Monday, September 27, 2010

The Church and the Child

Catholic school was a thing apart from everything else, and set you apart from your (non-Catholic) neighbors once you started.

Not in an inimical way. More an inevitable one. After all, Catholicism would teach you that this entire world and existence are just a blip, nothing, a test for you to pass to reach the real, eternal world of God's kingdom. So, naturally, you started thinking differently from the people who went to public school and didn't learn this.

You were set apart in looks, in a uniform. For boys, white shirt, navy blue pants, navy blue tie. For girls, white blouse, navy blue jumper with school insignia.

You were dressed better than public school kids, or for that matter, most adults. So you felt special and like you should be achieving something.

Religion was the foremost subject. All the loose ends, or actually starts, of things you had learned from your parents would be formalized.

It was tough, because you had to not only learn it, but believe it. That's a lot of requirement for a 6-year old.

Your religious instruction even set you apart from your prior self. As a child, baptised, you were free of sin, and even of the possibility of it, until age 7.

Age 7 loomed like a call to the military. Until age 7, they said, a child was incapable of understanding the nature of sin, thus of committing it. Then, at 7, bam. You were considered responsible for your words and deeds - conscripted into the army of the guilty, or inevitably, eventually so. The religious training you began in first grade, at 6 or 7, prepared you for your guilt.

I sort of looked forward to the instruction, because I sure had questions.

I thought the free pass until age 7 was kind of a hoax, because I sure knew when I did wrong, but I wasn't about to divest myself of any amnesty I could get. I wasn't afraid of God's anger over it; I figured it was a present He pretty much dropped in my lap, and We'd probably laugh over it some day. So I never mentioned it to Sister.

But, one of the first days of school, I brought up a related issue that had to do with even a little more liberty that I thought I, and my first grade compatriots, deserved.

I knew that we would prepare for the sacrament of Confession next year, in second grade. My question was, how could we be considered guilty of sin if we didn't have the opportunity to repent?

Sister Anna St. James? Say I see candy on a shelf and I take it. Then you tell me I'm not allowed to - but you don't let me put it back? Am I supposed to go to jail for that?

She gave me a good answer. She said that if I knew I was stealing, I was stealing, and the opportunity to put it back didn't make it not at least trying to steal, which is wrong in itself. As far as not being able to confess it, she said, you can't officially yet, as in a sacrament, but you can certainly explain yourself to God in prayer, and acknowledge your sin and ask to be forgiven. See how that goes.

Sister Anna St. James was a sport, I found, and I felt free to ask poignant questions like this as they occurred to me, and even less poignant ones, such as the part in the Bible when they talk about being unworthy to tie the laces of Christ's shoes. He wore shoes?, I asked. Not sandals? She actually laughed at this and she said, Stephen, if you are going to be so technical about things, I am going to have to be the same way grading your tests, because the Bible says you will reap what you sow, do you understand that?

The Bible is supposed to be perfect, I said.

Yes, she said, it is in its way. If you have ears to hear, Jesus says. There is such a thing as listening too closely and then the fault is really yours, you know. Now be quiet and let me teach.

I never knew, until years later, that nuns had a reputation for toughness, that they were supposedly uncaring, authoritarian, even sadistic. That was a huge surprise. To me they were as open and nice as family. I meant it when I said Sister.

Monday, September 13, 2010

Monday, September 6, 2010

Working Life

Brooklyn 3 was a neighborhood of working people and there wasn't anyone who didn't work. You could see all the people without jobs you wanted walking around from the mental hospital and if that didn't encourage you to go to work and be grateful, nothing would.

Everyone knew where everyone worked. On our street, 878 Clarkson owned a produce business. 880 was us and our father ran a print shop at Pan American. 882 was shipping and receiving. 884 worked for the phone company; 886 at the Navy Yard; 888 were two secretaries; 890 worked in cargo at Idlewild airport; 892 was a cop.

888 was a household of two sisters, their two adolescent children, and the women's father. The sisters worked as secretaries in the city. Their father was retired and minded the house. This was an unorthodox lineup, but driven by necessity, and we all knew what that was.

We were particularly proud of our father because he worked in the city, for a big company everyone knew, in an office. He was the only guy on the block who wore a tie to work, unless you count the cop.

In those days Pan Am's offices were in Long Island City. In 1963, they moved to Manhattan, a gigantic building with their name on top. It meant prestige although to my father I think it meant most notably a shorter commute.

When he came home at night we kids would shout and run to the door and ride his legs and feet around. My mother never got the opportunity for that kind of greeting which of course is emblematic of the kind of deal women got. The men might have complained about work but you did not hear of them offering to trade places.