Catholic PTSD

Post traumatic stress disorder is as apt a term if ever there was one, for the damage suffered by young Catholics who grew up as I did in the 1950s and 60s, before many of the “modernizations” took place in the church. We often refer to ourselves as “recovering.” Where to begin? The spiritual landscape is vast.

Born in sin. Try to wrap your head around that one. My non-Catholic friends are incredulous when they learn that this is the case. Born damned, but sprinkle a bit of water on the head, say the right prayer and we don’t have to “throw the baby out with the bathwater.” He’s been Baptized, and now has a clean slate.

My aunt, the nurse, the same one who assisted the doctor during that botched eye surgery, took this quite seriously. You might say, fanatically. When assigned to the neonatal unit, or the nursery, she would quietly “baptize” all the new-borns regardless of their parents’ religious beliefs. Jewish babies were saved from sin, along with Protestants of every stripe, and Catholics of course. Evangelistic baptism. Certainly more than a true believer.

Later, in Sunday school catechism you learn who made you, why you were made, and what you have to do to stay in the sunny side of the street. First and foremost, try not to sin. Follow the commandments, worship at mass, keep your hands off your privates. That last admonishment becomes difficult to follow when your hormones begin to devour you at puberty. More on that topic later.

For the most part, I bought the Catholic deal, hook, line, and sinker. Made my First Communion, got recruited to be an altar boy, passed muster at my Confirmation. Ironically, these pious rights of passage take place before you have a full understanding of their significance. Suffice to say, that at that point, Confirmation, you are agreeing that you will suffer for Jesus and uphold the Catholic faith henceforth. Now, how does a 12 year old take that message seriously?

Like many unsavory things in life, even Catholicism had its up-side. Being an altar boy was like being initiated into a secret society. To begin with you were chosen by the parish priest. Being one of the chosen conveys a certain status in itself. Then you had to learn an arcane language, Latin, so that you could participate in the Mass through prayer and responses to the priest. Along with this went bell ringing, incense burning, and preparing the cruets with wine and water so that the magic could take place. The magic being flat bread and sweet wine turned into, literally, or so the faithful believed, the body and blood of you know who.

I came to appreciate, on some level, the ritual of the Masses that I took part in. On one occasion, a group of us alter boys, served a high funeral mass for a Monsignor. The setting was a vaulted chapel, with rose marble stairs leading up to the altar. We were all in our stocking feet so that we wouldn’t scratch the floor. Candelabras glowed above the altar. There were so many candles that it took us almost 10 minutes to light them all. Mass was served by three priests. There was a choir of nuns singing, raising their voices in praise. Incense and chanting filled the air. Even as an 11 year old, I was moved by the beauty and spectacle ln the ritual of it all.

“Wait! What? That’s a sin!?” Or how I found out that something that felt so good, was so bad. Bad enough put you on a fast freight train to hell, the Hades express. “All aboard!”

I discovered masturbation around age 6. While shimmying up a small tree, my legs wrapped tightly around it, the friction became erotic. I didn’t understand what was happening but I got hard, and the center of my being shifted from my brain to my crotch. I shivered and tingled from head to toe. Henceforth, I was never the same. I had a vague sense that something so pleasureable was too good to be true. It felt too good. There had to be a catch.

And there was. On a late summer Saturday afternoon I was on my way to Confession with three other boys about my age. I was 12 at the time. Bruce, who was driving, was older than the rest of us, had his license, and was probably doing our parents a favor by taking us. We were making small talk, and jokingly loudly as middle schoolers are prone to do when Bruce broke in with a question, directed at me. “Hey, ya gunna tell the father that you pull yer pud?” I didn’t think I heard him right. “What?” He repeated the question.

“That’s a sin?!” That’s when it hit me. I knew felt too good to be true, too good to be permitted a Catholic pilgrim born in sin. Bruce went on, “Yeah, and it’s a MORTAL sin, too. Ya gotta tell it.”

If you aren’t familiar with the hierarchy of sins within Catholicism, there are the small ones, the VENIAL sins. Minor transgressions, such as swearing or telling “white” lies. If you died in a car crash next Tuesday, you didn’t have to sweat the venial sins. You’d be forgiven for those after spending some time in purgatory.

Additional explanation is required. It, purgatory, occupies the space between heaven and hell. If getting to paradise is a two-step process, and supposedly it often is, purgatory is step one. It’s where you get slow cooked rather than deep fried and after you’ve served your time you’re forgiven. You have to suffer a little to pay for your ticket in.

