I am ashamed that I have baptized my children in the Roman Catholic Church. 

I stood on an ornately carved altar in the church I was raised in, with my family at my side, and I vowed as a mother to give my two children over to God.

Why did I do this?

I remember being in the 8th grade and going to meet with a nun before my confirmation. Shrouded in black habit, authoritarian and grizzled, Sister Katherine informed me that confirmation would make me a women in the eyes of the church. She then went on to tell me that my mother was most likely going to hell for having gotten her tubes tied.

I walked away from the church at 18 without a backward glance. I went to college where I found Eastern Philosophy and fell in love with a Jewish boy who liked to go on long walks and talk about the Tao Te Ching.  God was not an organized construct then. He, she, the energy of creation was everywhere for me. I found God in the shake of a tree limb, and the roll of a wave against a shoreline I would barefoot and explore.

How did I get from that barefoot college girl to the high-heeled mother making a vow to raise her children in the church?

Miscarriage. My three miscarriages made me angry and vulnerable. I laid in bed and cursed at God. I stood at my Grandfather’s gravesite carrying in my pocket the St. Christopher’s medal he gave me as a gift for my confirmation. I dipped myself  grief stricken against the cold marble of his headstone. I needed to believe that there was a force out there greater than myself, my broken body; something or someone that could bring me the thing I longed for the most. I sat in sturdy church pews at Christmas time and made a vow to give myself back to organized religion if only I would be granted forgiveness in the form of motherhood.

When my daughter was born, I went back.

We baptized the children on a Saturday afternoon. My Irish Catholic grandparents made the trip up from Virgina. I remember how proud my Grandmother was to pass on the heirloom baptismal dress the  17 grandchildren of our family had all worn. My daughter would be the first great-granddaughter bestowed with this honor.

I remember my former altar boy father expressing relief that his two grandchildren would not end up in the void of wingless purgatory. Carried on the back of nostalgia for the way I was raised, all those Sunday afternoons of sitting side by side with my parents signing church hymns with hands entertwined, I felt full and complete in the moment the priest blessed my babies with holy water. My children cried out in protest.

What about my own protest?

I kept trying to tell myself that I could be like my mother, who is pro-choice but goes faithfully to church and, as she tells it, prays in her own way. I held fast to the shaky belief that I could be a part of something even though I was adamantly opposed to the way priests walked clean after  multiple counts of molestation, and the church still would not accept and love the parts of their congregation who are gay.

I kept force feeding myself the lie I was raised on,  the lie that the church is about love, faith, and extended arms.

I can not continue on with that lie.

Recently, the Vatican has chosen to excommunicate a Brazilian woman and her nine year old daughter. The church has turned their back on this family because the mother allowed her daughter to abort her twin pregnancy.  Actually, the church has not turned their back on the entire family. Just the daughter and the mother. The church still has those arms wide open for the step-father.  That would be the same step-father who had been raping the little girl, who weighs in at only 80 pounds,  since she was 6 years old. That bastard is still welcome to take communion.

My stomach turns as I type this post.

There is no amount of  childhood nostalgia that will permit me to continue belief in an organization that grants forgiveness for a heinous rapist while shunning a victimized little girl.

I made the mistake of baptizing my children based on the nostalgia for the way I was raised in a loving family, and my overwhelming gratefulness that I was able to be a mother after many years of trying and three times loss. But as a mother, I owe it to my children to protect them from hate and lies. I owe it to my children to teach them the truth about a compassionate God, something I’m certain the Vatican knows nothing about.

How do you know that you are a lapsed catholic?

Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!

He moans, his voice saturated with the pleasure before the fall. I roll over, off, dismounting to find my underwear. I crawl across the room , pull to release their cotton white from the crevice of the armchair, far-flung in the zipper-fly fumbling crush of our foreplay.

I am tugging on the elastic band, up over the soft fold of my flesh, flesh that bore babies, flesh he grabbed with eager hands. Sins of the flesh.

Exodus 20: 4-6 says,

You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them.

I know I am going to hell.

