Three years ago, I wrote an essay about my experience with the Catholic Church, the institution I’ve assigned the lion’s share of credit for improving my mental health. This essay was plucked out of relative obscurity by an editor at LEVEL magazine, elevated to Editor’s Choice on medium.com, and distributed far and wide across the digital universe — Twitter, Facebook, etc. As of today, How My Catholic Faith Helped Me Cope, has garnered nearly four-thousand views, and remains my most trafficked piece of writing to date. You can check out the story by clicking on the link below:
The spread of the dastardly coronavirus closed off the physical church from me in 2020, creating a hole in my heart’s center. Of course, I could still read scripture and pray whenever I felt the need to. But I could do nothing to replace the high of being inside the church, occupying a section of the pews with my fellow parishioners on a Sunday morning, the sun’s rays pouring through the clerestory on the eastern side of the chapel, illuminating beatific parishioners as the priest read through the scripture. And I missed offering and receiving gestures of peace with complete strangers, reflected through genuine hugs, handshakes, and smiles.
The church edifice would eventually reopen to the public. Unfortunately, my mom and I were not one of the people flooding the church doors on Sunday morning, as coronavirus cases and deaths remain elevated. Our Sunday morning routine consisted of watching news shows, cooking, and streaming.
We were restive on one particular Sunday, as we were dissatisfied with our choices for entertainment. So we channel surfed until we came across a televised Catholic Church service. Though not as fulfilling as appearing at the Church in person, a warmth spread through my chest as the priest conducted services on that day. On each successive Sunday, mom and I reserved a half-hour of space to worship at home.
***
On May 2, 2022, I was watching cable news (The Rachel Maddow Show) while engaged in a phone conversation with a woman I had been dating. Though my attention was divided, it was not in response to boredom, as the woman I was dating was vibrant, effervescent, and extremely intelligent. Choosing to share my time between Rachel Maddow and my girlfriend spoke to my companion’s compelling nature. For I am an unreformed news junkie, usually loathe to divert any of my focus away from the screen as the news is read.
My girlfriend and I were sharing a laugh when the red chyron appeared on the bottom of my television screen, announcing the reveal of the preliminary draft of the Dobbs v. Jackson decision, a ninety-eight page screed written by associate Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. Four other justices submitted their support for Alito’s preliminary opinion, giving the court’s conservatives five votes to end the constitutional right to abortion.
“Can you hold on second?” I said.
“Oh. Okay.” My companion sounded as if someone had slapped her.
“I’m sorry for being so abrupt. There’s some very important news that is breaking right now.”
“Is it really bad?”
“I think so. Yeah. Can you give me a couple of seconds?”
“You want me to hang up?”
“No. No. That is not necessary. You can stay on. I just need to listen for just a little bit.”
“All right. What channel are you watching? I’m really curious now.”
“Oh. Well, it’s channel 356.”
“We’ll watch it together, then.”
“Sure.”
My anger and frustration grew as Alito’s opinion was dissected, synthesized, and interpreted to millions of people. The most conservative members of the Supreme Court, all of them Catholic, were prepared to take away a woman’s constitutional right to bodily autonomy, relegating millions of women to second-class status.
“Can you believe this shit,” I said. “Why are they doing this? Why are they being so cruel?”
“This was to be expected,” said the girlfriend. “This is why they elected the buffoon. He got them the judges they wanted. And now, they have gotten rid of Roe v. Wade. I can’t say I’m surprised by this.”
“You’re not surprised?”
“And you are?”
“Yes I am.”
“Why?”
“Because it goes against fifty years of precedent. Because the five who voted to strike down Roe v. Wade said it was settled law during their confirmation hearings. Therefore, they freaking lied. Under oath.”
“Aw baby. These people do not care. They just don’t.”
“They should care because they are all supposed Catholics. The truth should mean something to them.”
“Well, it is very apparent that it does not.”
***
Hope swelled within me in the ensuing days.
Chief Supreme Court Justice John Roberts, another practicing Catholic, had not concurred Alito’s reasoning. Unlike the other conservative Catholics serving on the court, John Roberts wanted to pare back the right to abortion by fiddling with the viability standard put forth in previous abortion decisions. Instead of keeping the viability standard at twenty-four weeks as stated in Roe v. Wade, Roberts implied that he was amendable to fifteen weeks.
Reports suggested that John Roberts was endeavoring to peel away one or two of the four justices who’d concurred with Samuel Alito. Roberts assumed that Brett Kavanagh or Amy Coney-Barrett, the newest members of the court, would be amenable to a deal. I wanted this to be true, so I spent some time praying for a compromise to come to fruition. Nevertheless, on June 24, 2022, after the Supreme Court proffered their final ruling, uprooting protections for millions of vulnerable women, my heart split into two jagged pieces. Five Catholics had decided on endangering the health of women.
It was not long before we became privy to the horror stories, women and girls becoming victims because of the propagation of cruel and unjust abortion bans across parts of the country. A Texas woman miscarried and was denied health care by doctors, compelling her to carry a dead fetus in her womb for two weeks before finding a doctor willing to extract the fetus. A ten-year-old girl was impregnated by her twenty-seven year old rapist in Ohio and was denied an abortion in her home state, forcing her to flee across state lines in order to get the healthcare she desperately needed. The Dobbs decision has unleashed a pernicious cruelty across the country, but the Catholic Supreme Court Justices do not seem to care.
Recently, the people of Kansas, a very conservative state, voted to affirm the right to abortion for its citizens. The vote was not close at all, with nearly sixty-percent of voters choosing to keep the right to abortion enshrined in the state constitution. In addition to the size of scope of the victory, election observers were flabbergasted by the voter turnout. Despite a concerted effort by anti-abortion conservatives to constrict voter participation, almost one million people decided to cast their vote, a level of participation not seen since the recent presidential election.
The Kansas Catholic Church spent millions of dollars supporting a dishonest measure designed to strip constitutional rights from the people. Along with conservative Republicans, the Catholic Church wanted the rights of millions determined by a select few.
It is fucking shameful.
I used to be proud to be a member of the Catholic Church, one of the first religious institutions to come out against slavery. The Knights of Columbus, a fraternal service order for Catholic men, arranged for my parents to immigrate to the United States of America forty-five years ago. The Catholic Church has been an enduring force for good in this world, enriching and giving meaning to billions of lives. It is unfortunate that the church’s leaders and supreme adjudicators of law are loathe to align their views with parishioners, the majority of whom are pro-choice — 64% of Catholics say that abortion should be legal in most or all cases.
Catholic leadership needs to take more cues from the community and become a more democratic institution, allowing for an inclusion of a platform that matches represents what is preferred by the body politic. I will be eschewing the tangible church until then, preferring to pray to God in the confines in my private home.