Memories of the Thing that Supposedly Never Changes
My first memory of church was my grandmother's parish, Church of the Precious Blood in Monmouth Beach, New Jersey. It was pure white on the outside with red doors (kind of like an Episcopal Church, ironically), but the inside was small and dark--big dark wood beams bracing the ceiling, lots of 50s-style "Catholic kitsch" statutes. I remember going with grandma mostly, but we didn't go much otherwise without grandma, especially after the pastor, Earl Gannon (who has been there since the 60s, back to when mom was a kid), publicly called out my mother in the middle of Good Friday service for not keeping her young boys from making more noise than he felt acceptable. Monsignor Gannon's successor was a child molester, who, based on the timeline set forth in this article, was shuffled off to Precious Blood to get away from the "mess" he created at Incarnation Catholic Church in Ewing. His successor never bothered to visit my grandmother--a parishoner of his parish for over 50 years--during her final illness.
Anyway, mom relocated us to what is my first real experience of church, Church of the Nativity in Fair Haven, New Jersey. Come to think of it, Nativity was and is also very Episcopalian looking on the inside and outside--it was very bright and kinda plain on the inside, with a colonial look on the outside. It was at Nativity that I started CCD, made my First Communion, and first started to become attracted to the idea of church and of God. We left Nativity when we moved to Virginia Beach in 1988 (I was ten), but I am more and more convinced that Nativity had a far greater impact on my faith life than one might expect. When I think about that place of comfort, the place where "things seem right" about God and church and faith, it often looks very much like Nativity in the 80s.
This sort of move--setting up your childhood experience as the norm for everything that is good--is always risky. By definition, you remember childhood experiences in a child-like way, a way that is often free of many of the concerns of adulthood. So, it often is an apples-to-oranges comparison, one that adult experiences are very likely to come up short. But, keeping that concern in mind, I think it is still worthwhile to talk about what Nativity was like as experienced by a (albeit precocious) young kid, because it reveals something that a certain segment of people try very hard to pretend is not true. And that is the fact that the world of Roman Catholicism has changed a great deal between then and now, especially in terms of tone and points of emphasis. The church of Nativity in the 80s is not the same thing as the church I experienced in high school in the 90s, or as an adult in the 00s and early 10s. And I feel like, to a certain degree, is it gaslighting people to pretend otherwise. My memories may be those of a kid, but they are real memories.
What memories? Well, I am going to say a title that I am confident means nothing to the vast majority of Roman Catholics in the United States, but one that I remember very clearly--"The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response." Why do I remember this title? Because it was everywhere in our CCD textbooks, and was treated as an important, definitive statement of the Roman Catholic faith. What is "The Challenge of Peace," you might ask? It was an encyclical published by the U.S. Bishops Conference in 1983. Reading it now is like stepping through the mirror into Wonderland--the whole thing is basically a clear, albeit cagey, rebuke of the military policies of the Reagan administration. Indeed, it specifically goes after certain elements of military policies related to nuclear arms that had been advanced by the Reagan administration, and declared them to be immoral.
Now, from a pedagogical perspective, I am not sure much sense it made to repeatedly talk about this document in a CCD textbook for 2nd graders. It's a dense document by any measure, and to the extent I internalized any lessons from what was being presented, it was not much more than "peace is a good thing." But I think it is a relevant data point for a couple of reasons. First, no document like this would ever, ever come out of the U.S. Bishops Conference as currently constructed. Hell, they can't even get it together to denounce with one voice the Trump administration for deporting members of their own congregations; you think they are going to criticize a Republican president for his military and security policies in a public document in the name of all of them collectively?
Second, it reflects a sense of what was seen by mainstream Roman Catholicism as the important issues that must be communicated to kids. I don't know who wrote the textbooks we were using, but they came from some Catholic publishing house--it wasn't like this was some weird affectation of the priest or the head of religious education who cobbled this together. Relatedly, it also puts to the test the idea that Pope Francis is introducing new and scary and radical "Latin American Catholicism" to the U.S. church by pushing the emphasis toward economic or other "lefty" issues. I can assure you that you will never mistake central New Jersey for Buenos Aires or Recife or Puebla--Nativity was as lilly-white and affluent a parish as you will find. But nothing Pope Francis is saying or doing would be out-of-step with the vision of the faith outlined in those books. It's not a weird innovation, but a return to the way it was before.