I want to be worshipped. I want to stand stark still in front of the man that I love, all naked, visionary, empowered cunt. All I can think is how unfair it all is. 

God should not be getting the credit for what this woman’s body has done.

I wonder where she is right now, and if she remembers.

While most of the other girls in the grade were dreaming about which New Kid On The Block they would marry, she was sketching designs for the tattoos she would later ink all over her skin. She wore black nail polish before debutantes and sorority girls made it fashionable to do so. Most of her peers coveted Izod Polos. She worshiped at the altar of Death Metal tee-shirts, and thick black timberland boots, the kind you could envision she would use to crack skulls.

She was bad before everyone else wanted to be. Even the big football jocks who outweighed her by 60 or 70 pounds, gave wide berth when she entered the room. It was rumored that she worshiped the devil, that she let him finger her behind the school house, that she was carrying his bastard child. None of which was true. She was just a girl, who ate her lunch alone.

She used to sit behind me in English class. She would kick the back of my chair and hiss obscenities in my ear all class long. At the end of every period, I would duck out of the classroom before she could corner me, and rush to my best friend, who would loyally pick the spit balls out of my hair.

She would make her way down the hallways, growling at any person in her path. She once walked up to another girl in our grade and attacked her without any provocation. That girl got bitch slapped so hard she had the imprint of a hand on her face for the rest of the day. I had been standing in the hallway when it happened, was both horrified and overwhelmingly relieved that I had not been the recipient of that back hand. Instead, I had ducked my head and took off down the hall before I was noticed, angry at the injustice of it all, and humiliated by my own cowardliness.

I wish I had stood up to her, then, at that moment.

I did stand up to her, though. It happened months later. We had a substitute teacher for English. He had no control of the class. Instead of doing the busy work our teacher had assigned, we hung out in packs around the classroom, drawing on the chalkboard, telling jokes, enjoying the stolen freedom of a substitute too nervous to tell us to behave. That was when it happened.

She walked up to me. Before I could turn my head, she spit in my hair. A great big glob of mucous and spit, embedding itself in my curls. It was horrifying.

The room suddenly got really quiet. She broke the silence with a laugh that was more like an evil cackle. Then, she confidently walked away, hoisted herself up on the teachers desk, and sat like a royal despot, with legs dangling.

No one moved. No one dared to speak. All eyes were on me.

I’m sure she expected me to cry. I think everyone did. I would have, but I was too filled with rage. It had been building during the endless months of torment I received at her hand, suddenly it broke over me in waves. I did not cry. Oh, no! I charged, instead. I came barreling across the room, and before she knew what hit her, I did. I threw her off the teachers desk and I hurled my entire body on her, kicking, punching, biting. I tore into her like a mad dog. I was ravenous. I was out for blood.

It took three kids, and the very distraught substitute teacher, to pull me off. By then, I was sobbing and snotting all over myself. I could not keep my body from shaking. Adrenaline coursed through every vein.

Her shirt was torn, there was a huge knot forming under her right eye, and her lips and nose were both bleeding. But, worse than all of that, was that she stood there before me, before everyone, and she was crying.

News of the fight traveled fast. By mid-afternoon, I was a legend. She suffered a worse fate. Now that the other kids knew that a weak little nerd, like I was, could take her out, they figured she was easy prey. They were no longer scared off by her armour of black nails and heavy chains. She became public enemy number one.

Weeks later, I watched her sit alone at lunch and try her best to fend off the verbal assaults. They called her bitch. They called her dyke. They told her she was nothing but a trailer trash, dirty whore. Garbage was hurled onto her table. It landed next to her simple lunch of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, apple, and juice box. I remember feeling sad, wondering if the person who packed that lunch for her knew what she had to endure in her attempts to eat it.

I wanted to go up to her. I wanted to tell her I was sorry. I wanted to make it right. But, I did not know how. Instead, I ducked my head, again. I left the cafeteria with my friends.

Even though I had beaten down the biggest bully in the schoolyard, the truth was that I was still afraid.

I have a feeling she might have been too.