I hear stray sentences that sound good and right and I pray. I read of synods and lawsuits and feel the Lilliputian. Someone-someones-are doing something with all that. The Catholic Church holds land, money, art, parishioners and theological power. In that prayer, I ask for the serenity to accept the things I cannot change and the courage to change the things I can. The best I can do is invoke the Serenity Prayer. I no longer have to ‘fix’ what humanity is doing to the Earth. I remember the first time I got a cancer diagnosis. Yes, I put plastic in a garbage can after I’ve used it, rather than tossing it on Paterson’s streets, but garbage cans don’t render plastic benign it still takes up to 1,000 years to biodegrade. I’ll never be a saint, but I too can communicate that truth that I accessed through the smudged, manmade lens of my church.įor all that I donate to the World Wildlife Fund, the Nature Conservancy and Audubon, I contribute to this world’s fallen state. That means that someone as not-special as I am can play some part in passing this story on. And this awes me: God communicated himself to me, through 2,000 years of humans as flawed as I. I am grounded in the awareness that my own feet stink. Safaris are for the 1 percent.Īt Garret, in a church pew, I inhabit a fallen world, one that disciplines me to hope in the dark, to be humble in the light. Contact with compromised nature is what most people on this overcrowded planet can have. Garret is the park I can reach within that one hour wrenched from work, dinner and sleep, and getting up and doing it all over again. I inhabit a fallen one, where I must grieve over what humanity has done to the planet. I don’t inhabit their picture-perfect world. But here I see osprey, great horned owls, yellow-throated warblers and hooded mergansers.įacebook friends luckier than I share photos of pristine vistas: the Tetons, the Serengeti, the Pampas. Even here, shredded plastic bags flutter from branches. I tread on volcanic outcroppings, and find trees, a pond and deer. Past lawns speckled with cigarette butts, chicken bones and fast food packaging, I walk up 500 feet (about 152 metres). A landslide of trash tumbles from a Front Street apartment complex into the Passaic River. I walk over Paterson, New Jersey streets strewn with garbage: wrecked televisions, hypodermic needles and sanitary pads. When I am through with my day’s work, hunched over a keyboard in a position that would give a Yoga instructor or chiropractor a panic attack, I tie on a pair of sneakers, toss my binoculars and rosary into a daypack, grasp my walking stick and hike up to Garret Mountain. How, you may want to ask, can I remain in a church that sheltered priests who molested children? I have asked myself that question more times than anyone has asked it of me. I know what Jews mean when they say that no matter how little they feel their own Jewishness, encounters with anti-Semites make them feel Jewish. This prejudice entails classist and ethnic bigotry disguised as theological contempt. I am Catholic, as opposed to Protestant, because Protestant prejudice against Catholics has hit me across the face, from my childhood on a school bus to the more recent funerals of loved ones, when Protestant in-laws have insisted that my Catholic mother would not go to Heaven. I am Catholic because when I bring big questions to the Vatican website and read the church’s justifications for its stances, I encounter peerless wisdom, humility and power. But the tears break free, however silently. I believe that my presence in church supports other mortals just like me. I believe that without this human family, I would be lost. I believe that I have inherited this story, this ritual, and this opportunity for salvation from human hands and mouths that have passed it, one to the next for 2,000 years, in an unbroken line culminating in Jesus himself. I believe that every mass is the re-enactment of history’s central event: God becomes man, suffers for me and offers his substance for my salvation. His smile was for the person standing behind me, someone who could donate much more to the church coffers and to his ego than my blue-collar, immigrant family ever could.Įven so, I am Catholic. Our priest entered, looked at me, and smiled warmly. I was standing in a funeral parlour, my face covered with tears. He was buried by the parish where my six siblings and I were baptized, went to Catholic school and received our first Holy Communion. When I was a teenager, my brother was killed on my birthday. That is, I’ve never had a good experience with one. Being molested by a priest is not my tragedy.
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