Nurse the Hate: The Catholic Church

I was raised in the Catholic Church.  Almost everyone I knew was too.  I was vaguely aware of other religions, but thought of them as obscure as everyone I knew went to CCD classes and/or Catholic Schools.  We were all Irish or Polish kids.  We had one Jewish kid in our entire school, and there was a rumor of a couple of kids being some Protestant off shoot that had the tiny church close to the high school.  Other than that, we were all in for the same ride.

When asked about my religious preference, I always use the phrase “raised Catholic”.  I haven’t ever willingly attended church services since my confirmation into the church, a forced labor given to me by my father. Yet, being raised in the Catholic Church does a number on you regardless.  I have had guilt pounded into me from the moment I walked into the building.  I was born with sin.  I had a hand in Jesus’ death.  I was consistently committing sins that needed to be redeemed via incantations and confession.  Anything associated with pleasure was sinful.  If you are happy, you must have done something wrong.  Repent.  Duty is more important than happiness.

I never connected with the church.  To me it was always impenetrable rituals that had no meaning.  We were forced to memorize words that didn’t mean anything to us and repeat them on command.  I still don’t have a grasp on what the Lamb of God is.  Each Sunday I was forced to attend mass with my father and brother.  None of us got anything out of it.  My father was there out of duty, and dragged us along as well as his father had done to him when he was a boy.  My mother, a non-practicing Protestant of some kind, must have loved the time in the house alone on Sunday mornings. 

We used to sit by the door on the right hand side so when the mass was almost concluded we would slip out the side as the priest painstakingly read aloud the church bulletin, which had been placed in all the parishioners’ hands upon entry.  That fucking bulletin would drone on almost as long as the mass itself.  It was brutal. We would roar out of the parking lot before “traffic” with the same sort of feeling of victory my father had when leaving a Buffalo Bills game prior to the final gun.  (Which is why we missed one of the greatest come from behind games in NFL history when the Bills improbably beat the Patriots in the early 80s.)

In the school year, I was forced to go to CCD classes.  These were religion classes taught after the 930a mass on Sunday by either priests or well-intentioned parishioners, none of which had any real idea of how to engage with children.  The class would last probably an hour, but it seemed like a thousand lifetimes.  I remember sitting at a desk, as some lady would attempt to explain why it was important to say the rosary, as I even then understood it to be a diversionary chant.  Yet there was no greater crime than to be unable to recite an Act of Contrition on command.  I had those prayers pounded into me like sledgehammer and even now I can recite them from muscle memory.

The teachings of the church itself are admirable.  All religions have the same basic playbook.  Be nice to each other.  Take care of your neighbor.  Don’t be an asshole.  You can be whatever religion you want, and as long as you don’t lose your mind in literalism, you’ll have a code of conduct that is pretty reasonable.  Teaching kids the fundamentals of decent behavior seems like a good thing to do, no?

One of the teachers we had in CCD was Father Schanz.  He was an older guy with a temper.  He was sort of the #2 at the church and appeared to have a great deal of respect.  We all feared him in our CCD classes, as he would drop the hammer if we had been acting up in front of another teacher.  He was always quick to call out students to stand in front of the group and recite arcane facts and prayers.  But Father Schanz had a friendly side too. He seemed to take a particular interest in a few of the boys that I knew from school, a group that was considered to be “bad” kids.  Father Schanz cultivated a special relationship with those boys, and they seemed to get away with more in class than the rest of us thanks to their special relationship.

We were probably about 12-13 years old when those “bad kids” and a small group of us talked about the upcoming CCD classes.  This was the year we would have Father Schanz as instructor and most of us dreaded it.  A couple of the bad kids spoke up.  “Hey, Father Schanz is cool.  He took us out on his boat this summer.  He’s a really cool dude.”  Now this was impressive.  We were just a bunch of kids.  At that time I had never considered that any of the priests ever left the church, much less owned small speedboats.  I never thought about them doing normal things.  Who would have guessed that Father Schanz was this totally cool guy roaring around in the lake in a speedboat? 

The boys told us about how he was really cool when they were on the boat.  “He let us drink beer!”  At that point I had not had even more than a sip of beer.  Yet, here was really strict Father Schanz offering up cold ones to pre teen boys!  After hours, he really let his hair down.  That’s when things got a little weird.  One of the guys gave a little sheepish laugh.  “Yeah, we all went swimming but he had us take off our swim suits.  He said we should swim as the Lord intended us to.  Then he wouldn’t give us our towels and said we should just dry out in the sun.  I guess that’s the way people always used to do it.”

Now at this point I’m thinking “that’s really fucked up”, but I’m not sure.  I mean, Father Schanz is an authority figure.  He is the last word in what is right and wrong in CCD classes.  Everyone defers to him, even the other teachers.  But still, it doesn’t seem right to take off your bathing suits and swim naked for no real reason.  Why is he taking the boat far out on the lake with no one else around?  And how come there aren’t any other adults on the boat?  We all began to debate it, pretty sure it was wrong, but maybe just like we couldn’t understand that whole Lamb of God thing, maybe we don’t get this either.  It was confusing.  The bad kids were also exchanging looks of some kind.  It seemed like something else might have happened out there, but those guys weren’t talking.  Like kids do, we just moved on.  It never occurred to me to tell my parents or any authority figure about it.  Father Schanz WAS the authority figure.  He knew God personally.

I hadn’t thought about that in years.  Last week the 1000 page report on priest abuses in Pennsylvania came out.  I went to the link and saw it was possible to do a search for priests alphabetically.  I didn’t hesitate.  One name came to mind to enter.  Schanz.  Ding!  There it was.  Erie County.  One of the implicated priests, forced to retire.  It was an open secret amongst all the boys in the parish.  Don’t be alone with Father Schanz, hahaha…  Oh, he’s just a harmless guy with some quirks.  We all knew.  I’m sure we weren’t alone.  Who knows what really happened out on that boat?  How many boys did he “take an interest in”?  The other priests at that church must have known.  The Church decided to do nothing that would risk the business.  It was a business decision.  Don’t take it personal kid.

Conceptually I knew I would never return to the Catholic Church.  I walked out of there at 17 with a lifetime of implanted guilt and a basic ethical codebook.  Now, having particulars to attach to the broad stroke scandals that have continued to leak from the church, it would be impossible to return.  It’s impossible to reconcile what they have done to the weakest people in their care.  The Catholic Church is and always has been a business.  It is time for that business to close up.