Confessions of a Lapsed Catholic

Confessions of a lapsed Catholic

The wheels fell off the religion chariot very early for me. Not sure if I was a cynic in the womb but shortly thereafter for sure. I know that I drove my parents, especially my Mom who is myopically religious, crazy. It was right around the time I realized that Santa Claus was a fictional character, created by the adults, that I realized that this Jesus character might need a closer look too. I figured, if adults made up Santa to make Christmas a little more enjoyable for us kids; well maybe they were making up some other stuff too?

At Immaculate Heart of Mary School in Brooklyn, in the early 70’s, we received the sacrament of holy communion in the second grade. Then in third grade we practiced to receive the holy sacrament of confession. If you asked me, I thought this was backwards. I mean they taught us how bad we were. The priests and nuns taught us that our virginal white souls were pockmarked with the heinous taint of “original sin.” Glancing over a few rows at my angelic Susan Shaughnessy, in her maroon plaid skirt, patent leather shoes and white socks, it was hard to picture that she could be tainted with ANYTHING. Sitting there in my desk, playing with my blue tie with the little IHM embroidered on it, I’m thinking, Shouldn’t we have purified our souls of this horrible imperfection before we received the body of Christ? Just one of the many questions I had.

Sister Christine, my third grade teacher, was an ancient, elongated, veiny woman. What I remember most was her skin was practically see-through. And that after she blew her nose, a fog-horn, phlegmy sound, she kept her handkerchief tucked up her black and white sleeve. I wasn’t sure why, I guessed they didn’t have pockets on the nun’s habits.

About mid-year, Sister Christine is preparing us to receive our first confession.
Monday morning comes, our class walks down Fort Hamilton Parkway, to IHM church. We gather in the little side pews next to the confessional booths; and Sister Christine is teaching us step-by-step directions to receive confession. “Now boys and girls, you walk into the confessional. Kneel on the cushioned kneeler in front of the screen. Wait for the priest to slide the screen open. Then say, “Bless me father for I have sinned. This is my first confession.” Sister tells us that then you are supposed to tell the priest all the bad stuff you have done. As we are waiting in church to “practice” my friends and I are whispering and snickering, Sully says, “What do you think you get for cheating on a test?” Timmy Boyle pipes in, “Or stealing a Milky Way?” Chrissy Ryan, “What if you stole a car!?” Mark Bowen, always the smartest of us, ”What if you murder someone? Do you have to tell the priest? And if you tell him, does he have to turn you in?”

Something about confession just didn’t sit right in my third grade brain. All during the practice week I pester my mother with questions but her answers have been lacking. After a few days of practice, I am annoyed with the power this gives the priest. The major fly in the ointment for me is, Why does he have to know what everyone is doing? Sitting in class one morning, I raise my hand. “Yes, James?”

“Uh, Sister Christine, I just have a question about this whole confession thing.”

“Yes?”

“Well, I don’t understand why I have to tell the priest everything? Why does he have to know?” “You see Mr. Spinner, the priest is like the mailman. He brings your sins to god.”

“Well, didn’t you teach us that god was all-seeing and all-knowing?”

“Yes, and what is your point?”

“Well then doesn’t that mean that god sees and knows all of the bad stuff, and good stuff, I am doing? So couldn’t I just confess my sins to god?”

“No, it doesn’t work like that. You have to tell your sins to the priest to get absolution.” That explanation didn’t sit well with me.

Towards the middle of third grade, we all started to connect the dots on the Santa Claus thing. Sitting in the school cafeteria, eating our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, my friends and I are discussing…Sully, ”How does Santa know the houses that have Christians? I mean how does he know how to skip the Jewish kid’s houses? Is there a star of David on the roof?” Jimmy Quinlan, “How does he fit down the chimney? And what if you don’t have a chimney?” Mark Bowen,“How many people in the world? And he gets to them ALL in one night?”

From Santa, my thoughts turned to Jesus. Exactly how did he turn a few loaves and fishes into enough food to feed the hundreds gathered to hear him talk? And if he really had this power, why was Jesus so selective with the miracles? I thought, If I could just make food out of thin air, and turn water into wine, then it would just be a miracle frenzy! I envisioned that Jesus had a little “Barbara Eden/I Dream of Jeanie” twitch he would do and BAM, Lazarus rises from the dead. I couldn’t imagine how anyone with this power wouldn’t be miracle happy. Wouldn’t you just be sprinkling miracles around pell-mell for the masses? If I was Jesus and I came upon a sick boy in the village. "How sad, you need a kidney?” BAM “There you go kid. Ah, don’t mention it, it was nothing, I’m the son of God for Christ sakes. Ooops"

The more I learned, the more questions I had…If Jesus could perform miracles in biblical times, why is he so stingy with the miracles today? Why do we still have people starving all over the world in 1973? People have been praying to him for almost 2000 years. And god has been, for the most part, saying no for 2000 years! Think of all the unanswered prayers! In 4th grade, in Mrs. Gaglio’s class, we joined “Friends of Animals” to prevent the clubbing of the baby seals and other atrocities against animals. Why couldn’t Jesus help us with the baby seals? Our whole class, pious little boys and girls, praying for the baby seals; and still the baby seals become fur coats. How could god say no to all of his little uniformed disciples?

