When I was seven years old I had my first communion at our local church. This was soon after the mass was no longer in Latin. Before mass started they gave each of us "inductees" a sheet of paper that had a "promise" we were to read out loud in unison later in the mass. I quickly perused it ahead of time and was horrified even at my tender age at what I was literally being forced to recite. The piece went on and on about how great Catholics were with one of the points being made that only Catholics would go to heaven. Really?? Reciting this later made me feel sick to my stomach and I promised myself that I would never allow anyone to force me to say something again. But, of course, I am sure I did. Plenty of times. Parents and relatives put the pressure on. Do what you are told. We know better than you. Fall in line.
It really shouldn't have surprised my mother nine years later when I told her I had been repeatedly molested by the local priest when I was nine or ten. I didn't tell because I thought I was supposed to accept it. He was a HOLY MAN. I was just some stupid little kid. Do what you are told. We know better than you. Fall in line.
Every Friday there was an hour when the Baptist kids would cross the highway to one building, the Lutherans kids would go to another and we Catholic kids would go to the house behind the elementary school. Religious instruction. This house belonged to a retired school bus driver and his wife, their children grown and gone. Father K would always try to get me to stay behind the others when it was time to leave. He would reach from my back side as he talked and stick his hand into my crotch and rub and rub. It made me want to sink into the floor and die. I would try so hard to get ahead of the other kids each week and usually fail. He would call me back and do it to me again and again for months. One time I saw that the lady of the house actually saw what was happening. I pleaded to her with my eyes but she turned her vision somewhere else and never said a thing. Do what you are told. We know better than you. Fall in line.
The only reason it ended was because we suddenly got a new priest. Years later I figured that the church probably moved him because there had been another victim that actually spoke up to someone. I was relieved beyond belief, nonetheless. The new priest was old, crabby and distancing. No more worries. As I went through my teen years it became more and more apparent how old-fashioned and restricting this priest was. We were finally allowed to have a special teen mass but weren't even allowed to sing Day by Day from Godspell. Too secular. No Star Trek. A communion wafer fell to the floor when I was receiving communion and everyone stared at me like I had "666" engraved on my forehead. They even had to have a special ceremony after mass to pick it up off the floor. Egads. I was become more and more of a disenchanted Catholic as I became my own person. I laugh now when I think about the fact that I once wrote to the nun in our family. I told her I had decided to become a nun. She wrote back that I should be open to other possibilities. I like to think now that she was saying run, run, live your life. Do what you are told? We know better than you? Fall in line?
No more.
