Religion at Holy Trinity, Trinity High School, and Sacred Heart Academy
My absolute earliest memory occurred at Holy Trinity in their first church building, which had been erected in 1953. It was in that same year that Trinity High School came into existence by purchasing the old Holy Trinity property on Shelbyville Road. I remember being a toddler and, because I was teething, I gnawed a dent into the pew in front of me. Why my parents didn’t try to stop me, I will never know, but I chewed a chunk out of the pew. When Holy Trinity outgrew the old church building, it was converted into the school gym and a new, more modern church, was built in its place. It was in this church building where my father took us to mass every Sunday morning, where my brother and I became altar servers, where my sister was married, and where my children became altar servers. It is where I still attend mass today.
Call me old fashioned but I do not like to wear jeans to mass but prefer putting on a pair of slacks and a collared shirt. For this reason, I only attend mass when the Sundays when I know that I am going to the opera or ballet, since I will already be dressed. I always arrive early, about a half hour before the ceremony begins, so I have my choice of places to sit and I choose a pew close to where my family used to seat themselves when I was a child. Meditation might be too strong of a word, but since I’m in the exact same place where I was fifty years ago, I like to close my eyes and think back to a time, long ago, when I was young and impressionable. The memories swirl around inside of my head, decades of them, and I use the alone time to sort them out.
When I first attended Holy Trinity Parish School, it was so new that it didn’t have a kindergarten or a first grade, so I had to go elsewhere for my first two years of schooling. Finally, in 1969, I was admitted to the second grade, but only after I was tutored by Mrs. Kissel, an old teacher who specialized in helping remedial students. Sister Julianna was our principal and she was a mean old woman; I think that she enjoyed that fact that everyone at my school was afraid of her. My own experience with the nun was that she caught Doug Ware and I fighting in a classroom after lunch. He liked to hit me in the face and say “slap him until his face turns red.” Doug had been picking on me since I first attended Holy Trinity in 1969 and I finally had enough and I fought back. Sr. Julianna separated us, talked to Doug first, and then blamed me for the fight. Without even asking me any questions, Sr. Julianna slapped me hard on the back of my head. The blow hurt but not as much as the injustice of being blamed for a fight that I did not start. The only other nun that I knew at Holy Trinity was Sr. Alma Rita and she was so mean to my brother that he tried to correct the injustices done to him by setting the convent on fire. The flames died out quickly but Tommy was sent to the public schools as part of his contrition. Ultimately, he was sent to a military school where he graduated with honors. To this very day I think back on my time in my Catholic school, and the nuns who taught me, with a mixture of anger and regret.
I did enjoy attending mass, however. I found the routine of it relaxing and satisfying. My father thought so too and even went so far as to take us to the midnight mass at the cathedral for Christmas. His dedication to Catholicism went to such an extreme that he pulled into a local church on the Sundays when we were on vacation. He liked the ritual of it, but my mother, who was never religious, only attended to support my father and stopped going to mass when he became too sick to leave the house. Since I have always enjoyed contributing to something bigger than myself, I became an altar server while I was eleven years old. It was fun to put on the robes, light the candles before the ceremony, process in with the priest, and to help with communion. One of my jobs was to hold a platter under the chin of the parishioners so that if they dropped the communion then it would not fall to the floor. Also, I rang the chimes when the priest held up the body and blood of
Christ to receive God’s blessing. There was a certain magic to the mass and I wanted to be a part of it. I even enjoyed hanging out with the priest before the ritual began.
Today, I consider myself to be a low wattage Catholic, which means that I only attend mass at Holy Trinity a couple of times a year. At different points of my life I have tried to deepen my faith. For example, I tried to read the whole Bible on my own but gave up after Jeremiah because I found the book dark and repetitive. When I was a teacher at Sacred Heart, I led thirteen senior retreats over fifteen years, and the seminal part of my speech was that I had wanted to transfer to a seminary when I was in college to become a priest. After all, all of my heroes in my formative years were priests. And yet, when it came time to contact the recruiter for the Archdiocese of Louisville, I couldn’t pull the trigger. My faith simply wasn’t strong enough. The career of a priest was attractive to me because I would be able to lead a whole community of parishioners, serve as an example for others to follow, and I liked to idea of sacrificing myself for a greater good. But I was low wattage and not a very good Catholic because I don’t believe in hell, barely believe in heaven, and have no problems with Islam and Hinduism. Also, I believe that women are equal to men and should be allowed to become priests. Finally science tells us that people are born gay, so I am very accepting of the LGBQ community and think that they should be able to accept communion.
If these reasons weren’t enough to stop me from committing myself to the priesthood, then there is the problem of pedophile priests and the Pope’s inability to do anything about them. There is no connection between homosexuality and pedophilia so it is alright with me if gay men and women become priests. However, there are countless stories, reported in the media from all over the globe, of priests who have been accused of sexually abusing young boys. Unfortunately, and unfairly, because of the constant bad press, all priests are suspected of pedophilia. They have to find their own way to prove that they are worthy of the trust of their parishioners. I am still working it out, but to have that dark cloud of suspicion constantly over me as a priest is a good enough reason for not taking vows.
This is not a sad blog entry where I have a tell all story about being abused. None of the priests I have known over the years had done anything that I know of that would lead me to believe that they are pedophiles. Instead, this is a story about how I am trying to be a better Catholic and how I am deepening my faith by serving as a lector and a Eucharistic Minister for Sacred Heart. When I lector I read the chapter and verse over and over again because if the passage doesn’t make any sense to me then it won’t make any sense to the congregation. I like to be a Eucharistic Minister because sometimes, when I look deeply into the eyes of the people receiving communion, I can see the Holy Spirit working. There are a lot of true believers at mass and it is inspiring to see their faith reflected on their faces. In my own limited role, I feel like I am making a contribution and serving as a good example for others; it’s just that I will never be able to do those things as a priest.