Mortals? Those things are in a class of their own. These are the heavy hitting, soul blackening, kiss-your-eternal-ass-good-bye sins from which there is no redemption. If, perchance, you get hit by a bus next Saturday, and you had committed murder, or say, for instance, masturbated, you were “finished,” in every sense of the word. Done, fini, caput. And, not just for the rest of your pathetic little pecker-pulling life, for...eternity. No redos.

Felt like I got hit by a brick. Swallowing hard, and as red faced as a baboon, I asked, “What do you say? How do I tell it?” The voice of experience replied, “Ya know, ’ Bless me father, it has been two weeks since my last confession, these are my sins: took the Lord’s name in vain 5 times, lied to my father 7 times, missed Mass one time, and masturbated 147 times.’”

By the time we arrived at Holy Family Roman Catholic Church, I was panic stricken. We entered, took our seats in the pews, waited our turns. I noticed that inexplicably, there was a substantial turn out for Confession on this day. I dared not look to see if I knew anyone. It get’s better. This little church didn’t have a standard confessional which was like three little closets side by side usually at the rear of the church. The door in the middle was where the priest sits. The door to each side is where the penitents entered to have their sins, in turn, large and small forgiven. There is a slightly opaque sliding widow on either side that the priest lifts when it is your turn to ‘fess up.

Holy Family had no formal confessional, but rather a potable screen, a kneeler, and a curtain. Father sat behind the curtain in a comfy chair while you kneeled, shielded by the screen, a short wall of thick purple velvet, on a portable frame. It did afford a modicum of privacy, but you weren’t completely hidden. Your feet stuck out into the room. You were, exposed...

After insisting that my friends go first, I could delay the inevitable no longer. I approached the “confessional’ reluctantly, kneeled and began my spiel. Obligatory opening. (See above.) Litany of small time, petty transgressions. “And...masturbating (I had no idea how many times, really) 15 times.” Long pause, followed by a deep breath behind the curtain. I could feel the eyes of every penitent in the church burning holes in my scuffed white sneakers. My face was hot, my palms were sweating as the lecture began.

To paraphrase, I was told about the sin of Onan. His story comes from the Old Testament, Genesis, Chap. 38. (I had to look that up.) He was to act as his bothers stand-in and impregnate his sister in law, giving the brother an heir, since his brother hadn’t been able. Onan knew that even though any offspring would be his biologically, they would belong legally to his brother. So, Onan did a tricky thing. Coitus interruptus, a squirt in the dirt. Or in the biblical version, “But since Onan knew that the offspring would not be his, he spilled his semen on the ground whenever he went into his brother’s wife, so that he would not give offspring to his brother. What he did was displeasing in the sight of the Lord, and he put him to death.” Yeah, you read that right. Put…him…to…DEATH.

Naturally this was all news to me, and I don’t think I understood the reasoning behind it. What I did understand was that hearing this long and drawn out fantasy involving a wrathful god was the reason that the cost of pleasuring myself was eternal damnation. It didn’t make sense to me, but since the Church made the rules, I had to do my best to follow them or pay an awful spiritual price.

Fortunately, the price that day was three Hail Marys, five Our Fathers, preceded by an Act of Contrition while Father spoke to the big guy on my behalf, beseeching him to give me a pass provided I promised to try hard not to keep doing what I couldn’t keep myself from doing.

From then on each day was a struggle to subdue my raging hormones and not touch myself. It mattered not that I knew, or at least believed, that if I masturbated it was essential that I get to confession, and I mean asap. In the meantime, I took great care not to step in front of bus. This was the pattern of my early adolescence, saved one day, damned the next. Catholicism instilled in me an “all or nothing” dichotomy that has stuck with me throughout my life. Indulge, repent...I’m damned, I’m saved. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Decades later, when I was married and the father of two young children, my wife and I decided that some religious instruction was important in our kids’ upbringing. So we joined an Episcopal Church, and found it much friendlier, and frankly, warmer and more humane. This upset my family, all staunch Roman Catholics, no end. Two of my aunts were positively apoplectic.

One afternoon my father asked me. “What is it about the Catholic Church that you don’t want to be a part of it?” Fair question, but I replied, “You don’t really want to have this conversation do you, Dad?” He told me that he did; he genuinely wanted to know what my objections were. So, I started with this, “Well, to begin with they’re really weird about sex.” To his credit, and without a moment’s hesitation, he said, “Well, you got me there.” When I followed with, “Do you want me to continue,” he said, “No, that’s enough.” And that was the end of that.