There was a whisper behind us: “Those Berrigan kids don’t know the rosary.” Surprised, bemused, maybe a little scandalized — the noises rippled softly through the funeral home’s largest visitation room. I was in college. My mom’s younger brother had died of lung cancer and we were there to pay our respects to Uncle Bill — a handsome, voluble construction worker and father of three daughters, who had given up cigarettes and beer more than a decade earlier.
It was a little scandalous. We were raised by a priest and a nun, people who literally spoke Latin and lived and breathed the essence of Catholicism with a capital C for decades. But, despite that — or rather because of it — we were raised in an early-church-sort-of-catholicism that didn’t have a lot of patience for pomp and circumstance.
What did that look like?
For starters, there was no rosary involved. Eucharist of watered down wine and old bread was shared around a circle in the living room, consecrated by whoever was “up” that week and shared by agnostics, atheists, Jews and even some Catholics (but it had been a long time since their last confession). It was pretty informal, but I recall that our father, Philip Berrigan, gritted his teeth when one woman shared the Eucharist with her dog, and would get mad at us for picking our feet or playing with our fingernails as the host was coming around the circle. We had nothing to compare this ceremony to, and so did not show the proper reverence (or even basics of hygiene) that he thought of as baseline.
What else did our church look like?
Bible study was in the front room on Wednesday nights — with friends consulting the experts — theologians and scholars like Leonardo Boff, Ched Myers, Walter Wink and William Stringfellow. In time, thinkers like Joan Chittister, Mary Daly, Dorothee Soelle and Miriam Therese Winter were also incorporated — opening the book, and delving into prayer together.
Are you getting the picture, yet?
Here’s another image: We used a worn Bible stuffed in the glove box or the lunch cooler, and pulled it out at the beginning of every car trip and before each meal on the job site (our family painted houses for a living). We were people who took the Gospel mandate of “love thy neighbor” and “blessed are the peacemakers” and “turn swords into plowshares” seriously enough to plan actions, organize retreats, hold banners, get arrested and go to prison.
In short, our church did not look like a church with stained glass windows, remote and ornately clad priests, or strangely hard and mealy wafers. It looked like belief and life integrated, and in constant tension. So, no, we did not learn the rosary. On the rare occasion we went to church, we mumbled along with the prayers and tried to stand and sit when everyone else did.
We were all baptized by our uncle Daniel Berrigan, a Jesuit priest, in our Uncle Jerry and Aunt Carol’s backyard. We were confirmed much later on. My sister and I prepared for confirmation with a nun in Baltimore, a stalwart woman who practically ran her parish. The priest just came in for Sunday mass. We could easily distract her from our catechism by asking her pointed questions about the role of men and women in the church. Kate was in high school and I was just out of college when Bishop P. Francis Murphy confirmed us. I wanted to be able to call myself Catholic, to be a member in good standing of the tribe.
Despite this, I never attended church regularly until the Fall of 2001 — when I just wanted to be in a room full of people feeling and breathing together. Then I started attending noon mass at Saint Francis Xavier in New York City a few times a week. I would tell my boss I was going to the gym and then go work my spiritual muscles instead. I loved the little chapel tucked behind the altar, the anonymous fellowship of the 20-or-so regulars, and the strange combination of rote recitation and deep solace.
More than a decade later, when I moved into Maryhouse Catholic Worker in New York, I loved vespers. We gathered every night at seven, read the psalms aloud together and then brought into the circle all those who needed prayer. I found so much meaning in this half hour or so of daily prayer and communion. I looked forward to it so much. Vespers is old school Catholicism — the kind of thing my mom would have done with her family as a child. But in the well-worn dining room of a busy soup kitchen, homeless shelter and revolutionary Christian laboratory, the words, gestures and fellowship were a healing balm after a long day of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.
Now, my husband and I belong to All Souls Unitarian Universalist Congregation in New London and our son Seamus is being brought up within this incredible community. We bounce out of bed on Sunday mornings, ready to go to church. We often volunteer as greeters — handing out programs, making sure everyone gets settled comfortably and collecting the offering.
Patrick is an atheist. He doesn’t believe there is a higher power who watches or cares about us. He says that he doesn’t need to believe in God to be a good person; he doesn’t need an ancient book to tell him what is moral. Patrick believes that we can find all the guidance and moral leadership we need in always asking the question, “How can I help?” The rite and ritual of the Catholic mass is off-putting to him. It would be hard to get him to go to church with me, but we both find comfort, fellowship and food for thought within All Souls’ vibrant, progressive and genuinely welcoming congregation. There is room there for what we each believe.
