My Catholic Girlhood

           Unable to sleep a few early mornings ago, I arose to eat and to read. Lately I have begun a few books but been unable to peruse them beyond the first hundred pages or so. I am interested in their contents but they do not seem to have a kind of pull upon some inner place that clearly looks these days for satisfaction. Holroyd’s book about his family that I wrote about in my last post, exercised that pull. One that I began the other morning is having a similar effect. This is Memories of a Catholic Girlhood by Mary McCarthy. I found this slim volume a few days ago while walking out on Bloor St. BMV Books keeps several bins of used stock at its curb, each book modestly priced to entice bibliophile passers-by. On my way to the fruit market I paused to look over the current batch and found myself drawn to McCarthy’s book. I too had a Catholic girlhood, one that ended fairly abruptly (not that this was realized by anyone at the time) when I graduated from St Francis Xavier grade school and began my high school career at Brockville Collegiate Institute and Vocational School as it was then known.

                It must be the period of my life that I find myself in, perhaps also the fact that my mother died last year, that is moving me inexorably toward an inner storehouse of memories. The brush of Holroyd or McCarthy’s recollections upon my own, sets up an inner vibration that leads me toward a space in which experiences are more of the senses than of the mind. I am again that little girl in my coat and hat that match those of my big sister, standing with my parents in an enormous public space filled with people, with music, with incense, with a sense of mystery and occasion that command my attention. There is shuffling in the seats as some move into the aisles and toward the front to take part in an inner observance from which I am as yet excluded. I long to be a part of that circle.

                My father came from an uninterrupted line of Irish Catholics, fervent and unquestioning in their faith. His marriage to a woman steeped in the Protestant conservatism of her own people neutralized some aspects of his devotion over time, though by no means destroyed it. Ironically both of my parents received their high school education in settings that diluted the full impact of their backgrounds, making possible their unusual for that time and place, inter-faith marriage. Mom was sent to board with religious sisters at a Catholic girls’ school in Calabogie for the five years of her post-grade school education. Dad was boarded in Ottawa at the university’s high school, his mother hoping that he would discover a vocation to the priesthood. These hopes crashed and burned, however, when scarce weeks after being left in Ottawa, he climbed the wall and found his way back to Perth by train. Entering the local school, he left behind the intense Catholic culture of his grade school and home.

                The Catholic school that Linda and I attended in Ottawa had few religious sisters as teachers. I remember none (other than the principal who reddened my palm with her strap on one painful occasion). When we moved to Brockville in 1950, however, it was a different situation. For both grades seven and eight my teachers were religious, part of the order of Notre Dame. I have no distinct recollection of the sister who taught me in grade seven. She seemed to me to be an older woman, rather heavy, not particularly attractive physically or personally. I suspect that she was nearing the end of her career and experienced the energies of her students as burdensome. This is pure speculation, of course. She may simply have been a woman troubled by her own inner trials, unable to put them aside to be more present to the children in her care. My lay (i.e., not religious) teachers in Ottawa had been more involved with us and with the materials that they imparted.

                I loved my teacher in grade eight. She was a young religious, healthy, attractive, and bright. She did wonderful things, like writing the lyrics of traditional songs on the side blackboard and then singing them with us. I sensed that she saw me, probably all of us, as individuals and dealt with us accordingly. We would be given poems to learn by heart. When finished we could approach her at her desk and give our recitation. I would do this as quickly as possible in order to get back to reading whatever book I had in hand at the time. If I hadn’t a book she would let me leave the classroom and find something in the small library on the upper floor of the school. I knew that she sympathized with my desire to read.

                It was during those years at St Francis Xavier that I experienced most fully being a Catholic in the manner of people whom I have known since. We studied, in fact memorized, the catechism, the booklet which through a series of questions and answers teaches one the core tenets of the Catholic faith. These tenets were not discussed; they were simply learned as truth with a capital T. I digested them as such and had no questions. Regularly a priest from the parish next door to the school would come to give a talk to the students. Then we could ask questions if we wished but there was never a real challenge to his teaching. As part of our regular school life we would say rosaries, make novenas, go over to the church to make confession, walk together in processions to honour the Virgin Mary on one of her feast days, learn about and raise money for the missions in foreign lands, hear stories of young women who died preserving their virginity (an idea I only vaguely understood at the time), and went in buses to Kingston, the seat of the archdiocese, for immense day-long rallies. I enjoyed it all. At Mass I would go upstairs to the choir loft and sing (as I had begun doing while we were still in Ottawa). This was an especially joyful way of entering into the liturgy, none of which I understood or appreciated as anything more that an expressive and colourful drama in which I had my own part.

                In our home there were no overt expressions of Catholicism. We went to church on Sundays and we all received the sacraments. We continued to say the little bedtime prayers that we had been taught but there were never any rosaries or novenas, and certainly no devotion to Mary. A lovely statue of her circulated the homes of the students, staying for a week at each, giving families an opportunity to say their evening rosaries in front of this blessed icon. My mother declined the privilege when I said that it was our turn. In that incident, if not others, I was aware that her (and thus our) location was at some odds with that of the school and my teachers. I also caught the whiff of distain that she nurtured for such devotions.

                Grade nine came and I left behind that Catholic Petri dish and with it my Catholic girlhood. Without any realization of this transformation, I slid into the space inhabited by my parents who had compromised their own traditions in order to be together. The memorized catechism stayed with me in some unconscious manner, reappearing many years later when I struggled with questions of faith. The veiled references to sexual sin worked upon me in ways that ultimately created terrible inner stresses in my early womanhood. I in no way regret this period, however, as I do not regret other experiences that have formed various elements in the mosaic of a fortunately long life. So much to recall and to re-experience, to re-visit, to savour, to compassionately understand.