My Dad Got Me to a Nunnery
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Communion rail, then descended on bended knee in order to accept the white host (a crisp
paper-thin bread wafer) as the symbolic body of Christ directly on the extended tongue; the
altar boy (no girls allowed) held a palate under the faithful’s chin to catch any tiny morsels from the hosts that might fall. Communion was available only to those whose mortal sins
(the most lamentable of sins) had been forgiven via a formal confession before the priest and
if they fasted prior to Communion for at least three hours and drank nothing, other than water,
for at least one hour. Everyone knew about those very few not rising to join the Communion
line—they most likely had big bad sins (murder, rape, adultery, ate meat on Friday, touched
the host …). Today, none of these indiscretions keep the faithful from accepting the body of
Christ. All are welcome to receive. Whether you be you sinful or righteous, you may now
take the Communion host in your own hand (a mortal sin back then), from either a priest or a
lay person (male or female)—even if you had bacon and eggs just before Mass. Today, just
about everyone attending Mass takes Communion. The heaviness of sin vanished.
Not all masses were equivalent, although they all contained the indispensable Introit,
Epistle, and Gospel. Some masses were a really big deal: like “high” masses: three
big ones come to mind to qualify as a high mass service. That’s three very tall lighted candles
to the left and right of the altar. These occasions were Christmas, Easter, and the feast of
Christ the King; there were undoubtedly others, like having a high-ranking visiting priest as
guest to say Mass. Those visiting priests were usually hooded missionaries from countries
like Myanmar and Haikou Macau—countries that we never heard of. I think they brought
their own colorful Mass vestments, since I had never seen those colors on Father Jalbert.
St. Louis Home hosted a solemn procession of religious leaders who came to our
convent to present an actual relic —a very tiny piece of wood—from the real cross of Jesus
Christ. I don’t think St. Louis got to keep it permanently—just a sort of traveling show, I suspect. Super holy!!! Our convent also served as host to a traveling Virgin Mary statue
from Mexico. This one had a blue halo with blinking lights all around. Many people carrying
a rosary the size of a Beluga whale through our playground added to the pageantry of that
occasion. We all loved witnessing these rare but most holy events.
Masses were pretty much routine events, except those designated as a high mass. The
high mass required that we light six tall candles, that the singing nuns perform their well
rehearsed hymns to an overpowering organ. There was, of course, the obligatory sermon
reserved for a high mass. Sure, Christmas and Easter were the biggest celebrations and the
most cheerful, but the Feast of Christ the King struck a high note, too. High mass for Christ
the King feast day meant that the priest’s red and white chasuble (the silk outer vestment and
mantle worn over the rest of his sacred attire that carried spiritual symbols)
would be especially colorful with Jesus Christ’s mug shot staring at all as put on view via the
priest’s back. Lots to sing about on those euphoric “high mass” days. All other masses were
“low” mass, a smaller two-candle affair—rarely a sermon, no music, no singing nuns, nothing
special, but quite short, a pleasing 20-30 minutes maximum.
The Catholic faithful could not be late for Mass nor could they leave early. There
were rules, to be sure, but there was wiggle room, too. If one arrived before the reading of the
Gospel (about five or ten minutes after the start of Mass), that would count as full attendance.
If one left Mass no earlier than the final blessing (two or three minutes before the official end
of Mass), that, too, would still be acceptable for attendance purposes. A mortal sin could be
avoided by following the rules of attendance at Mass. While we attended at Church masses, there were certain behaviors and rules we needed to
adhere to such as silence, prayer, and keeping focused on the good Lord. Everyone, without
exception, was required to attend mass with their own missal. While we were required to
attend Church masses, there were certain behaviors and rules we also needed to adhere to such
as silence, prayer, and keeping focused on the good Lord. Everyone, without exception, was
required to attend mass with his own missal. So ingrained was this indispensable tool in our
lives that I have for all these years kept that 1957 missal and its “treasury of prayers”. Its
leather cover and red edged sheets, besides a red ribbon strung as a page marker, served to
contain all the requisite prayers, gospels, and scriptural recitations. The missal also offered
lots of guidance printed in italics for the faithful to follow. I suppose the missal also
provided us with an opportunity to read something, anything, to accelerate the paassage of
monotonous narrations from Scripture. and the sacred but dull rites before us. The mass
provided loyal Catholics lots of aerobic movement, too, directed by a nun at the rear of the
chapel. Each of us stood, sat, or kneeled, depending on the cue count clacker given by the
nun’s “clicker,” seemingly consisting of two small pieces of hardwood struck against each
other. I recall one time seeing a nun holding a different kind of clicker, probably as the result
of having misplaced her original one; it was a Halloween frog clicker made of tin, engineered
to evoke the grunt of a frog. When we heard that “ribit” sound, we surreptitiously giggled.
Surely, that nun must not have thought we would notice the difference. How silly.
