Unction this: Froward cozenage

I attended Catholic schools for the first 12 years of my life. The first eight years were taught by Dominican nuns, with one lay teacher covering second grade. Our school was one block away from the church, so that you can imagine frequent trips there for various ceremonies, like confession, stations of the cross, or just weekday mass. Weekends consisted of Saturday, a free day, and Sunday, at least part of which had to be used to attend church under penalty of mortal sin and eternal damnation if we failed. Unless we had a good excuse. However, going fishing, playing baseball with the neighborhood kids, or even reading a book were not considered good excuses. There were no good excuses, really, save deathly illness, or perhaps death.

One memory to emphasize that we were not wealthy kids attending this school … girls, on entering the church, had to have head covers. None of them had any such thing, no lace or doilies, so on entering they would pin a Kleenex on top their heads. It got the job done.

High school was less rigid, but not much. There were nuns aplenty, Sisters of Charity as I recall, but wearing a box-like headdress, which I do not find for that order in photos. There was a priest or two teaching various classes, not necessarily religious. Priests would also make special trips to the school to hear our confessions, aka a kid’s form of creative writing class.

Our high school had a large gymnasium with two lockers rooms and a stage for important events like graduation, musicals and plays. However, a sign of the times, for PE classes girls were forced to use the hallway. Only boys got to use the gym. Did you ever think for a moment that the women’s rights movement was about nothing? We didn’t think anything of that little bit of genuine discrimination.

My great aunt on my mother’s side was Sister Faith, head of the Dominican order of Kansas City. For our grade school, they sent along eight nuns each year, seven to teach, and one to serve as a housekeeper/cook. They lived in a mansion-style home across the alley from the church.

The reason why the Dominicans sent nuns out to a far outpost like Billings, Montana had to do with our familial connection, my grandmother’s sister having pull. She petitioned the order to send teachers to Montana for the sake of her grandnephews. I did not know this until years later; I did not know how special I was in having that connection. Otherwise, I would have been intolerable. As it was, I was fairly popular in grade school, and thought I and my family were kind of special. I was only a tad intolerable.

Late in eighth grade a group of us met at one kid’s nearby house, and as I sat there I was shocked to see them all necking, deep kisses and neck nuzzling, girls sitting in boys’ laps. I knew nothing of this side of life, having but three brothers and non-demonstrative parents. I was shocked! As I say of my three brothers, in the ensuing years I was the only one to get laid on a regular basis. Maybe that is true of my parents too.

So imagine now 12 years of weekly mass, of having sat through at least 624 such ceremonies, not to mention those we had to attend on weekdays and special occasions. Imagine all the preaching, all of the indoctrination. In 7th grade, having attained “the age of reason'” (I am still waiting on that), we were “confirmed”. Confirmation was one of the seven holy sacraments that included communion, confession, matrimony and extreme unction, none of us having the slightest clue what ‘unction’ meant. (The act of anointing.)

I raised my kids Catholic in the early years, but as time wore on I matured and began to question the authority of the Church and even the existence of Jesus. I vividly remember laying in bed one night and deciding I was done with it. So effective was my indoctrination that I was fearful of something bad happening as a result of my decision. Independent of my wife, I made an offer to my kids, that they could attend or not, their choice, but that I was done with it. By that time she and I were alternating Sundays taking the kids to Church, so I told the kids the best I could demand of them would be that they attend Mass every other week. That did not sit well and my wife was quite upset about all of this. For a brief time she attended Sunday mass on her own, but that fizzled, as her belief was skin deep anyway, merely reliving her parents’ life. My kids: they all quit there an then, having had quite enough.

My parents, both devout Catholics, were furious with me at my decision to forego religious rituals with the kids. So too were other family members except my brother Steve, the priest, who counseled Mom and Dad on the nature of free will. Ideally they brought their boys up to think for themselves and act based on conscience. However, within the confines of the Catholic Church, no one really believed any of that. Just as with pretending with seventh graders that we had attained the age of reason, so too with obligations to the church was there a façade of free choice, we being free to choose only as long as the ‘right’ choice was made.

Otherwise, choose as we say or burn in hell, you little shits!!!.

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That’s just a life, like billions of others, kids brought up to believe as parents believe, most of them naturally falling in line. My point in writing all of this is this: Thousands of religious ceremonies, hundreds of hours in religion class, the example of religious people all around me, and it didn’t take! (I would add Bible-reading to that litany, but as Catholics we were cautioned not to read the Bible on our own, but instead to rely on official Church interpretation. That was good by me!)

I am currently re-reading The Varieties of Religious Experience, a series of lectures given in Edinburg, Scotland by William James in the early 20th century. William, and his brother Henry, the famous novelist, had a remarkable father who trained them in various disciplines and made sure they attended high quality schools. I can see the quality of William’s thoughts filtering through the pages of the book, his wording precise and yet engaging. The book is a transcript of a series of those lectures. I would bet that editing was not necessary.

James is not a foe or friend of religious belief, merely an observer. He does not belittle anyone. He wants to understand the experience people go through, and how and why these experiences affect them. That is why the narrative above, and my final thought: “It didn’t take.” For all of the masses, classes, time spent on knees, and exposure to religious people, never once have I heard a voice, seen an apparition or flash of light. Never did I ever imagine my prayers meant anything outside of my head. I tried, I wanted to believe, but I was not able to do so. My most joyful memory of my religious life was my thought upon leaving the Church in my late 30s, “At last, my Sundays are free!”

I came across a passage in the book that stopped me in my tracks. I put the book down and thought that if I can retain that passage, I need read no further. Without further comment, I pass it along to you. James is quoting William Locker Lampson, from his autobiography “Confidences“:

I am so far resigned to my lot that I feel a small pain at the thought of having to part from what has been called the pleasant habit of existence, the sweet fable of life. I would not care to live my wasted life over again, and so to prolong my span. Strange to say, I have but little wish to be younger. I submit with a chill at my heart. I humbly submit because it is Divine Will, and my appointed destiny. I dread the increase of infirmities that will make me a burden to those around me, those dear to me. No! Let me slip away as quietly and comfortably as I can. Let the end come, if peace come with it.

I do not know that there is a great deal to be said for this world, or our sojourn here upon it; but it has pleased God so to place us, and it must please me also. I ask you, what is human life? Is it not maimed happiness – care in weariness, weariness and care, with the baseless expectation, the strange cozenage* of a brighter tomorrow? At best it is but a froward**child, that must be played with and humored, to keep it quiet until it falls asleep, and then the care is over.

*Deceptive or cheating, especially in a clever or skillful way.**Perversely inclined; willful; refractory; disobedient; petulant; peevish.