I do miss communion and the long stretches of prayer and contemplation that are part of the Catholic mass. I am not alone in that. All Souls congregation is full of people who were raised Catholic, but are lapsed for lots of reasons. I’m not lapsed. I am a Catholic in waiting — waiting for my church to remember the Gospels, to be a justice and peace-seeking community, to be fully inclusive of women and to be welcoming to people who are not hetero-normative. Pope Francis is a step in the right direction, but there is a long way to go.
Until then, I will say the rosary, make time for prayer and attend All Souls. And we will raise our kids to be knowledgeable and respectful of all religious traditions and practices, and help answer their questions as they find their own paths of meaning.
For what it’s worth, I agree w/ Patrick. All due respect, but the more I read the Old and New Testaments, the firmer my disbelief.
Tom Over,
Try reading the 19th and the 139th psalms. Nineteen is creation and The Law of reality, while One Thirty Nine peers into you as a being in this same creation. ( keep in mind while reflecting or meditating, or praying, on these astonishing works – or at any other time – that God is not an object or a subject; an object you can possess, a subject you can know.
God is as the saints say: inscrutable.) peace.
I survived the RC church from the mid 50’s to mid sixties when I firmly and loudly told my mother that I was never going there again.
I lived through the hell of institutional physical, verbal, emotional abuse as well as class and economic bigotry.
To this day codified ritual and dogma can set my teeth on edge without my even being aware that it is happening.
Though passionately anti war, it took me years to call myself a pacifist due to the anger I felt towards anything in a habit or clerical garb….not a good way to grow up at all.
I was not sexually molested, so I cannot even imagine what those people went through.
Like Patrick, I gave found that I can be a very valuable, ethical and descent presence on this earth without a church. “How can I help?” ….yes, my feelings exactly.
I realize that my experiences are not shared by everyone and am glad that your family have found a safe, inclusive and accepting place to gather and share peace, but do all such such places need to be called churches?
Who killed some 3000 innocent people in NY City in 2001, Believers or Non-believers?
If these believing Muslim were Atheists or Agnostics, these 3000 or so New York victims would be alive today.
Religion results in far more harm and evil than good.
Look at all those religious wars, the Inquisition, burning of heretics, and suicidal bombings where thousands were victims.
World War 1 and 2 results in the death of Millions and Millions, and yet the main participants of both wars were all Catholics (Italy and Germany), Christians (Germany), and Shintoist (Japan).
Both the population and leaders of those countries were raised and brought up in Traditional Religion which did nothing to prevent the Wars and the slaughter of Millions.
For example, Hitler and Mussolini were raised as Catholics and Stalin was raised a Russian Orthodox (I heard Stalin even wanted to be a priest in his childhood days. Hitler was even a Catholic Altar Boy when he was a Child.)
It is not of LACK of belief, but strong BELIEF in religion that causes all this Harm and Evil in the World.
The FASTEST Growing Religion in the World today is “Non-Belief”, which increased from almost zero over 100 years ago to the third largest Belief in the World (next to Christianity and Islam).
The prediction is that it will be the largest Belief in the next 100 years or sooner. Don’t be surprised if almost all Traditional Religious Beliefs will be extinct as Greek Mythology by then.
To what extent would you consider yourself ‘spiritual’, though not ‘religious’?
I use the former term to describe myself as it pertains to a sense of wonder and reverence about the Earth and the universe in general, which carries with it a sense of responsibility for how my behavior affects human and nonhuman others, here and around the world, now and in the future.
Thru ecology, that wonder doesn’t conflict with reason. I’d be interested (and hopefully not judgmental) of what religious folk have to say about how they reconcile with reason the extraordinary claims in the sacred texts of their faith.
If such folk explain by saying that the harsh or extraordinary claims in the Old or New Testaments are to be taken figuratively, that poses the question. If the sacred texts are mostly symbolic, then what distinguishes a Catholic from a Protestant? Or, for that matter, if loving each other as one planetary human (and nonhuman) family is ultimately what matters, why be a Christian instead of a Buddhist, Hindu, Jew, Muslim, Pagan, or even an atheist committed to love?
As for ‘spirituality’ based in ecology, it’s in harmony with, though not limited to, science. What I like about science is that it’s subject to revision, whereas religious doctrine involves claims of immutability (despite the fact that, for example, Christianity has changed over the centuries).
When a person believes he or she is having a ‘relationship with God’ who is deemed to be all-knowing, that person may be more prone to a counter-productive degree of certainty.