But a return from what? Well, I am very confident I never, ever heard anything about abortion at Nativity, either from the pulpit or in CCD. Ditto with birth control. But it is more than simply the specific issues that were not discussed; it was also the tone. Everyone has praised Bishop Curry, and rightfully so, for presenting a positive, affirming, optimistic vision of Christianity in his wedding homily. But the Bishop Curry vision was the vision we got at Nativity, albeit in a much more white-bread form. The only remotely negative thing I remember Father Brietzke preaching on was people leaving after Communion before the end of the Mass (I think he joked about posting Swiss Guards at the door). The "culture war" was simply not present, and not relevant, in the presentation of the faith, either in substance or in tone.
And the lack of culture war was very specifically understood to be a change from, and a repudiation of, the way it was before the Second Vatican Council. It became very fashionable in the late JPII/Benedict era to treat the "Spirit of Vatican II" as some sort of collective hallucination on the part of a handful of liberal priests and nuns, imagining a discontinuity that was never there. But I very much internalized the idea that The Way Things Are Now was very different from The Way Things Were Then. I remember being told as part of First Reconcilation, by Father Brietzke, that it used to be called "Confession" and it was scary and shame-filled, but it's not like that anymore, because we don't go into those scary booths but sit face-to-face with the priest. The idea that Vatican II changed Catholicism from a rules-based and fearful religion to a more loving and inclusive faith, and that this was a good thing, seemed to me to be something that everyone agreed with and understood (my Dad, who didn't/doesn't like the Vatican II changes, struck me as a weird outlier that was hard to understand).
There is a segment of Christian people, both Roman Catholic and otherwise, who fetishize the idea that religion should be about telling "hard truths" and beating up your congregation. And I suspect I would now find the message pushed by Nativity in the 80s to be a little too self-satisfied and a little too uninterested in engaging with the issues of the day. But I took away the idea that church is a positive thing disseminating positive messages, something that neither my brother nor especially my sisters would say about their 90s-era Catholic school experience. You can call 80s Catholicism "moralistic therapeutic deism" if you want, but I'm still here doing the church thing and they are not. And it's not like they left as adults--they were out, at least in spirit, early in their teenage years, if not earlier. Something was communicated to me that was not communicated to them, or if it was communicated it didn't stick. And there is no question that the Catholicism we got in Florida was very different from what I got at Nativity. I think part of that is the South, but part of that is also the penetration down to the parish level of the cultural warrior priorities of Pope John Paul II and the bishops he appointed. It's simplistic to say that in the 90s abortion replaced "The Challenge of Peace," but it's also not wrong, either.
It's hard to see change when you are in the middle of it, because it is often so slow and so subtle that you can't see it. It's even harder to notice changes when you are told that the thing you are observing doesn't ever change. But, at least with regard to the Roman Catholic Church, it does, and it did. It's much more fixated on policing sex, much less interested in justice and peace questions, much less positive, much less secure of itself in its having stepped away from its past. It's a different place--even with Pope Francis in charge.
The truth is that the Episcopal Church I attend now feels more like Nativity in the 80s than the Catholic parishes I was attending prior to making the switch. The move feels like a return to something that once was and now is gone, as opposed to some radical change of place and perspective. I'm hesitant to say that, because "I didn't leave you, you left me" can be such a self-serving justification, but it is how I feel. If anything, I feel a little bit like a crypto-low church person in my parish, more comfortable with the still recognizably Catholic but much more relaxed post-Vatican II style of liturgy than the "smells and bells." But the similarity to what I remember as a kid is real. And it feels comfortable in a way that have been seeking for a long, long time without actually knowing what I was looking for.
I've thought about whether it is possible for the Roman Catholic Church to go back to the way it was in the 80s. On a basic level, the answer is no--too much in the world is different, too many things have happened. And I am well aware that my experience was not universal across the whole of the Roman Catholic Church in the U.S., let alone the world. But I think, to a degree, the answer is yes. Pope Francis is trying, if haltingly and inconsistently, to bring some of it back. A couple rounds of like-minded Popes may do the trick. But it will take a long time, and there will be rough days in between then and now. And I doubt seriously that I will be alive to see it.
