David Sapp
Catechism
We were Catholic simply because Dad grew up Catholic and remained so because President Kennedy was Catholic. We rarely missed Sunday mass at Saint Vincent de Paul, the limestone Neo-Romanesque church surrounded by a black wrought-iron fence on High Street. I was baptized at the marble font near the altar. I blundered through my first confession and cranky Old Priest made me repeat it, but I survived first communion, catechism, and confirmation though I don’t remember learning much about compassion. I played a trumpet solo, “O Come All Ye Faithful,” for a midnight service but I messed up and the choir members wouldn’t talk to me or ask for another solo after that. I learned to love Bach before I knew who Bach was when the organist played the “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor” during recessionals. I was an altar boy for a couple of weeks for 7:00 am weekday services. Old Priest always added a single drop of water into the sacramental wine. Young Priest tipped one drop of wine into the water.
When my mind wandered during Old Priest’s tedious homilies (He liked to spell his sermons. For Mother’s Day it would begin: “M is for the many gifts mothers give us. O is for all the other things mothers bestow . . . .”), I gazed at the large stained glass windows between the arches – exquisite depictions of the life of Mother Mary in vivid red, blue, green and amber: Annunciation, Visitation, Nativity, Assumption. I knew all the stations of the cross from small paintings in the aisles around the perimeter of the nave. Like a medieval peasant, my appreciation for the pictures made up for my lack of memory of prayers, liturgy, or the lives of saints. Mom was a little worried when, at five, I played priest in the basement with a cardboard box as my altar, an Oreo cookie as the communion host, and a cup of Kool-Aid for the wine. I was mildly religious (though never protestant) for a brief time at fourteen before becoming more preoccupied with the mysteries of girls. Mass each Sunday was what we did. It was predictable and comfortable, familiar and unchanging from year to year, season to season.
Mass was our Sunday routine before Mom’s hysterectomy. Before she was convinced that not all of the softball size mass was removed, that it was cancerous and not benign. Before her paranoia, always lurking at the periphery of our lives, rudely surfaced. Before the police brought her home for trespassing at the rectory. (After all, she surmised, she could use the washer and dryer there any time she wished because she belonged to the church and put an envelope in the offertory basket every Sunday even when money was tight.) Before she was arrested and committed to the state hospital for harassing Old Priest. Before languishing in the psych ward. Before the threats of Thorazine and electroshock. Before Dad brought her home and still she glued candy Lifesavers to strategic locations on a Playboy centerfold and mailed it to the Bishop of Columbus. Before we lost the house and the dry-cleaning business. Before her rage turned on our family. Before she began throwing coffee cups and jelly jars at Dad’s head. Before Dad removed his hunting rifles from the hall closet. Before Dad, then my little sister and I, moved out, leaving her too alone to search for sanity.
Around Christmas, just before all this, before Mom’s mania became our new routine, Mom, Dad, my little sister, and I went to mass as usual in our Sunday best and took our usual spot in the pews, on the left, four rows back. At first, as always, we dutifully stood-sat-kneeled, stood-sat-kneeled. Mom was part of the decorating committee that each year hung large red ribbons and green garland boughs throughout the church. She was eager for us to see her work. She wanted to be part of and contribute to something rather than spend long, sad afternoons napping in a dark bedroom. Soon after Old Priest walked down the center aisle with the altar boys carrying the cross, gospels, and incense, Mom began crying quietly. We later learned that, the day before, the other ladies in the group unanimously rejected Mom’s decorating innovations, and after she went home, switched it all to what was originally planned. Old Priest sanctioned the reversal. No one told Mom. The mass was well under way when Mom pushed past us in the pew, left through the side door and into the sacristy where the vestments were kept. This room led directly to the altar. Dad followed and caught up with her just before she rushed Old Priest who now stood, arms uplifted in prayer, before the parishioners. My little sister and I stood frozen in the congregation, listening helplessly to our mother’s sobbing and cursing. The organ and a hymn muffled the worst of it. Dad somehow coaxed, wrestled, and half-carried Mom out of the building, and after a little while I led my sister by her hand to join them in the church yard.
Sundays were different after that. Certainly, I saw indications of the true nature of people in other boys and girls. Cruelty was present: the teasing, an occasional bloody nose or a sock in the stomach, the ostracization and tears – the usual and customary torment of a child navigating the playground or the neighborhood. I never quite comprehended the brutality of other children, but I accepted that it existed. But this was different. Priests and church ladies weren’t supposed to behave so callously. They weren’t meant to cause suffering. This was the beginning of the end of my naivete. Love was now rare and conditional. This was my catechism in compassion.
