Catholic confession

Somber ceremonies in Vatican City
remind even a Baptist of his past

"What's this?" Mom asked.

I didn't immediately supply an answer because I couldn't see what she was referring to, as I was in the middle of lowering onto the floor of my bedroom one of the travel bags I was helping Dad bring in from the car. They were visiting for an Astros-Braves game and would be sleeping in my room since I had yet to buy a bed large enough for two adults for my guest bedroom.

So I didn't connect her question to the pendulum-like slapping of plastic on wood that I also was hearing. At least not until I turned and saw her looking down at the rosary beads hanging from the inside doorknob of my bedroom door.

Like in that precise moment you realize you've locked your keys in your car, locked yourself out of your house, forgotten a critical appointment or left tickets to a sporting event or concert at home, a surge of panic flashed across every node of my nervous system.

Though it lasted only a second, it presented enough of a hesitation on my part to give Mom time for a follow-up question.

"Something of Spence's?" she added.

Good grief, no, I thought.

Spencer was my roommate, and, more importantly, is Mormon.

My family, on the other hand, is as Baptist as Billy Graham. With the exception of an uncle by marriage who led my Aunt Rhonda and two of my cousins to the Methodist Church — a denomination that, in the area where I grew up, was set apart by only one theological difference: "They sprinkle rather than dunk" — every single relative I can think of has been raised in a Baptist church, from suburban Houston to backwater burgs in rural Alabama. To say I'm from an area where Baptists are common would be an understatement akin to saying Osama Bin Laden has been hiding in a region where Islam has a slight influence.

As far as I know, my school had only one Catholic student while I was there, and he wasn't a practicing Catholic. My exposure to this "other" Christianity was limited pretty much to classic literature, European history, Martin Luther and the blue version of The Way I tried to buy in junior high because it's one of Auburn's school colors, before the parental explanation that "it's a Catholic Bible."

So as Mom now posed these questions to me about this device of Catholic ritual found in my bedroom (which I seem to remember even some nun on an episode of Happy Days once rubbing), I stood thinking that surely she knew enough about Catholicism and Latter-Day Saints from Training Union classes to know no Mormon would have a set of these. Did she really know even less about these other faiths than I once had?

Or maybe it was something else. Maybe she suspected Spence was more to me than a friend who was relieving some of the burden of my monthly mortgage payment. It would be another 15 months before I came out to my parents. But here was Mom, asking whether some fixture in my room was something of my roommate's. Did she think I was shacking up?

She wouldn't have been the first.

A gossipy ex-co-worker who I invited to dinner one night made just such a leap, the next day telling former colleagues that I had "tried to pass off a storage room as an actual bedroom." On some level, his mistake was understandable. In addition to the usual telltale sign of two 30-something single males living under one roof in a renovated bungalow, there was this issue of Spence's bedroom.

What my aforementioned acquaintance from my previous job labeled a storage room did resemble what most Americans call the "junk room," a source of shame to women across the country and the perpetual nightmare of all TV home makeover hosts.

Put more plainly, his bedroom was a wreck. Piles upon piles of clothes, stacks of dog-eared papers, unrelated objects lying randomly on the floor. But closer inspection of Spence's space also would reveal slept-on sheets, bottles of herbal supplements on the nightstand and other indicators that a human being indeed inhabited it — that it wasn't an occasional decoy for two guys sharing the same room.

So, after a few seconds, when Mom's questions sank in, I tried to play nonchalant.

"Nah, Spence is Mormon, Mom. Remember?" I asked. "One of my friends from Canada is Catholic, and he gave it to me."

That friend was Joe, the Irish-Catholic Maritimer I'd been dating long distance for five months, so I had to play off the memento as if it were a T-shirt from an airport gift shop or a box of saltwater taffy. In anticipation of my parents' visit, I had tried to hide every object that could indicate his standing in my life, such as: the photos on the fridge of the eight-day trip to Atlantic Canada my parents didn't know I'd taken a couple of months earlier, as well as the Halifax Mooseheads jersey he'd given me on his second visit. I thought all proof of his significance had been tucked away.

But I somehow overlooked the rosary beads. Joe had placed them on my door during circumstances similar to the one in which I now found myself with Mom. We were bringing his luggage, as well as the luggage of his best friend, into the house. The two of them had driven from Halifax to Atlanta to hang out for a week.

He made his first order of business upon entering my house to loop the beads on the doorknob and, while doing so, said something about keeping me safe.

Their full theological purpose was lost on me, but that string of aqua-blue pseudo-gemstones was a prized possession because I knew Joe was aware that I'd be reminded of him every time I shut or opened my bedroom door.

That's why it was such a surprise that it never crossed my mind to remove them before my parents' arrival. I could only guess, since Spence had been out of town, that it had been days since I'd needed to close my door and, therefore, since I'd heard the familiar knocking of the beads as they swung back and forth.

That was almost four years ago. I thought back to them this past week because of the death and burial of Pope John Paul II.

The last time I spoke with Joe, he was angry over yet another pronouncement by the pope against homosexuality and said something about abandoning the church because he was no longer sure whether, after we die, anyone goes beyond a hole in the ground.

He said he would just focus on nothing more than living a stress-free life and would no longer worry about what other people think.

But I didn't believe him. He never struck me as the sort of guy to throw out the baby with the bathwater. For whatever unhappiness or guilt he could attribute indirectly to the Catholic Church, I suspect he's also indebted to it for many of his values and principles.

I'm betting also that last week's massive media coverage of the events in Rome took him back to treasured thoughts of his mom, his childhood, his aunts and uncles who have officially served the Church and all the things of the past that have contributed to making him the man he is today. Not unlike my memories of him, my heritage and my family recalled fondly via that string of rosary beads.

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Your turn
· Has the Pope's death had an impact on you? Why or why not?
· Did you grow up attending a church? Do you attend one as an adult?
· How have your religious beliefs, if at all, changed from childhood to adulthood?

Comments

[Steve]

Thanks for sharing your story, Jim. For the last couple of months, I've been going to a Baptist church that was tossed out of the SBC for its acceptance of gays and lesbians. In many, many ways, it's like the church I was raised in as well as the church I attended in college. I'm looking forward to getting more involved there.

[Jim Burroway]

I grew up Catholic, and was practicing until about five years ago when I came out. I was saddened by the pope's death and stayed up through the night to watch the funeral. It was very touching.

I too was disturbed by his most recent pronouncements on gay marriage. I understand the particularly sacramental nature of marriage according to Catholic teaching, which is a key point that most non-Catholics don't understand. It's akin to baptism, and just as no Baptist would tolerate government regulation of baptism, Catholicism does not recognize in any way, shape or form, governmental involvement in marriage. Most Protestant denominations however recognize governmentally-inititiated civil marriage and divorce. The Catholic church never has and probably never will.

Yet even knowing this distinction in how Catholicism views marriage, I was still disturbed by the pope's latested pronouncement. I thought it went over the top.

I'm not ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater, much to the profound consternation of my BF. On the other hand, I'm not reconciled with the Church either. I'm somewhere in between. All I know is this: God created me, He loves me, and Jesus died for me. And He wants me to trust Him on these things.