead to more opportunities for me to work again.

  This kind of small-f faith helped me get in Great Big Sea and it is one of the biggest reasons Great Big Sea still sails strong to this day. As I type this paragraph, I am at Pearson Airport passing a twelve-hour delay that was completely caused by the error of an airline employee. Many folks would have freaked out at this employee. I chose not to. Instead, I politely opted to tell her I’d make the most of the delay and use the time to write a chapter for my book even though what I really wanted was to get on a plane with my family.

  I have faith that this positive use of a seemingly poor bit of luck will pay off in the end. I have decided that atheism is too cold and lonely a pillow on which to lay my head.

  So, I restate my place in the world as a religious free agent with more questions than answers.

  I’ll keep looking.

  Me aboard the Dublin ferry, heading to the Mother Country on my first trip off the island of Newfoundland, around 1988.