Big Mike: Sex & God

When I was a little kid back in St. Giles elementary school in Oak Park, I noticed that the nun who taught my third grade class wore a wedding ring. At the age of eight or so, kids start noticing details about adults. The realization begins to sink in that adults are actually a collection of individual human beings, an epiphany indeed.

St. Giles Church In Oak Park

Anyway, I decided to ask Sister Caelin (whose name, as we shall see, fully illustrates the weird, weird sexual pathology that pervades the Catholic Church — which is, in turn, the point of this post) why she wore a wedding ring. Mary Therese Mulvihill, who at the time was half-kneeling next to me in a semi-circle around the Sister, involuntarily expelled a gasp and then gave out one of those Aw-w-w-ws that Catholic schoolgirls who’ve already advertised their ambition to become nuns themselves are so good at. They mean, You are so-o-o-o in trouble — and I have elevated myself in the eyes of our lord, the creator, by acknowledging your sin aloud.

Sister Caelin was as stern and steely-eyed as any nun I ever had. Already in the schoolyear she’d hollered at me while we were supposed to be writing an essay about Why We Must Love God. My problem was I couldn’t give any good reason why we should. I mean, really, here’s this guy who purportedly knows everything, who controls everything, who has planned everything in advance, yet he still lets us get hit by cars, which was my primary terror then. I’m supposed to love this guy?

Sister Caelin never smiled and her voice was as cold as the sound of a jail cell door clanging shut. She saw me sitting there, fiddling with an eraser (I was actually trying to draw the Batman logo on it) and feeling heavy-lidded. “Michael Glab!” came that voice. “What. Are. You. Doing?” Her tone indicated a barely suppressed rage and a not-at-all suppressed contempt that would have been more appropriate had she caught me wacking off under my desk, a pastime that hadn’t even occurred to me yet.

I answered the only way an eight-year-old can. “I dunno,” I said, barely audibly. She stared at me for an eternity, than said, even more contemptuously, “Playboy!” This embarrassed me no end, given that at the time all the nuns and priests could ever talk about was how evil Playboy magazine was. Had they not mentioned it, I wouldn’t have given it the first thought for at least a few years. But, thanks to their obsessive harping, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on Playboy, even though I knew doing so would have stained my immortal soul. The only conclusion I could come to was that sitting there trying to draw the Batman logo onto an eraser equated me with the slobbering old lechers who kept Playboys in their dressers under their socks. And, naturally, Mary Therese Mulvihill was staring at me as this all went on. I think she shook her head.

Playboy, March 1964

Anyway, back to the semi-circle around Sister Caelin. Rather than call out my name contemptuously, she deigned to answer my question. She held up her left hand proudly to show us her gold band. “We all wear wedding rings,” she announced, meaning, of course, she and the rest of her fellow Sisters. “It shows that we’re married to our father.”

This last sentence was so bizarre that even as an eight-year-old I felt on the verge of hyperventilation.  I had to ask, “How can you be married to god? He’s not even here!”

This was the point at which Sister Caelin again called out my name contemptuously. Then she ordered me to stand in the cloakroom and say ten Our Fathers. I confess at this late date that I never did recite those ten Our Fathers. Instead, I fantasized kicking Mary Therese Mulvihill in the face.

Happily Married Women

Now, regarding Sister Caelin’s name. In those days when nuns took their vows they adopted new names, usually those of saints to whom they’d devote their lives. I don’t recall any saint named Caelin so as I began writing this, I decided to look it up. It turns out that Caelin is an Irish girl’s name. After a little further digging I discovered that Caelin was also a big shot in the christianization of Europe back in the 8th Century. He was also a man. Sister Caelin named herself after a man. Sheesh, there must have been a bundle of sexual and gender confusion in that St. Giles convent.

Want more evidence? The principal of our school was Sister James Mary. Not Sister Mary James, a first name followed by a surname, no. Sister James Mary. Our principal was as gruff as a longshoreman and had the gait of bouncer and the voice of a Major League umpire. We could hear her walking through the hall two floors below us because she wore a pair of brogans that would have made a skinhead proud. And, the piece de resistance, she had whiskers on her chin. None of this is an exaggeration.

I bring all this up because the Church is back in the news again. Apparently, the Pope, back when he was a Cardinal with some authority over such things, elected to take no disciplinary action against a priest who was sodomizing little deaf kids by the hundreds.

This, by the way, is the church which demands its priests, nuns, and brothers take vows of chastity. This is the church that tells the faithful in overcrowded lands without adequate food or sewerage that birth control is an abomination. This is the church which tut-tuts mantra-like over sexuality in the media and homosexuals everywhere.

And this is the Pope who was known as the Vatican’s Pitbull when he was in charge of enforcing the Church’s rules.

Apparently, a grown man fucking little deaf kids in the mouth doesn’t violate Church rules. I didn’t think so.

This Guy’s Got Nothin’ On Cardinal Ratzinger

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