I envisioned that god was up there in heaven, cooking dinner and watching t.v. and stuff and he ignores pretty much every request he gets. Jesus and God and the Holy Spirit (don’t even get me started on the Holy Trinity) are up in heaven trying to watch Password and they keep getting interrupted with people’s prayers… “Ah, what’s her name is praying for her husband again. Why doesn’t she just leave me alone? Take that thing off the hook will ya?”

The more I learned about world history, the more I thought of all the horrible things that god could have prevented. And didn’t. I mean if he was a merciful and christian god…He couldn’t step in during the Holocaust to save 6 million jews? How many wars could have been prevented? Couldn’t god step in and make sure Archduke Ferdinand doesn’t get shot? Why wouldn’t you make sure Hitler got into art school? Then he wouldn’t have been so angry. I mean if he had an outlet you know?

At the end of my days at IHM, by papal decree, they took away Limbo. We were taught there was heaven, hell, purgatory and limbo. Limbo, we were told, was this nebulous place for unbaptized babies. I pictured all of the cherubic babies floating around on clouds. One day the priests and nuns just told us that limbo was "out." We weren’t doing limbo anymore. Gazing up at the ceiling in my classroom I wondered what happened to all those babies floating carefree in the stratosphere? I worried that they might get hit by a plane or a rocket. Did these babies get an automatic upgrade to heaven? Was it a lateral move to purgatory for a few years? Or maybe worse?

So many questions…Hmmmm, if they could get rid of Limbo, just like that. I had the feeling then that heaven and hell, like Santa Claus, were constructs to make life a little more enjoyable. I thought, If Thomas Jefferson and Abe Lincoln and Thomas Edison and Lou Gehrig and my grandparents, were all in heaven, I mean, how crowded would it get? If all the people, who EVER lived were either in heaven or hell, I mean, that's a lot of people. If you did go to heaven, what age would you be? If you died at 96 would you be 96 or would you be able to choose? The thought of our loved ones up there, with all of the other people we knew who died was just so appealing. I mean what a nice thought. But then I realized, similar to Santa Claus, this heaven thing was just to make us feel better. Death itself makes us sad, it’s hard to grasp the concept, so we create this nice place in the clouds where everyone is happy and that makes us all feel better.

Catholicism is not a religion that cottons to questioners well. The answer to most questions is, “It was God’s will.” Or, “You just have to have faith.” If you don’t get what you want by praying, you still have to keep having faith. Despite all of the evidence I accrued over the years that prayer did not work, and this Holy Trinity just might be the same as Zeus and Poseidon, people would say, “You just have to have faith.” If you ask too many questions, if you are unsure, they call you a Doubting Thomas. Now Thomas was the first guy in the bible, that I had any respect for. Here was a guy with a brain. Here was a guy thinking like me. All Thomas was saying was, “Alright, if you really were crucified and came back to life, let’s see the scars, let’s see some proof." The little cynic in me liked Thomas. I knew if I was there, little Jimmy Spinner would have been right next to Thomas saying, “Wait, Jesus, I just have a few questions about this whole 40 days in the desert with no food thing.”

Baby Face Finster

The summer of 1980, I packed my Brooklyn wise-guy self off to the woods. That June, I started a junior counselor job at a YMCA camp in Sussex County New Jersey. According to the brochure, the camp was in the Hamburg "Mountains." But those of you familiar with geography in the east know that they were, I would say, "verdant hills." I jumped into the Silver Lake culture whole-heartedly. There were many people to meet, traditions to follow and camp songs to learn that added to the fabric of day to day life. To this day, Silver Lake was the best job I have ever had.

Most of the skits and songs were connected to various personalities. During my time at Silver Lake I recall-Glen Gruder with his Oscar Gamble afro and Larry Montanye with his bushy, boy-scout troop leader mustache as they donned their togas to spit water on each other in “the Greek Water Boys.” And I see a red-faced Steve Swierczek, feathered blonde hair in 80’s style, sneakers, shorts and a two-colored baseball shirt as he leads the Silver Lake dining hall in a rousing rendition of "Little Rabbit Foo-Foo." I could go on about the personalities I met at Silver Lake, still some of my best friends to this day. But this piece is about someone in particular…

The family name Quinn at Silver Lake was a brand-name. As a counselor, you knew if you had a Quinn in your bunk you got a whole bunch of freckles, a permanent smile and a kid who would brush his or her teeth before bed without having to be asked. The Quinns: Judy, Corey, John and Connor were from Franklin Lakes, New Jersey. I can still picture Mr. and Mrs. Quinn dropping their brood off in the wood paneled station wagon. The scene always made me smile because I knew the Quinn house was a warm house, an active house. I always pictured a house where the muddy soccer cleats were piled near the door, opening a closet meant a surprise of baseball gloves and or Christmas ornaments. I pictured big meals of Irish stew with a lot of laughter, the Quinns poking fun at each other for their various idiosyncrasies. And of course I see the scene after dinner. The table would be covered with school books because Mr. and Mrs. Quinn ran a pretty tight ship. Yes there was time for laughter and a hug from Mom and Dad too but you don’t raise four responsible kids without some expectations.

