“Catholic Light”

Muffy Kerber is 828's first guest blogger. She was born in New York City and now lives with George in Murphy, NC, where they own an operate Shoebooties Café. They have five adult children and on June 20 will celebrate their 28th wedding anniversary. 

“Catholic Light”

My husband George has always teased me about my upbringing being “Catholic light” compared to his, and there is truth in this. While we both know the words to a lot of the same hymns, and we both have memories of dropping a little holy water to the floor for the souls in Purgatory before we made the sign of the cross, and of waiting in line for confession as we decided which sins to own up to, there was nonetheless a legitimacy to George’s Catholic upbringing that was lacking in mine.

I think some of this lack of legitimacy came from basic differences in our natures; George’s personality was better suited for embracing Catholicism than mine was.  He remembers learning about other religions and being glad that his religion was the winning one and sorry for people on the losing religion teams. He recalls actively trying to focus on his spiritual side when going through the Stations of the Cross during Lent because to do otherwise would be a sin. I remember being in the fifth grade and learning about other religions and thinking that one winding up the winner couldn’t possibly be true; it would be too unfair.  And my memories of the Stations of the Cross are of continually peeking ahead to see how many were still left, chafing at the slow pace, and wishing Jesus’ journey to the cross would go a little faster.

But the majority of the lack of legitimacy in my Catholic upbringing came from the
differences in the Catholic environments George and I were raised in.  I don’t mean to imply that I wasn’t raised as a serious Catholic, because I was.  My grandmother Minty was a devout Catholic whose world, and her perceived status in it, was sharply defined by the structure and boundaries of the Church.  It was important to Minty that I knew Archbishop Cardinal Spellman had been a guest in her home for Sunday dinner on “more than one occasion”.  She loved to talk about how she had received a “Special Dispensation” from Archbishop Spellman that allowed her to have a cup of coffee before mass on Sunday mornings and still take communion.  Though family lore has it that this dispensation was obtained with the help of a generous donation, it was a very real thing to my grandmother, a special privilege she believed was conferred on her by the Archbishop because it was important to him that she be able to receive communion and he understood that she wasn’t able to function in the morning without her coffee.

My mom was also a devout Catholic.  Her faith is what sustained her through a difficult life, and it was a Catholic faith rooted as deeply inside her as it had been in my grandmother.  I remember Mom talking about how she and her brother would have heated discussions when they were teenagers about whether it was still acceptable to take communion at Sunday mass if you had inadvertently swallowed a little toothpaste in the morning when you brushed your teeth, or would God consider that a breaking of your fast. 

When my brothers and I were growing up, the traditions of the Catholic Church defined the external structure of our lives as well.  We had our First Holy Communion in the first grade and our Confirmation in the fourth. My brothers were all altar boys, and while I didn’t own a nun outfit like the one Linda and Nancy wore when they had been asked to be on a float in a parade, I did have a chapel veil, which looked like a little lace doily that I bobby-pinned to the top of my head when we went to mass.  Financial circumstances forced us to move pretty regularly, but the apartments we rented were always within St. Gabriel’s parish, so we had a semblance of continuity.  Yet being Catholic didn’t permeate our life the way it did the Kerber’s.  Somehow, it never felt like we were a part of the parish community.  I suspect this was because we knew our family didn’t resemble the ones the priests and nuns would brag about.  My parents were divorced and my father was rarely around; my mom was frequently in the hospital; my brothers were experimenting with drugs, and I was fairly invisible.  We were not good Catholic role model material. 

George’s memories of growing up Catholic are quite the opposite.  He remembers his mom insisting that they be active, engaged members of the Holy Angels community. It mattered to her that the parish priests and nuns knew her children personally and thought well of them. She made sure George and his siblings were daily Communicants during the school year, sold raffle tickets for the Parish Picnic, shoveled the walks of elderly neighbors, and excelled in academics. The Kerbers set a high Catholic bar. Who can compete with a personal shrine to the Virgin Mary on the landing at the top of their stairs during the month of May, complete with fresh flowers that each child took turns picking?  What can top saving everyone’s palms from Palm Sunday so they could be burned, I’m assuming to stave off disaster, when the family huddled in the basement during a bad storm? St. Gabriel’s priests and nuns would have definitely bragged about the Kerbers.

But while I concede the intensity of George’s Catholic upbringing as compared to mine, I refuse to accept the “Catholic light” label.  For one thing, I had to wear an extremely unflattering uniform during twelve years of Catholic schooling and George did not.  That alone should confer full Catholic status on me.  But the paramount reason I reject the “Catholic light” label is that I am a true child of Vatican II.  I may not have developed a Catholic faith, but I did develop a strong Catholic conscience, shaped by the ripples of brotherhood, social justice and women’s rights that flowed from Vatican II.  While my high school years didn’t contain much academic success, they did contain numerous philosophical discussions in and out of class about equality and the role of women in society.  My classmates and I planned folk masses, which we wrote our own prayers for and during which, accompanied by guitars, we sang of the more just society our generation was going to help bring about.  These Catholic experiences carved a deep place of fairness and compassion in me; they shaped the essence of who I am today. “Catholic light”?  I think not.

—Muffy Kerber