A Good Catholic
Single, unemployed and pregnant at age twenty-two, three months from finishing my undergraduate degree, I knew one thing with certainty: I was a good Catholic.
“Adoption is an option,” some confidantes reminded me.
“No one will know if you just go an have an abortion,” others offered kindly.
But I knew that those were not options for me. I’d become pregnant following the Catholic rules about birth control, and I trusted God and The Church to be there for me, like Mary and her unborn baby Jesus. Becoming a mother to an unexpected pregnancy’s child would be a holy choice, and one I accepted and embraced.
Like Mary, I married before the baby was born. (Mary’s marriage turned out a bit better, as far as I can tell, though I at least had the great good fortune to have a second child, too, during my otherwise ill-fated marriage.)
Nothing — NOTHING — has brought me more joy, more meaning, more love, more fulfillment or more closeness to the Divine than being the mom of those two people. (I’m leaving their names out of this because I’m the one who made these choices, and they can tell their own stories at other times. This part is mine to tell, and while they’re part of it, it’s not quite about them.)
From the instant I felt that “quickening in the womb,” I knew that I’d do anything — ANYTHING — for that newly created little person. Throughout both of my pregnancies, I talked and sang to that new little person inside me; every cell in my being loved and adored those wee humans from the moment of their conception.
And to hold a baby! Oh, the first moments of seeing, hearing, holding a new person who has emerged from one’s own body! Oh, every moment of awe at the tiniest of yawns, the fingernails so little (and dangerous!), the gulping of milk that nourishes their little cells into growth so quickly, so quickly.
Sacred, sacred, sacred, holy, beautiful, necessary perfection.
And to think: God had come into the world unable to lift his own little head, wobbly necked and unable even to feed himself. Little Baby Jesus was a lot like my baby: crying out to express hunger, fear, disconnection, discomfort, depending on mere humans to listen, to support, to sustain his very existence
DAYUM, as they say nowadays.
And now I, too, had been entrusted with an entire human life, a person who had no hope of survival except for my being present to them. Mary, help me.
God, it was hard.
Money was tight, neither of us was really prepared for a real adult life, let alone marriage or parenthood. Things that had been easy to take for granted disappeared from daily life. We lived far from our families in a small apartment and very little support network. I was alone with a baby almost all of the time.
When a dear friend who was in college in that same city decided to follow through on her baptism and practice Catholicism, I became her sponsor. We joined the Newman Center on her campus — a vibrant, loving, progressive community. She became my daughter’s Godmother a month after her own Confirmation and First Eucharist.
Along the way, I fell in love with the theologies that said that “prolife” needed to consist of a “seamless garment,” the theologies that clarified that Catholics ought to care about life after a child was born as much as before the child was born. That totally made sense (and still does.)
At no point did the Catholic Church, however, ask how I was doing, or if I needed help or support as a young mom. I guessed that I’d done my part by not having an abortion, and I was now, theologically and structurally, at least, on my own in terms of the Church.
My son was born twenty-one months after my daughter, though I already knew that the marriage was shaky at best. (I don’t need to delineate the issues here; they’re really a sidebar to the main story, oddly enough.)
Both children: miraculous, glorious, perfect reminders of all that is holy, and I mean that wholeheartedly even to this day 32 years later. Every single day I did my best to honor the trust that God had put in me to care for, nurture, sustain and co-create these new lives, and I mean that wholeheartedly even to this day as well.
As my then-husband was losing his job, we moved back to Northeast Ohio. Our families were at least more nearby. I joined a Catholic parish where two of my friends were parishioners. I became active as a volunteer in their RCIA program, developing friendships that have lasted decades now.
As my marriage was clearly dissolving, I reminded myself that other humans had been through far worse things than enduring a bad marriage for the sake of two small children, and that somehow I could get through this. My friends and most of my family knew that it was bad, and were as supportive as they could muster, given that I couldn’t yet support myself, let along these two precious little humans, outside of the household.
I turned to my faith, and found that the Catholic Church just really wasn’t all that enthusiastic, as an institution, about this situation.
In order to support myself and my kids after what I now knew would be an inevitable divorce, I went back to school, working toward a graduate degree in Ministry. Heady days and sleepless nights of studying, writing papers and developing practicum projects while essentially single-parenting in a deeply unhappy marriage gave way to eventually doing all of that while dealing with domestic relations court and working three part time jobs to make ends meet.
Somehow, it didn’t occur to me that the Catholic institution that I loved and treasured and that (among other things) taught me that the worst thing anyone could ever do was have an abortion really ought to be a bit more vocal about all of the ways that society and the Church in particular owes people on THIS side of the womb a just and dignified life, too.
A few decades later, I’ve worked as a fulltime parish minister, a hospice spiritual care provider and am twenty years in to providing local support for the Jesuit Volunteer community in my city. I live in a community of smart, generous, engaged, educated mostly Catholic social justice and social service activists and leaders — doctors, social workers, executive directors, funders, advocates for social policies that support human dignity across the span of life. Here I find life valued in all of its many facets.
Goodness, how I love the social justice tradition of the Church! And the mystics and prophets, ancient and contemporary! Joan Chittister! Edwina Gately! Dorothy Day!
And dammit, how I despise the shallow, narrow, penis-worshiping patriarchal stance that “prolife” means nothing other than making sure that people who have conceived a baby are required to make sure that baby arrives alive from the womb.
The new Bishop of Cleveland has made a splash in his first month in the diocese by writing a letter to his flock reminding us that nothing in Catholicism matters more than abortion.
No words about the social stigmas and structures that make it nearly impossible for so many born-people to live in dignity.
No mention of a Catholic call to provide safe, dignified housing, nourishment, childcare, healthcare, and education for those born-people.
No mention of a Catholic demand for an end to the racism and redlining that damn parents of born-people to poverty.
No mention of a Catholic understanding that a multitude of circumstances drive single, unwed pregnant women like me to have to consider whether they can even possibly survive following through with their pregnancies, no matter how much they want to, for the love of God.
No call for the faithful to carefully consider the difference between a presidential candidate who is credibly accused of serially sexually abusing women and children and a presidential candidate who is a thoughtful, engaged Catholic. No mention that the abortion rate historically goes DOWN under the (Democratic) administrations that use taxpayer money to provide a social safety net for the born and the unborn.
Only yet another shallow, penis-worshipping reminder that you might go to “hell” if you don’t vote against abortion screed illustrating yet again that the Catholic Church as an institution does not give a damn about those of us who trusted in them, in God and in our Mother Mary that we mattered, too, even after we didn’t have abortions.
I didn’t have an abortion. I believed. I’ve failed as a parent in so very, very many moments that I’d rather not recount because I simply didn’t have the support structures to do anything but my lousy best.
The Catholic Church could change this. The Bishops could write letters to the faithful this month outlining the complexities and nuances of the abortion debate. The USCCB could issue teaching that demands that Catholics understand that abortion only happens because society does not support life AFTER birth. My pastor and Bishop could encourage voters to be advocates for a social safety net that promotes dignity of persons.
I didn’t have an abortion. I believed.
I wish the Church believed in me as much as I used to believe in it.
