December 1990: Asheville, North Carolina
The priest has a German last name and a pump-pump handshake. “God bless you,” he says to me and Richard. “God bless you.” It’s nearing midnight.
The three of us are standing in an alcove toward the rear of the basilica. Cinematic darkness drapes the nave. The cassocked priest – Father Carl – materialized from the shadows only moments ago and now points us toward the altar and two side chapels, one Marian, one eucharistic, both lit by flickering candles. He knows we’re not Catholic. “You boys should come back during the day so you can see the stained glass.”
Father Carl double-pumps our hands a final time, smiles, then disappears into the darkness from which he emerged.
Struck by the beauty of the church and the oddly insistent “God bless you” of the small forty-something priest, neither Richard nor I speak a single word during the ride back to campus.
April 1992: Asheboro, North Carolina
The Easter Vigil Mass is packed. It’s now past sundown but still hot. Someone forgot to turn on the AC. My navy blue sport coat hides sweat-stains spreading across my shirt.
The longest Mass of the year is even longer tonight. Father Tustin has decided all seven readings will be read twice: once in English, once in Spanish. I fear dehydration.
My mother and stepfather are sweating with me. They’re not Catholic but seem happy that I’m happy. I’m taking Maximilian as my confirmation name, after the priest-saint of Auschwitz.
The Mass approaches awards-telecast length. Father Tustin motions for the catechumens to approach.
“The Body of Christ,” he says, placing the host on my tongue.
I close my eyes and assent for the first time. “Amen.”
August 1990: Cullowhee, North Carolina
Move-in day, Western Carolina University.
I’m a second-year transfer with a brown American Tourister suitcase. My roommate is a wiry mountain-bred military enthusiast named Richard: red hair; freckles; an alarming stutter. He locks up on words beginning with W.
He hauls in a green duffel bag big enough to hold a human body and starts unpacking. At one point he pulls out a framed 8×10 glossy of John Wayne – a publicity shot from The Green Berets – and places it on his desk. When he finally empties his duffel, he whirls around and sticks out his hand. “Richard,” he says.
I shake it. “Joshua.”
“Wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww –” He stops, closes his eyes, collects himself for a second attempt. “Wwwwwhat’s mine is yours,” he says, and gestures to his half of the dorm room.
“Well, um, thanks, I appreciate that.” I never know what to say to people.
“Just two things, though. Don’t touch my deodorant, and don’t touch my John Wayne picture.”
My eyes widen. I can’t tell if he’s serious. He grins big and I relax.
But I never touch his deodorant or his John Wayne picture.
Richard is a fundamentalist Protestant of the Southern Baptist variety. We lay awake late into the night debating the issues of the day. Desert Shield is gearing up. There’s talk of war and maybe a draft. Richard is gung-ho for action. “I want to go out in a blaze of glory on a field of honor,” he says one night.
“I want to go out with Uma Thurman,” I say.
And that’s how it begins, my gentle needling. Whatever position he takes, I take the opposite. Just because.
But when he starts trashing the Catholic Church – as a fundamentalist Protestant, he regards the Catholic faith as a paganized usurpation of true Christianity – I’m unsure what to say. Although I rejected Christianity a few years ago in high school and am now a thoroughgoing agnostic, I nevertheless retain an anti-Catholic bias absorbed osmotically from the prevailing Southern culture. And now, in the middle of a 2:00 a.m. dorm room religion debate, I have nothing to counter my friend’s wilder claims of Jesuit assassins and Babylonian fertility cults.
So I take to the library. I read. I study. I block with my left and counter with my right. Two months pass. Parity is achieved in our late-night forays into religious debate. A truce is never formally declared but I take his sudden disinterest as a tacit concession.
I can’t put down the books, though. Something within me has moved. Works of apologetics lose their sheen but De Lubac and Von Balthasar sparkle. Behind and above everything towers John Paul II and his insistence on the centrality of Jesus of Nazareth.
August 2018: Washington, DC
It’s different this time. There’s rage.
The third crisis in as many decades and no reason to believe substantive changes are on the horizon. The hierarchy have never appeared so aloof, so remote from the faithful in the pews. After days of silence, Rome finally issues a response to the Pennsylvania grand jury report, but reaction from the laity is swift and dismissive: “Yeah, we heard this in ’93 and ’02.”
Various solutions are floated but are undercut by the ideological biases of the floaters. Overlooked are the victims, a thousand souls across six dioceses in a single state. The revelations to come will be devastating, the human toll incalculable. The Catholic Church has 197 dioceses in the United States.
The grand jury report is sulfuric, a satanic wishbook of horror. A boy sodomized with a crucifix. A boy forced to pose naked as Christ on the cross while priests snap Polaroids. A boy whose mouth is washed out with holy water by a priest who’s just abused him. These are not simply the moral failings of weak men. No, there’s another element to this crisis, something you won’t find in the DSM-V. Pope Francis alludes to it in his response to the crisis: “I invite the entire holy faithful People of God to a penitential exercise of prayer and fasting, following the Lord’s command.” The Lord’s command is referenced in a footnote: “But this kind [of demon] does not come out except by prayer and fasting” (Mt 17:21).
It’s not fashionable to speak of Satan. We’re too advanced now. Too modern. Too progressive. It opens us up to ridicule and accusations of excuse-making. Yet the demonic shading of the abuse is evident to anyone who reads the report. Prisons across America house men and women guilty of pedophilic crimes that made no use of sacramentals, consecrated hosts, and crucifixes. If we don’t acknowledge the spiritual element of the battle being waged here, it won’t matter what organizational structures we devise to protect the most vulnerable among us. The grand jury report is evidence of what soon-to-be-saint Pope Paul VI lamented in 1972, that “from some fissure the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God.”
He was not a man given to hyperbole.
May 2016: Marion, North Carolina
I never expected to see his name again.
I’m traveling through the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains en route to a three-day retreat. Marion is just up ahead.
A fondness for the old Mass has led me to a website listing parishes in the state that offer the traditional liturgy. I’m surprised – pleasantly so – that Our Lady of the Angels in Marion is on the list. I’m 15 minutes away.
A second look at my phone’s screen reveals that the traditional Mass is only offered on Sundays. Today is Thursday.
A third look at my phone’s screen reveals the name of the parish priest: Father Carl. Good Lord, it’s been a quarter-century. I set my GPS for Our Lady of the Angels.
I wheel into the lot by the church and park. I try the church doors but they’re locked. As I walk back to my car I notice a small sign with an arrow pointing up the hill behind the church: “Office.”
I haul myself up the paved driveway to the house. I’m oddly nervous about ringing the doorbell. What will I say? How will I explain my presence here? Why am I doing this?
I jab the buzzer.
Heavy footsteps approach. I hear the deadbolt clear. A plump young woman with glasses pulls open the door and smiles.
I give a little wave. “Um, hi.” I never know what to say to people.
“Do you need to see Father?” she asks. For some reason she asks this in a very loud whisper.
“Um, well, yes, that would be great. I don’t have an appointment. He’s not expecting me.”
“Please come in,” she says, pulling the door wide. “I’ll let him know you’re here.”
As I step through the doorway into the house I’m struck by how very strange life is, how full of turmoil and hurt but sustained by a love that, as Dante wrote, moves the sun and other stars. When joyful, we want to share it; when suffering, we want the comfort of an embrace.
Everything in life tends toward communion.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In