A Word That Means “Father”

Saint Peter's Square at the Vatican — image via Pixabay

I dreamed I was at the Papal Conclave.

In the dream, it made sense that I was in the Vatican for the Papal Conclave. I wasn’t the only lay person there. There were tourists of every race and nationality at the conclave, dressed rather casually, in among the clerics. Some of the tourists were on the floor in bedrolls and mattresses. People were talking and arguing. I was showing Adrienne Michelangelo’s famous ceiling. And then the gunshots began. I could see a gang of terrorists coming into the chapel, guns blazing. I grabbed Adrienne and threw us both to the cold tile floor.

I’ve never been more happy to wake up.

My nightmares are often Catholic-flavored. Sometimes I dream I am going to confession in what I think is a nice secure confessional, and then I look around and realize the priest tricked me and I’m confessing my sins to the whole congregation. Sometimes I dream that the Virgin Mary is destroying cars outside my house, or holding a knife to my throat. Religious trauma is a very difficult cross to bear. But I am getting better. I’m told the nightmares are part of that process.

Later, as I was getting ready to leave for the grocery store, and I checked the news on social media one last time. I saw a commentator post two words: “white smoke.”

I sat back down, half afraid my dream would somehow come true.

We got a livestream on the television: there were a thousand people in Saint Peter’s Square, waving flags. They’d been standing out there for Lord knows how long. It was early evening in the Vatican.

Just as in my dream, they were from all over the world, and casually dressed. There were priests and seminarians, religious sisters in veils, families with children, young people in fashionable jewelry. They waved flags from Mexico and the Philippines, Italy, Ireland, the United States. They looked so happy, as if they’d come out to see a show.

“Habemus Papam!” they chanted over and over. We have a Pope! We have a Pope!

Of course, the title “Pope” comes from “the Greek word for “Father.” We Catholics are raised to call the Church our mother. But on the throne at the very top of the Church hierarchy, there is invariably a male, a man we are to call “father.” We have a father! We have a father! We have a father!

I felt a ghost of the happiness and excitement I used to feel, in a group of Catholics exalting that we have a father who sits on the Chair of Peter. I remembered how the consecrated ladies in the Legionaries of Christ used to exalt the virtues of John Paul the Second. How my mother had pictures of John Paul the Second and that weird, twisted crucifix all over the house. I remembered the way the crowds at his funeral chanted Santo Subito! Santo Subito! and I was so happy to have lived under the fatherhood of a great saint.

That was just about a year before I came to Steubenville, and met Mike Scanlan for the first time, and learned so many horrible truths, and ruined my whole life. And now, of course, we know that John Paul the Second was anything but saintly.

The Swiss Guard marched through the square in those ridiculous puffy pantaloons, a relic of the very worst era for men’s fashion. Behind them was a brass band. I don’t remember the Vatican having a marching band at any other announcement of a new Pope, but maybe I just didn’t see them. They goose-stepped around the square, tooting their trumpets. I joked on social media that they were the Vatican Glee Club. Maybe they’d march in formation in the shape of letters next, and spell out “EXTRA ECCLESIAM NULLA SALUS” the way the Ohio State Marching Band performs Script Ohio.

And then I was sad, thinking of Columbus where I grew up, and how I might have been happy if I’d stayed there and gone to Ohio State instead of Franciscan University.

The crowd at Saint Peter’s liked the Vatican Glee Club better than I did.

When the performance was over, they started chanting again: in Latin, but not “Habemus Papam.” They were not exalting that they had a father, but supplicating their mother. All those thousand people, from different parts of the world, waving their international flags, chanted together, “Salve Regina, Mater Misericordiae.”

Again, a ghost of a happy feeling. I used to love that chant, before the PTSD took hold. I used to love the Virgin Mary.

I’ve been in Steubenville for almost twenty years now. The continuous series of shocks all those years broke my faith, but I’ve been picking up the shards lately. I went through a period where I was nearly an atheist. I lapsed in my ability to go to Mass several times, for months at a stretch, because every time I went into a Catholic church I’d have a panic attack. But somewhere in all of that, I discovered that I still do believe in Christ. I’ve been finding Christ again. I’ve been to Mass almost every Sunday. I would love to be able to go to confession, if only the panic would let me. I’d like to be able to pray a Rosary or chant the Salve Regina, but some of my absolute worst triggers involve the Virgin Mary.

O clemens. O pia. O dulcis Virgo Maria!

I know that the Church is not my mother, or my father. She is something else. She hates me, and ruined me, and I am terrified of her. But part of the way I’ve met Christ has been through the Church. Part of the mystery of who I am, is that I am a Catholic.

Christ didn’t call the Church He was founding a mother. He called Himself a mother. The Church He calls a kingdom, where the king invested talents in his servants and didn’t supervise to see what they did with them. A vast flock of sheep and goats all insisting “Lord, when did we see you?” A household where the steward beat and abused the other servants, while the master was away at a wedding.

Maybe the Church is also like my dream: a conclave of human beings from all four corners of the earth, with danger and terror and murder here inside with us. Maybe I just have to live with that reality.

“Habemus Papam!” chanted that crowd of people. And again, I felt happy, which made me sad.