June 25, 2025
I have been interested in the Catholic Church since about 6th grade. Growing up my parents were atheists, or maybe agnostic, I'm still not sure, all I knew was I got to sleep in on Sundays. My grandfather did drag me off to an Easter service at a community church in his town once or twice. The carpet was red and there were a lot of very interesting hats was my take-away from that experience...oh and my shoes hurt. (They always did as a kid because there were no double wide children's shoes at that time.) Anyway I digress. My father was not really raised with solid church attendance from what I've been able to garner, but my Mother was forced into a particularly dour, humorless synod of Methodists for the majority of her pre college life. My Aunt converted to Catholicism so that she could marry. I am sure that her parents referred to this as a mixed marriage and were highly skeptical of the union for this reason alone. (There were many other reasons my Aunt should of, and eventually did leave the marriage.)
I was not raised with any religion, but I was in the Girl Scouts. If you've ever been a Brownie or Girl Scout, it is a guarantee that you have seen every single church basement in your hometown. Girl Scouts never have meeting spaces, and most churches are willing to lend or lease the space very cheaply. Brownies met in the Community church basement, I took ballet class there, my mother took Yoga classes there too, and I'm sure if I still lived in that town I would have ended up attending other meetings there. Ones that started with "Hello my name is Christine and I'm an alcoholic." Later when the scouting group got a little smaller we met at the Lutheran church, the one with the guitar music and the bearded pastor. That didn't last for very long as very few sensible adult women choose to be surrounded by preteen squealing girls and we had a couple of years with out a scout leader.
And of course as time went by, less and less kids were interested in being Girl Scouts, but Margie and I were. I think there were about 5 or 6 girls in scouts at that time and we started meeting at St. Joseph's, the Catholic church. I remember that first time in a Catholic church vividly. It was a tall rectangular brick federalist building with a steeple that contained a horn speaker, out of which came canned bell music every day and sounded like a posh door bell chime. Although the building wasn't a grand cathedral, it certainly felt that way to me. You walked in and wow, unlike the mid-mod Lutheran or the Hodge podge of added spaces in the community church this church was a Church. It looked like it had been there for a very long while and was not going anywhere ever again. It was about the Power and the Glory AMEN! Walking in your eyes couldn't help but shoot right up, it was so TALL inside there, and I was gob-smacked. This church MEANT IT. No they weren't going to muck about with groovy homilies comparing church families to the Brady Bunch or some other bullshit like the Methodists were up to. It had none of the "Hello neighbor, nice to meet ya, have you met our friend Jesus?" of the Community church either. This building was definitely saying "Psst, stand up straight" It was absolutely symmetrical, a straight aisle down the middle with pews on each side, books closed neatly, all the kneelers folded up. To the left of the alter a niche with a statue of the Virgin, to the right Joseph. And in the apse, nailed to the wall, under the architectural pediment and columns was the crucifix. I couldn't even look at Christ on it, the suffering was too terrible to look at. I did indeed stand up straight.
Margie went over to a shallow bowl of water on a column at the end of the aisle and dipping her fingers did something sign languagey. I followed her example... not that I had any idea why there was a bird bath inside a building or what the hell I was doing but I knew she came to this place every weekend. I figured she knew the lay of the land. "What are you DO-ing" she said to me. "I dunno." I whispered. "YOU'RE not Catholic" she said I don't think you can do that. "Why not?" I asked splashing a little water around with my fingers. She sighed that strangled sigh she did when she was irritated with me for asking a question she didn't know the answer to. Which I must admit was fairly often, not that Margie wasn't whip smart, only that what other kid gets asked "Have you ever thought about squirrels having assholes? No one ever talks about squirrel shit only bird shit. Why is that?" She put her little hands on her little nascent hips and was probably going to launch into something she heard in Catechism class or something, but was saved by the voice of our scout leader gathering us together and marching us to some place in the building far less holy.
I don't think we went there many times. I do remember I had my "flying up" ceremony there. Although I think it was in some other place in the church. (It, like every Catholic church ever, had a mass of attached buildings.) I was happy to become a Girl Scout Cadet, but directly after the ceremony realized there was no one who was going to be the leader for that. So a whole ceremony for nothing. I mean I even worn my nicest underwear, the ones for Tuesday, which were blue, and still had some elastic left in them, even though it was probably a Saturday. And I think that I only went to St. Joseph's one more time in high school for some sort of "Bless the Senior Class and pray that none of them die in a car crash on graduation night" type of thing... I think they called it a Benediction or some such sort of thing. All I know is that sensation of gravitas stayed with me.