Ash Wednesday was a special occasion for a low mass, the more informal and shorter
mass. It took place on the first day of Lent—forty days before Jesus Christ’s resurrection from the dead and into Heaven (otherwise known as Easter). Ash Wednesday was somber
day, almost as much as was Good Friday (Crucifixion Day). During the forty days preceding
Easter, all the religious icons around the chapel were shrouded with a purple covering. During
Lent, we could not see any of the images of the Stations of the Cross, nor the faces of Jesus,
Mary, or Joseph. I think that during those forty days, the nuns used to clean those statues up
with divinely inspired dexterity because I knew that on Easter Sunday, those statues were
polished just like a Marine’s spit-shined shoe.
We paid attention to the Stations of the Cross mostly on Good Friday—a very somber day.
That was the day Christ died for our sins, and the nuns taught us how to be grateful for that.
Jesus didn’t have to get killed for us, but he did. The Stations of the Cross served as a good
walk-through of the twelve segments of Jesus’s experiences with those responsible for
carrying out his death sentence, Pontius Pilate, and Mary Magdalene, the lady who wiped his
bloody face. I was always touched by these sequences of events. My older sister Mary Ann
reminded me that “Everyone cried for Jesus” when we walked through the Stations of the
Cross on the weekend before Easter.
The rites of Catholicism governed virtually all aspects of our time at St. Louis Home.
Being Catholic commanded that there were non-negotiable beliefs and practices that we were
to abide by. No exceptions were made for Peter, the Protestant with whom I
was a tight friend
during our stay at St. Louis. We, like Peter and his brothers Mark and Jon, abstained from
meat every Friday, to conform to our nuns’ obsequiousness to the Pope’s rule back then. No,
siree, no meat on Fridays—not even for Peter, Mark, and Jon. After all, everyone at St. Louis, except for Peter and his brothers, were Catholic. So, they participated as well as they could.
Naturally, Peter and company attended many masses, benedictions, sermons, Catholic Bible
studies, and prayer recitations. Like us, they had to recite the question and answer passages
from the green Baltimore Catechism. Like us, they “learned” all of it by rote, as was the
common practice of the day. Unlike us, I figured that they didn’t risk hell by sinning; nor did
they earn indulgences for getting into heaven through good deeds and repetitive prayers. They
must have been oft befuddled about the Catholic Catch-22 to which they were always victims.
Our teachers and caregivers were absolutely consistent in all matters of Catholic truths
and half truths—be it with the self-proclaimed preeminence of Catholicism or their
explanation of the Church’s inscrutable mysteries—they fell in line like fascist warriors. All
nuns appeared especially cold to people and faiths non-Catholic. Peter was one example of
such a target. While I don’t really know what caused me to gravitate toward Peter, this non
Catholic, I suspect it’s my life’s penchant for participating in the plight of the different—
modeling the lead character from the great American novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn. Peter and his brothers were the target of anti-Protestant rhetoric spewed from the
mouths and hearts of our Catholic leaders. Peter remained silent, probably unaware that it was
his faith (or lack of one) that was continually insulted before all of us. Sometimes the nuns
suggested that the teachers and their students at the Dunstan Public School across the street
from us were possessed by the devil. They were labeled as pagans. For all this Catholicism
that most of us would need to recover for years afterwards, it was Peter who, on leaving St
Louis Home a year later than me committed the unthinkable: He became baptized a Roman Catholic. Yes! Shocked as I was to learn that, I know that Peter was assuredly well prepared
for that rite, after a lengthy and painful initiation with the convent nuns! The power of
persuasion? He ultimately had, after all, done them proud.
At St. Louis Home, there was no time, no space for raising questions of conscience or
spiritual doubt. Tough questions
about the Church or about God
yielded little in the way of clarity and understanding. The “Trinity,” a
concept about the three persons in one God was, for example, a mystery. God, they
explained, comprised three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. I thought there
must have been a spiritual triumvirate in charge of my destiny. But noooo—not quite like
that. And so I was taught that God sees all of us all of the time in the name of the trinity.
Still, making the distinction between Jesus, the son of God seemed like there were two
persons involved at the highest celestial levels of authority with the Holy Ghost there to scare
me into doing noble deeds, or at least avoiding grisly ones. Even the Baltimore Catechism’s
memorable illustration of the trinity as represented here didn’t help. I’ve accepted the concept
as a mystery until I really will understand it, as they nuns advised us, “in the next world.”
Other mysteries flourished in our Catholic classrooms. The birth of Jesus from the
immaculate virgin mother was one that was clearly off limits. Yet, we celebrated the most
holy day of the Immaculate Conception at the end of May. What for? Who knew: an
immaculate conception? Perhaps we learned that immaculate meant super clean, as in the
Virgin (another word we didn’t know) Mary’s absolute cleanliness—a hygienic virtue we
should all aspire to. But conception??? Who would ask? In the bliss of our ignorance, off we went to a colorful high mass to celebrate something about a very clean Mother Mary.
