A Good Catholic

Do I want to be a good Catholic? The thought never crosses my mind even as I avoid the Virgin Mary statue at my great-uncle’s house. Blood tears stain her cheeks. I’m only three years old. 

Oddly enough, it doesn’t start there. It begins with bells ringing. With spires and arches. Cloisters and buttresses. I crane my neck up to squint at light shining through stained glass. They’re made up of fascinating pictures that look about as naturalistic as a child’s drawing. In the front garden stands another statue of the Virgin Mary. But this one doesn’t cry blood. She has her arms outstretched in welcome or is asking for a hug. It makes me wonder what she must have done to earn such devotion and adoration even thousands of years after her time. 

Despite attending mass every week, I don’t learn the answer until several years later. I don’t understand the sermons in Spanish. So for now, I settle into the intriguing mystery of the woman in the garden and the man on the cross. 

It starts with the priest entering in his purple, regal robes. There’s singing and clapping along to catchy songs about hope and forgiveness. It’s my great-uncles who are playing on stage with other family members. Sometimes my dad joins in. Though I don’t understand the lyrics any more than the lectures, at least the words come with music and I sing along in my broken Spanish. 

Even when not at church, my dad plays music with his uncle. My brother and I play with his sons. We’re neighbors. But when I turn four my family moves to another city. We continue to go to church though. 

I hold hands with the people by my side. A little kid tries to keep their arms up to my height for as long as they can and there’s the tall old couples who tire me out in the same way I’m doing to the poor child. I shake hands and exchange a “La paz del Señor” with a smile. There’s drinking of wine, which was strange at first, but it is probably because wine was cleaner than water back in AD 30. Other kids are probably excited about getting to drink alcohol before they’re of age, but I’m not excited. I drink it solemnly. And then there’s eating the ostia that subtly tastes like bread. Afterward, the adults catch up while the kids run and play around the Virgin Mary. It’s like we’re all in this together.

It starts with hands intertwined in prayer for loved ones while staring at a symbol of holy sacrifice that hangs on the wall. With relatives from Mexico circling the living room on Christmas Eve and reciting Los Veinte Rosarios as they pass around the tiny baby Jesus. I’m impatient to get it over with so I can unwrap my gifts. Finally it’s my turn and they hand over the clay doll. The urge to rush through the tedious hour of repeating the same prayers slowly ebbs. Because those kind faces that raised me, fed me, loved me, now turn to me with trust in their eyes. Because Christmas is about family and God. It’s about holding that little baby to remember the rare miracles that manage to brighten up this too often dark and cruel world. It starts with all those good things. 

Then I realize the building is not ancient or even that large. I never see the bells swing. The chiming is most likely just a recording from the tower. The stained glass forms aren’t proportioned accurately and their anatomy is all wrong. They resemble a child’s drawing because those artists didn’t know what they were doing. My Spanish has improved but the narrations were passed down over centuries about people and places I will never understand no matter how many times they explain them to me. The priest drones on, explaining the metaphors and morals with all the superiority of an English teacher forcing you to enjoy a book that holds no meaning for you. They tell us the meaning of what the author intended even when they’ve been long dead. If the game telephone can change a phrase from, “You have lovely eyes” to “Woah, your eyes freak me out” what happens to the holy book when translated over too many languages to count and passed down by so many men in power?

One day I defend him—my great-uncle. When my friend makes a snide comment of him owning a white, windowless van. 

“He works at a church!” I say.

“That’s worse!” she tells me. 

He’s not like that, I think, but don’t say anything. Do I know that for sure?

I come to realize that I don’t know these people and their sweaty palms and sticky fingers. They make me want to pull back and go rinse my hands thoroughly with soap. They’re all hypocrites. That mother over there, smiling proudly over her son because he’s such a good little Catholic who stays abstinent with his girlfriend, when at school I know what he’s been up to. It’s fine, none of my business really. But he swears to his mom he’s no sinner. And that other girl I know from Art History class justifies herself in cheating on the exam. It was no sin because she had a good reason. Her and nobody else who cheats on a test. Because she’s a good little Catholic. My great-uncle prays and prays and goes to mass every single Sunday so it doesn’t matter that he’s hit his wife right? He’s a good little Catholic too. They’re all such good Catholics because they read the bible and go to church. 

I realize all these things and finally admit to myself that I’ve never liked the taste of wine and the bread hardly tastes of anything. I can’t bring myself to see my great-uncle the same way. I admit these things to myself. And then I wonder. Do I want to be a good Catholic?