This past March, decades removed from Silver Lake, I was skiing Mount Snow Vermont with a few friends. We were, three dads in their mid-40’s, enjoying a St. Patrick’s Day weekend without our respective families. Late in the day, I was scanning the crowd as we inched our way toward one of the ski lifts, and I see a familiar face. I spied Corey’s Quinn-ness through her hat, goggles and parka. I yelled across four lines of people. Actually I had my buddy Ian yell because for some reason I was being shy. “Corey!” She turned, looked around. I waved. She peered through the crowd and I said, “Spinner, it’s Jim Spinner.!” She dragged her husband and their two kids across the entire ski-lift line, to say hello. Those Silver Lake bonds are strong.

We continued to inch toward the lift and after some introductions, Corey and I played catch-up and I said… “Last I heard, Judy was in Rochester, New York and she was a nurse......Last I saw Connor, I had gotten him an internship with me at The Carson Group............

I can see now that Corey had to know what was coming. That the subject must come up all the time and it must cost all of the Quinns a great deal of anxiety. I continued, “Last I saw John, we were up here. I rented your mom’s ski house for the weekend and she asked if it was okay if John and his friend overlapped with us for a day or so. Of course I said that was okay. We had a great time skiing for a few days. If I recall, John was about to leave for Central America to do some work for the Peace Corps or something.” As her family schussed to be the next on the lift Corey said, “Oh, you haven’t heard, my brother John was murdered.”

What do you say to that? I stammered something, I think? Corey added some details and then she and her family were on the lift. I was left standing there with my two buddies, baby-stepping our way onto the lift with the sound of “My brother John was murdered” echoing in my head.

I knew my buddies didn’t know John, but they had heard enough of my camp stories to have some clue. “Jesus. I don’t believe it. John Quinn was murdered.” I proceeded to tell them a bit about John and the word Sweet kept popping up. John Quinn was truly one of the sweetest guys you'd ever want to meet. The kind of guy who'd help you move. The kind of guy you'd want your daughter or sister to date. I mean why else would he be down in Honduras teaching kids to speak English? What kind of a guy graduates from The University of Vermont and decides that he wants to help people in a third world country have a better life? John Quinn, that’s who.

The news weighed heavily on me as we continued to ski. I’d look out at the snow covered mountains, enjoying the view and I would think, John Quinn was murdered. Doing the après ski beer thing, we were singing along to "Brown Eyed Girl" and the thought pops into my head again. How? Why? Who would do such a thing? To John Quinn?

After I got back to Connecticut that Sunday night, I felt the need to connect with some old camp friends who knew John. I didn’t want to be the guy who calls with bad news, but I really had to talk to someone, someone who knew John. Eventually I got in contact with Gray Goldfarb, he and John were the same age and we all worked in Ranch Camp together. I knew he would want to know, and that it would be good to talk to him. Gray’s a New Yorker, born and raised on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Gray was one of the first white kids I knew who was really into rap. I stumbled through the conversation to eventually reveal, John Quinn was murdered. I had uncovered some of the details of John’s death through Corey’s emails and a few Google searches. So I told Gray--that as far as the family could tell, John was living in Honduras, his second trip down there, and someone stole his CD collection. John and some friends were at a bar in Honduras when John recognizes the thieves. And in his "Aw Shucks" manner confronts these apparent gang members and one of them shoots him in the face. Gray’s response, in his cynical New York way was, “You see that makes sense. John Quinn would get murdered in Honduras. That wouldn’t happen to you or I. First of all, John would be the one to go down there to help people, something you or I wouldn’t do. And then, he would be just naïve enough and just pissed off enough, because John always knew right from wrong, that he would confront these gang-bangers from Honduras. You see Spinner, you or I would have seen these guys for the bad people they were and we would have said, they can keep my CD collection.” I knew that Gray was upset. And I was shocked at what Gray was saying. I felt as if he were trampling on his grave or something. And I was glad that Corey or the Quinns couldn’t hear it.

Then I realized, Gray was saying, that’s how pure John was, that’s how innocent, he couldn’t imagine a world, or a person evil enough to shoot someone in the face over a CD collection.

I just wish we lived in a world where John Quinn was right.

John’s story was so touching and so heart wrenching that the local Jersey congressman, whose district includes Franklin Lakes, talked at length about John on the floor of the House of Representatives. Do a little searching on the internet, take some time to remember or at least think about John Quinn. In talking about John, my buddy Gruder said to me, "Didn't we used to call him "Baby Faced Finster?" I told him, "Yes we did...but that nickname never stuck, he was too sweet a guy."