Adam and Eve’s frolicking in the Garden of Eden and giving birth to Cain and Abel was
another elusive anomaly. These were either mysteries or just plainly amusing phenomena, as
in the Feast of the Circumcision of Christ, which occurred exactly one week after Christmas.
Though that feast day has since been renamed, the Octave of Christmas, we knew it to be the
Circumcision of Christ. When asked what it meant, we were told it meant, “shedding a little
blood for all mankind.” What does that mean, given that Jesus was only eight days old? Why
would anyone do that? It’s a mystery. Another mystery for me was that paint-by-number
copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper. It looks as if Jesus Christand his twelve disciples
are on a stage all facing in the direction of an audience. An audience? What audience?
Leonardo da Vinci? What could this be? Another mystery.
These Sisters of Charity sometimes told us to spit on the walkways gracing the front of
a Protestant church. Only Catholics, they intimated, had a place in heaven to look ahead to.
All we Catholics needed to do were to make many sacrifices, many prayers, to obey the Ten
Commandments at all times, and to plan our lives as though we were to become priests one
day. Some tall order for my friend, Peter. Fortunately for Peter and his brothers, they
remained behind to prepare our breakfast tables during Sunday Mass and the other masses for
Tuesday and Thursday.
The Catholic canon was everywhere. Indulgences could be earned as credits for a
reserved space in heaven one day. Indulgences were earned through attending Masses,
rosaries, and lots of prayers. Yes, prayers. I think I earned many indulgences when I prayed following my Mom’s death. There were ejaculations (not the lewd kind) that earned
indulgences. These were repetitions of pious utterances like “Lord Have Mercy” or “Save me
from sin for I am not worthy.” Ejaculations could be interspersed with other repetitious
recitations like Hail Mary’s and Glory Be’s though they were said over and over and over (a
hundred times, or so it seemed). Other ways of receiving indulgences, if done in great
quantity, would include blessing one’s self, using water from the font at the Church’s
entrance. Genuflecting after doing that would earn you another indulgence. Should you
attend masses for five consecutive first Fridays of the month—well, that would earn you a
ticket to heaven, or so we believed.
Prayers, not to be confused with meditation, were inescapable. Lord, were there
prayers at the convent! Prayers six times a day. Church three or four times a week. The
ubiquitously symbolic rosaries daily. Genuflections. Grace before and after meals. Even
simple group commands as in “Go play” were expressed as prayer as in the Latin “Deo
gratias.” [“The Lord Be With You”]. There were prayers at wake-up time. Prayers before
bedtime. Prayers before and after classes. While non-Catholic kids well away from our
reach may have awakened to an alarm clock each day or given a gentle tug from their parents,
we woke up each day to an outcry of the first three words of the sign of the cross: “In the
name…” A pause ensued for just a few seconds, as we knew we must sit up right away in bed
to complete the tex
t of that opening prayer.
Prayers came in many varieties. You could just say a little, “Jesus, have mercy
me,” or “Mary, pray for us” whenever the spirit beckoned. On the other hand, you could get into some serious personal prayer, like a novena. This would require a personal commitment
between you and the Lord for nine consecutive days of prayer for one special intention. I
think I did that when my mom died.
One clear message we all understood almost at the outset of Catholic kindergarten
class was that we could “adore” or “worship” only God. No one could worship or adore the
Virgin Mary, nor any of the saints—not even St. Joseph, Jesus’s foster father. And surely, no
one could adore his parents. Adore only God. Period. The searing fires of hell await those
who apply the word worship or adore in any other context. Pity you if you adore someone’s
diamond ring (Ooops. One more sin. Coveting someone else’s enticing goods would be
viewed as a breach of the tenth commandment). The profundity of that sacred rule suggested
by the first commandment about bearing false witnesses under the pain of mortal sin continues
to plague me in adulthood as I really do act as if I worship my wife and children. I must
almost say I adore the art and music of the great masters. Catholicism’s commanding
influence, indeed.
Kinesthetic activity is central to Catholic prayer recitation. Some psycho-physical
prayers do require certain histrionics, like the “sign of the cross” that calls for a finger
traveling from touching the forehead to the sternum to the left shoulder, then the right
shoulder, ending with both hands together—hence, sculpting the shape of a cross. During
recitation of the Confiteor (Apostle’s Creed), when you reach the line that says “mea culpa,
mea culpa, mea maxima culpa” [“through my fault, through my fault, through my most
grievous fault”], you must strike your heart three times. When passing by the tabernacle at the center of the Church, a genuflection is in order with a sign of the cross as an optional added
touch. The Lord’s rewards for all of these physical demonstrations of piety were guaranteed
to us in the “next world.” But do so sincerely.