I prayed the other night.
I was just lying in bed, feeling pretty good, and suddenly I found myself saying the “Hail Mary” in my mind. I’m not sure why. I wasn’t looking for a favor.
Praying might be the kind of thing that some people do all the time, but God and I haven’t been on speaking terms in a few years. We have a deal. I stay out of her life, and she stays out of mine. We’re giving each other the silent treatment.
I don’t have a grudge against all gods, just the Catholic one.
We used to get along well when I was young and innocent. God could ignore that I was mean to my sister, and I could ignore the little inequalities in life. As I got older though, the differences got bigger and harder to ignore. My beliefs about the world started clashing with my belief in God.
I guess it all started with contraception. I just couldn’t understand why a little piece of rubber or a tiny pill offended God so much. Birth control certainly didn’t stop the people of the world from procreating and celebrating God’s creation. For me, the lack of birth control seemed to cause a lot of suffering in unwanted pregnancies and the spread of deadly disease. The deaths of millions seem more important to me than some talk about the sanctity of procreative sex. So we agreed to disagree on that one.
Then the heresy got worse. I started thinking that straight and queer sex were morally equivalent. Why should God care how I had fun as long as I wasn’t hurting anyone? A few years back, I even became convinced that a woman should have the right to choose to have a baby. I’m sure God didn’t like that too much.
From her end, God messed up a bit, too. Her spokesman, the Pope, started name calling. He called homosexuality an affront to Christianity and gay marriage a threat to family values. Then they rewrote the catechism, so that the entry for homosexuality now reads “intrinsic disorder.” That was just going too far. This was personal now. I broke off our relationship to give her some time to think.
But abusive relationships are like an addiction, and sometimes I found myself crawling back. I would go to church hanging my head and God would welcome me back with open arms. Things would go well for awhile, until I realized that nothing had really changed. God still made me feel bad about myself, and I left reluctantly vowing never to go back.
I’m not sure I really blame God, though. None of this is really her fault. She’s a puppet for the special interest groups who have agendas of their own. The strongest of those puppet masters is the Catholic Church. She can’t help it if they speak in her name, condemning some and welcoming others.
But then again, maybe God is to blame. Like a president who takes too much money from an energy corporation, perhaps she has been bribed into looking the other way. If the Catholic church can keep a billion people praying, she’ll just focus on other things when those prayers aren’t as merciful as she would like.
And then there are my own problems with being part of an organization that can do so much harm, even if the vast majority of people involved have the best of intentions. So I’ve put my rosary away and moved on to other things. I spend Sunday morning sleeping. Deep inside, I left the possibility of a reconciliation open, but outwardly I made a clean break.
So the other night, as I lay in bed praying, I couldn’t help but hope it stayed a secret. Somehow I hoped that God would let my prayer in through the back gate, where no one could confuse it with the Pope-approved ones that made it past Saint Peter. I’d have a quick conversation with God, tell her I missed her, show her I cared, and then slip back out before anyone noticed.
I would have to be quick. The cardinals would be pissed if God was talking to an unrepentant queer kid. And I wouldn’t be caught dead with someone who worked for the Pope.
Joe McFadden is a senior in the College and a contributing editor of The Georgetown Voice. He working on becoming a Zen master.