So, in the end, I found a home in a place that is actually very much like the thing I remember. If and when the day comes when the Roman Catholic Church gets to where we are, I hope those that come after us will welcome that with joy and open arms. I suspect they will. In the interim, I hope we can be a place that welcomes anyone who is searching, but especially those that are looking for something that they once had and now don't, or can't for whatever reason. As well as to be a place that passes on to the young ones a bit of the positive, joyous message that I received and carried stubbornly with me despite the forks and bumps in the road. If we can do that, if we can live that, then we will be doing a holy thing in the world.
Anyway, mom relocated us to what is my first real experience of church, Church of the Nativity in Fair Haven, New Jersey. Come to think of it, Nativity was and is also very Episcopalian looking on the inside and outside--it was very bright and kinda plain on the inside, with a colonial look on the outside. It was at Nativity that I started CCD, made my First Communion, and first started to become attracted to the idea of church and of God. We left Nativity when we moved to Virginia Beach in 1988 (I was ten), but I am more and more convinced that Nativity had a far greater impact on my faith life than one might expect. When I think about that place of comfort, the place where "things seem right" about God and church and faith, it often looks very much like Nativity in the 80s.
This sort of move--setting up your childhood experience as the norm for everything that is good--is always risky. By definition, you remember childhood experiences in a child-like way, a way that is often free of many of the concerns of adulthood. So, it often is an apples-to-oranges comparison, one that adult experiences are very likely to come up short. But, keeping that concern in mind, I think it is still worthwhile to talk about what Nativity was like as experienced by a (albeit precocious) young kid, because it reveals something that a certain segment of people try very hard to pretend is not true. And that is the fact that the world of Roman Catholicism has changed a great deal between then and now, especially in terms of tone and points of emphasis. The church of Nativity in the 80s is not the same thing as the church I experienced in high school in the 90s, or as an adult in the 00s and early 10s. And I feel like, to a certain degree, is it gaslighting people to pretend otherwise. My memories may be those of a kid, but they are real memories.
What memories? Well, I am going to say a title that I am confident means nothing to the vast majority of Roman Catholics in the United States, but one that I remember very clearly--"The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response." Why do I remember this title? Because it was everywhere in our CCD textbooks, and was treated as an important, definitive statement of the Roman Catholic faith. What is "The Challenge of Peace," you might ask? It was an encyclical published by the U.S. Bishops Conference in 1983. Reading it now is like stepping through the mirror into Wonderland--the whole thing is basically a clear, albeit cagey, rebuke of the military policies of the Reagan administration. Indeed, it specifically goes after certain elements of military policies related to nuclear arms that had been advanced by the Reagan administration, and declared them to be immoral.
Now, from a pedagogical perspective, I am not sure much sense it made to repeatedly talk about this document in a CCD textbook for 2nd graders. It's a dense document by any measure, and to the extent I internalized any lessons from what was being presented, it was not much more than "peace is a good thing." But I think it is a relevant data point for a couple of reasons. First, no document like this would ever, ever come out of the U.S. Bishops Conference as currently constructed. Hell, they can't even get it together to denounce with one voice the Trump administration for deporting members of their own congregations; you think they are going to criticize a Republican president for his military and security policies in a public document in the name of all of them collectively?
Second, it reflects a sense of what was seen by mainstream Roman Catholicism as the important issues that must be communicated to kids. I don't know who wrote the textbooks we were using, but they came from some Catholic publishing house--it wasn't like this was some weird affectation of the priest or the head of religious education who cobbled this together. Relatedly, it also puts to the test the idea that Pope Francis is introducing new and scary and radical "Latin American Catholicism" to the U.S. church by pushing the emphasis toward economic or other "lefty" issues. I can assure you that you will never mistake central New Jersey for Buenos Aires or Recife or Puebla--Nativity was as lilly-white and affluent a parish as you will find. But nothing Pope Francis is saying or doing would be out-of-step with the vision of the faith outlined in those books. It's not a weird innovation, but a return to the way it was before.
But a return from what? Well, I am very confident I never, ever heard anything about abortion at Nativity, either from the pulpit or in CCD. Ditto with birth control. But it is more than simply the specific issues that were not discussed; it was also the tone. Everyone has praised Bishop Curry, and rightfully so, for presenting a positive, affirming, optimistic vision of Christianity in his wedding homily. But the Bishop Curry vision was the vision we got at Nativity, albeit in a much more white-bread form. The only remotely negative thing I remember Father Brietzke preaching on was people leaving after Communion before the end of the Mass (I think he joked about posting Swiss Guards at the door). The "culture war" was simply not present, and not relevant, in the presentation of the faith, either in substance or in tone.