A couple quotes come to mind. One from Friedrich Nietzsche and one from Mark Twain: “Convictions are more dangerous enemies to truth than lies” (Nietzsche) and “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” (Twain.)
(By the way, those quotes are suggestions from those writers, not sacred commandments. And that’s how I’d suggest religious texts be read: as sometimes useful guides that fallible, inspired human beings composed, not the ‘word of God.’)
Of course, the danger of inordinate certainty seems more applicable to religious extremism than to open-minded and loving faith, as demonstrated by Frida and Nathan. Plus, proponents of political ideology and ‘scientific’ theories are not immune to the dangers of an inordinate degree of certainty.
Frida, I love your thoughtfulness and candor. Once asked if I were a “recovering Catholic,” I took the opportunity to say that for me there was no need for a process of recovery, I spoke of my gratitude for all the Catholic Church has given me. And whenever i am with my “more faithful to the church,” friends I am happy when we pray together.In a car ride conversation with my 14 year old grandson who was railing against “religion,” saying among other things that he is a non-believer. I did ask about his passionate verbal attack, and what I wonder is beneath it. Is it the longing of an adolescent boy for something solid to be passionate about. Then he asked if I believe in God… .
My honest response is, I don’t know, the jury is still out. I believe there is a power deeper and greater than I, and I pray. I am happy you and Patrick have found a faith community.
“Lapsed Catholic”implies the institution judges the individual. “Catholic in waiting” implies the individual judges the institution, so that if it ever becomes reformed or pure enough one can rejoin it without compromising one’s integrity. But the early Church was never “pure”as Paul’s letters show. I understand the integrity of leaving an institution as sinful as the Catholic Church. But there is a risk involved in this path too, namely that I make myself the judge of what is holy and true.
I like some comments I heard recently fron Cynthia Bourgeault: every tradition has the same eye of the needle: die to self. If you don’t commit to a path, you won’t die to self. Traditions provide a safe way to do this. It doesn’t matter where you start, it only matters that you start.
A Catholic priest whose name I will not mention, but who you mentioned in your article, Frida, once prodded me and a couple of friends into stealing an American flag from in front of a liquor store in suburban New York in the late 1970s. That man was a really nice guy, still is, and he reminds me of the cliché, “Some of my best friends believe in God.” Hi Ho!
I am a member of the Prairie UU Church in Madison, WI. Like All Souls it is a great place for atheists, humanists, and naturalists to frequent!
Randy Converse
Hello. Thank you so much for your great article on, ‘What should church look like.’ Your childhood and your adult years sound amazing. I used to go to a monastery in Rochester, NY, a lot for mass and the daily office, including Vespers! At one point in my life after reading Thomas Merton’s books and books on contemplative prayer, I had aspirations of religious life. I am married now and have a son. He is beautiful and is 8 months old. My wife works during the day and is the primary ‘breadwinner’ and I work as a cook part-time at night and watch my son during the day. I live in a world of tremendous change, like we all do and it grates my soul every once in a while and it gets challenging. From traditional gender roles to personal spiritual crises it is a different life these days for most people.
I converted to Catholicism about 15 years ago. My wife is divorced and she has been a Catholic her whole life. She is beautiful and strong and a heroic person. We like the tradition of old monasteries, contemplative Christianity and the lives of the saints. But – as a divorced married couple without an annulment we are denied the sacraments. It brings hard guilt that hurts a lot at times. We married out of love and devotion and we needed each other.
Our Christian/Catholic spirituality is what actually brought us together and it pangs me from the inside out, too not be accepted as a Catholic in full communion.
My wife has kids and the divorce hurt them a lot. I understand now the pain of divorce and it is traumatic. I really thought the church would be their for spiritual support and a kind of invisible form of advocacy for both of us and her kids, but it wasn’t. I hope to God the Roman Catholic Church will be their for someone like me and my wife and her kids someday and make it easier for a great woman to leave an abusive husband and too still live at home with her kids. We made mistakes but we should have been loved and supported and not put a through a ringer. Thanks again for your article and God bless!
Frida,
I was taken in and sheltered with love and too much food by a wonderful Catholic family in my early teens, so I know about the commitment and affection of which you write!
I am studying to become a UU clergy member now. I feel it essential to my path to keep the faithless as well as the faith! Your thoughts bolster me in my conviction to be a humanist healthcare chaplain.
I’m working on gathering beads to make a Seven Principles ‘rosary.’ They will help me learn and recall them. I will likely add some beads for the sources of faith, too! Great article- thank you!
Peace ant ~)<