On the Sunday of the Good Samaritan

I went to Mass.

I’ve been going almost every week lately. I’m giving myself permission not to go if I think it would give me another panic attack, but lately it doesn’t. I still have to stay in the foyer, pacing around.  It’s a nice little parish. I wish I could tell the pastor I think so. I wish I could shake his hand and say that his homilies are nice and the music is very good. But I tend to go mute with anxiety when I’m in a Catholic church. And this morning I was having a bad spell– even though it was one of my favorite Gospel passages, the Parable of the Good Samaritan.

I kept scrolling on my phone, trying to dissociate, during the liturgy of the word– hearing the readings through the propped-open door to the rest of the church, so they ran through my head as I played games with my thumb on the screen, trying not to think about them.

There was a scholar of the law who stood up to test Jesus and said,
“Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
Jesus said to him, “What is written in the law?
How do you read it?”

There is a certain type of person that the Catholics of Steubenville call “a devout Catholic.”

Please don’t misunderstand me when I say that. There are all kinds of Catholics in Steubenville. If you like anything about me, I promise that I’m not unique. There are lots of Steubenville Catholics just like me, who are eccentric and rabble-rousing and care about their neighbors and get into awkward situations like I do all the time. There are many other Catholics who see through the hype and the propaganda, as well or better than I do. There are plenty of Catholics who are traumatized and honest about it.  Yes, I think there are even a few other liberal Catholics. But there’s a stereotype you’re expected to conform to, and you can’t be popular in the Catholic clique if you don’t. There’s a mold. There’s a cookie cutter meant to hack off any member of the Body of Christ that doesn’t fit the expected pattern. Every gathering with other Catholics here turns into a Procrustean bed onto which you’re supposed to lie down and offer up the pain for the poor souls while somebody tears you apart. I’m not the only one who’s felt the agony of shunning. It happens quite a lot.

He said in reply,
“You shall love the Lord, your God,
with all your heart,
with all your being,
with all your strength,
and with all your mind,
and your neighbor as yourself.”
He replied to him, “You have answered correctly;
do this and you will live.”

But because he wished to justify himself, he said to Jesus,
“And who is my neighbor?”

I wish someone could explain to me why, even after everything I’ve learned about the vicious cult that molded the Catholic culture in this place, I still feel as if I’m evil for not being accepted here. Shouldn’t I be proud of myself?

I wish someone had warned me that, somehow, when I found out that the men I was groomed to regard as holy were actually monsters, I would feel like I was the monster, the one going to hell. Because every time I’ve been to Mass for the longest time, I’ve felt that I’m going to hell. When I’ve tried to pray, more often than not, ever since about 2022, I’ve felt that I’m going to hell. When I’m spending time with Adrienne or driving on my history day trips, when I’m swimming, when I’m helping at the church outreach or helping the neighborhood children, at least a good half of the time, I feel that nothing good counts for anything because I’m going to hell, because I’m not a “devout Catholic.”

Of course, I used to believe that before my deconstruction and reconstruction as well. My OCD used to drive me to go to confession, sometimes twice a week, sometimes confessing to another priest a day later because the first priest would say “That’s not a sin, put it out of your mind, but I’ll absolve you for everything else” and I was worried the priest was wrong. I was chasing that hour or two of feeling forgiven and safe. Now, my religious trauma being what it is, I don’t know if I could ever go to confession again, so I rarely if ever feel safe.

If there had never been such a person as  Mike Scanlan. Or if Mike Scanlan had joined the Dominican Friars or the Jesuits and become a cult leader somewhere else, and Steubenville had never become what it is. Would I still have ended up this way?

“A man fell victim to robbers
as he went down from Jerusalem to Jericho.
They stripped and beat him and went off leaving him half-dead.
A priest happened to be going down that road,
but when he saw him, he passed by on the opposite side.
Likewise a Levite came to the place,
and when he saw him, he passed by on the opposite side.
But a Samaritan traveler who came upon him
was moved with compassion at the sight.”

I’ve noticed that the Gospels have very few kind things to say about priests.

When Jesus speaks a parable about the people who are supposed to be the leaders, left in charge while the master is away, he doesn’t compliment them. Now here’s a priest crossing over to the side of the road, and here’s a Levite doing likewise. The God Who decided there ought to be such a thing as a priest, has a very low opinion of priests.

But a Samaritan traveler who came upon him
was moved with compassion at the sight.
He approached the victim,
poured oil and wine over his wounds and bandaged them.
Then he lifted him up on his own animal,
took him to an inn, and cared for him.
The next day he took out two silver coins
and gave them to the innkeeper with the instruction,
‘Take care of him.
If you spend more than what I have given you,
I shall repay you on my way back.’

If I am not damned, Jesus. If you remember me at all. Please come this way and be moved with compassion. Pick me up and get me out of this spot, because I am half dead.

“Which of these three, in your opinion,
was neighbor to the robbers’ victim?”
He answered, “The one who treated him with mercy.”
Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

Funny how the scholar won’t say the name, “Samaritan.” A friend pointed that out to me recently, and now I can’t get it out of my head. The scholar hates the Samaritans that much. He just says “the one who treated him with mercy.”

“Go and do likewise,” says Jesus. Don’t be like a priest, just show mercy. 

What a bundle of contradictions this Church is. What a strange, subversive text the Gospel is, particularly when I hear it read by a priest on Sunday.  “Don’t be like the priest,” says the parable spoken by a God Who thought up the idea of a priest. “Be like the utter outcast, the embarrassment, the disgusting heretic whose name you can’t even stand to say. Don’t bother to look like a good Catholic. Show mercy, and you will inherit eternal life.”

I walked out for a few minutes, so I wouldn’t hear the homily this time. I liked the one I’d just thought of in my head.