Chapter Twelve
WORSHIP
Worship and Worry, "The Jew Store," Spirituality, Song
Initially in writing this story of my boyhood I had considered our religion irrelevant and best omitted, but at some point in the writing I began to sense that this was becoming more than a description of life on a Vermont farm in the 1930's. It was a story about a family, a farm family of French descent which brought its Catholic faith with it from the Province of Quebec and was subject to its influences.
Though the first European to visit Vermont shores may have been a Frenchman, Samuel de Champlain, the settlers who cleared and laid title to our local area were predominantly of English descent and of the Protestant faith. There was a Protestant church in the New Haven town center where the Baccalaureate Service was celebrated for my senior class in 1936.
To us few Catholics it seemed not inappropriate; no crucifixes or Christ statues, no Stations of the Cross, Latin chants or gold and red vestments to burden our consciences with the guilt of having attended a house of worship of another denomination. It was a fitting and memorable event.
Our family church was in Bristol and we attended there on Sundays and Holy Days. On any Sunday when we were prevented from attending by illness, car troubles or impassable roads, we would gather in the front parlor and on our knees would recite the Rosary.
In my maturity and exposure to other cultures I learned of the significance and purposes of repetitive prayer, but in my boyhood, after fifty Hail Marys on tiring knees and the sleep-inducing drone of elided phrases, my mind and eyes unconsciously escaped around the room while automatically droning the implanted words and occasionally rerouting into the imagery of "fruit of thy womb" or the meaning of "hallo-wed."
I remember as we went up Stony Hill (sometimes backwards) to Bristol and church on Sunday, clutching our nickels and dimes for the basket -- apprehensive lest we over- or under-reach and drop them on the floor -- it seemed to be more of a time for the grown-ups than the children. During the Latin Mass our minds would wander and we'd look forward to meeting our friends and relatives, getting out of our Sunday clothes and enjoying the big traditional Sunday dinner.
The acquisition of my new blue serge Sunday suit had disquieting associations. The only purveyor of suits in Bristol at that time was Jack Abrahms who operated what we called in our ignorance "the Jew Store." In fact, I never heard it called anything else, which tells something about our times and culture.
In those days I was not troubled by that or aware that I should be, but in church sometimes during the Latin Mass when the habitual mind-wandering set in, I would forget to sit or stand or kneel in the appropriate sequence and think about Mr. Abrahms. He was the only Jew I had ever seen, other than the sacred one whose mortal image was portrayed around us on the Stations of the Cross. I wondered if back in the Holy Land they might have had any common ancestry, like us with Charles Martel.
Our parents were diligent in furthering our Catholic education and saw that we went to catechism on the designated days and learned our assigned lessons so as to qualify for the ritual of confession and the sacrament of communion.
I hope the teaching of catechism has changed since I was a boy. Then it was a rote learning and reciting process where in many cases the successful reciter had no clear understanding of what he had recited. It was not all lost on me, however. Though too shy to volunteer, I had a pretty good understanding of venial and mortal sin with imprinted mental images of the terrors of Hell and eternal damnation that I had seen in the old attic bible.
I apparently passed catechism requirements and qualified for confession and First Communion. I would have taken ten spankings rather than go to confession. It was supposed to relieve you of the guilt of your sins so that you could leave the booth with a clear conscience, but I found it scary and humiliating. In the confessional my mind would fill with extraneous twaddle even as I recited the confessional convention, "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned," and would be thinking, "Why would he bless me for having sinned? Shouldn't it be `Bless me despite my sins?'"
There was more. I could not bring myself to tell this kindly, saintly man with whom I'd be in close proximity once out of this screened enclosure of the real sins on my conscience arising from studying naked girls in magazines obtained from neighborhood boys. So I confessed to a measly venial sin such as telling a lie or using the Lord's name in vain.
I would depart the confessional with a minor penance of ten Our Fathers and ten Hail Marys and feeling more guilt-ridden than when I entered.
The troubled conscience with which I went to First Communion was soon dismissed and forgotten as I received praise and congratulations from parents and relatives.
After more study and growth enabling me to fit into my older brother's outgrown suit, I was ready for the sacrament of confirmation, the final act of admission into the Catholic church. I was duly confirmed and by title, custom and habit officially Catholic, though feeling little transformation by the sequence of sacraments I had completed.
It would be another development and influence in my life that brought spirituality.
When my voice matured and changed into a lusty baritone, I discovered a latent talent and a joy and new confidence in singing. After the farm went bust and I graduated from high school and moved to Burlington, I joined the choir at Burlington Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. For lack of money I did not attend college that year but went to work in a printing plant.
At church I learned and gained respect and love for the Gregorian chant and the liturgical music of the church, took voice lessons and matured in musical knowledge and spirit. In the following year as a choir member, I learned and gained access through music to a spirituality I had not felt before. I would sometimes stop on the way to work for the pleasure of sitting alone there, not so much to pray as enjoy the ambience and a feeling of undefined gratification.
I was still adolescent and emotional, I expect, but it was the beginning of my discovery that access to the Deity was through the heart rather than the intellect, through feeling rather than testimony.
The act of singing gave me an enlightened insight into the meaning of prayer. When sung, "Our Father who art in Heaven" is a succession of images, long vowels and accenting consonants, giving the singer time to feel and express the word's meanings and implications. Given that experience, I learned to say the prayer "Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with Thee. Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb,
Jesus . . ." in the tempo I would have sung it, and thereby brought to it the senses of vision, sound, feeling and compassion that would have been completely lost in a hurried recitation.
I could understand the origin of spirituals and the people who sang them. Praise of God is not an intellectual process. The faith of my mother was never doubting, never questioning.
One incident relating to our local French and Irish Catholic churches bears telling.
St. Joseph's, where my wife of fifty-three years and I were married, seemed in style and atmosphere not long removed from Quebec. The "Cathedral" was numerically Irish but with a diverse congregation. I had sung at both churches.
During my senior year at the University I was engaged to sing at a wedding Mass at the Catholic church in Bristol, Vermont. I arrived early for a short run-through with an unfamiliar organist. When seated she turned to me and asked, "Do you sing French Latin or Irish Latin?"
Fortunately, due to my Burlington experience, I knew what she meant.
"Which do you prefer?" I said.
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I do not wish to leave the impression that I am now a devout Catholic. Life experiences have modified my views about formal religion so I can no longer claim adherence to the faith of my youth.