And the lack of culture war was very specifically understood to be a change from, and a repudiation of, the way it was before the Second Vatican Council. It became very fashionable in the late JPII/Benedict era to treat the "Spirit of Vatican II" as some sort of collective hallucination on the part of a handful of liberal priests and nuns, imagining a discontinuity that was never there. But I very much internalized the idea that The Way Things Are Now was very different from The Way Things Were Then. I remember being told as part of First Reconcilation, by Father Brietzke, that it used to be called "Confession" and it was scary and shame-filled, but it's not like that anymore, because we don't go into those scary booths but sit face-to-face with the priest. The idea that Vatican II changed Catholicism from a rules-based and fearful religion to a more loving and inclusive faith, and that this was a good thing, seemed to me to be something that everyone agreed with and understood (my Dad, who didn't/doesn't like the Vatican II changes, struck me as a weird outlier that was hard to understand).
There is a segment of Christian people, both Roman Catholic and otherwise, who fetishize the idea that religion should be about telling "hard truths" and beating up your congregation. And I suspect I would now find the message pushed by Nativity in the 80s to be a little too self-satisfied and a little too uninterested in engaging with the issues of the day. But I took away the idea that church is a positive thing disseminating positive messages, something that neither my brother nor especially my sisters would say about their 90s-era Catholic school experience. You can call 80s Catholicism "moralistic therapeutic deism" if you want, but I'm still here doing the church thing and they are not. And it's not like they left as adults--they were out, at least in spirit, early in their teenage years, if not earlier. Something was communicated to me that was not communicated to them, or if it was communicated it didn't stick. And there is no question that the Catholicism we got in Florida was very different from what I got at Nativity. I think part of that is the South, but part of that is also the penetration down to the parish level of the cultural warrior priorities of Pope John Paul II and the bishops he appointed. It's simplistic to say that in the 90s abortion replaced "The Challenge of Peace," but it's also not wrong, either.
It's hard to see change when you are in the middle of it, because it is often so slow and so subtle that you can't see it. It's even harder to notice changes when you are told that the thing you are observing doesn't ever change. But, at least with regard to the Roman Catholic Church, it does, and it did. It's much more fixated on policing sex, much less interested in justice and peace questions, much less positive, much less secure of itself in its having stepped away from its past. It's a different place--even with Pope Francis in charge.
The truth is that the Episcopal Church I attend now feels more like Nativity in the 80s than the Catholic parishes I was attending prior to making the switch. The move feels like a return to something that once was and now is gone, as opposed to some radical change of place and perspective. I'm hesitant to say that, because "I didn't leave you, you left me" can be such a self-serving justification, but it is how I feel. If anything, I feel a little bit like a crypto-low church person in my parish, more comfortable with the still recognizably Catholic but much more relaxed post-Vatican II style of liturgy than the "smells and bells." But the similarity to what I remember as a kid is real. And it feels comfortable in a way that have been seeking for a long, long time without actually knowing what I was looking for.
I've thought about whether it is possible for the Roman Catholic Church to go back to the way it was in the 80s. On a basic level, the answer is no--too much in the world is different, too many things have happened. And I am well aware that my experience was not universal across the whole of the Roman Catholic Church in the U.S., let alone the world. But I think, to a degree, the answer is yes. Pope Francis is trying, if haltingly and inconsistently, to bring some of it back. A couple rounds of like-minded Popes may do the trick. But it will take a long time, and there will be rough days in between then and now. And I doubt seriously that I will be alive to see it.
So, in the end, I found a home in a place that is actually very much like the thing I remember. If and when the day comes when the Roman Catholic Church gets to where we are, I hope those that come after us will welcome that with joy and open arms. I suspect they will. In the interim, I hope we can be a place that welcomes anyone who is searching, but especially those that are looking for something that they once had and now don't, or can't for whatever reason. As well as to be a place that passes on to the young ones a bit of the positive, joyous message that I received and carried stubbornly with me despite the forks and bumps in the road. If we can do that, if we can live that, then we will be doing a holy thing in the world.
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