Wednesday, October 23, 2019 // The Statement
6B
M
y mom was standing on the front
lawn of my best friend’s house sur-
rounded by hundreds of other par-
ents. I rushed into her arms, glad to be in the
safety of her care. News helicopters whirred
overhead as they passed through the grey sky, its
dourness casting a shadow over the whole day.
We were being evacuated from school, and being
only in fourth grade at the time, I had no idea
why. All I knew was that the quaint world of
suburban New Jersey was no longer a safe place
of serenity and security.
That day, 10 years ago, was the day the pas-
tor of my church, Father Ed, was found dead
in the church rectory. He had been stabbed 43
times, though my parents didn’t
tell me that at the time. For
the first few days after his
death, I thought he died
of natural causes, like
all the old people in my
town. There hadn’t been
a murder in Chatham in
over 50 years, and surely my
Catholic school wasn’t the
place for that trend
to be broken.
But, unfor-
tunately,
it
was.
That holy site — the center of my faith and moral
creed — was violated.
The santicity of the church was destroyed in
that instant, its status as a place of comfort for-
ever lost. The man who was the gatekeeper of
that community was taken from us. It seemed
like no one was protecting its status as a place
to feel in the presence of God. The one man in
my life who I truly believed was devoted to God
with all of his heart, and took that commitment
as a priest seriously, was no longer there to pro-
vide me guidance. I truly thought he was God’s
shepherd, leading his flock to the path of righ-
teousness.
When he spoke on issues of Catholic morality,
I felt he had full credibility. There was no out-
ward hint of hypocrisy, either in his intensity or
his actions. Hearing him speak, I felt like I could
actually follow God’s path and devote myself to
Him. Without that voice in my life, the spiritual
journey felt far lonelier and more difficult. How
could I follow Christ if God took away from me
the only holy man I knew? How could God let
a good man who had done nothing wrong die a
horrible death?
And so began my path of disillusionment with
the Church, his death sparking a long chain
of events that would seemingly pull me
further away from my spiritual commit-
ments. What made Father Ed such a won-
derful man was not just his enlightening
sermons; he put his homilies in succinct,
clear terms that any follower could
understand. While I certainly appreci-
ated the fact that Father Ed always had
me home from Mass in under an
hour, I felt like a shorter Mass
allowed me a stronger grasp on
the meaning of that day’s read-
ings.
Soon after his death, Mass
became longer, the homilies more
drawn out, the singing more fre-
quent and seemingly extraneous.
Even worse, the Vatican changed
many of the responses in 2011 with
an update to the Roman Missal,
the series of sayings and responses
that guide the Mass. Ironically,
the Church was trying to make the
responses more in line with the
traditional Latin Mass, but instead
it made the Mass harder to follow
and it alienated people like me from
participating. We now had to say
“And with your spirit” in response
to the priest saying “May the Lord
be with you,” instead of respond-
ing “And also with you.” The Mass
I had grown to look forward to had
changed, adding insult to the injury
of no longer hearing from
Father Ed. The meaning of
the Mass became muddled,
and I was no longer as receptive to the speaker,
since Father Ed wasn’t the one standing at the
lectern.
The situation became much worse when I
went to high school. I was separated from my
tight-knit Catholic community for the first time
since preschool and now attended school where
most people were not Catholic and sometimes
outwardly hostile to religion. In my 11th-grade
world history class, we had to read a book in
which the author argued that religion was just
an ideology to bind people together; it had no
higher moral purpose or reason for existence. I
tried to argue that religion helped fill in the gaps
for what science could not easily explain, like
what existed before the universe was formed.
The only person who came to my side argued not
in favor of religion but by using a scientific argu-
ment.
People tried to undercut my beliefs by using
quotes from the Bible and arguing that Christi-
anity was just another system built to oppress
women. Arguing in favor of my faith became a
lonely fight, and it seemed like I never had a good
answer. This was a situation where Father Ed
surely would have known what to say.
It didn’t help that my process for receiving
Confirmation had very little religious content.
Instead of taking religion classes every Sunday,
my church mandated an all-weekend retreat,
which we spent mostly singing non-Catholic
songs and eating candy. I was hungry for how my
faith could add deeper meaning to my life, but
instead, I felt unprepared to commit to the Cath-
olic Church as an adult.
I wanted to answer the most pressing ques-
tion: How do I apply my faith to the challenges
of modern life? I tried to answer that question
myself by spending nearly 30 minutes in confes-
sion during that part of the retreat, harkening
back to my fifth-grade days when I tried to be
the last one to leave our quiet reflection time.
But this time, I didn’t seem to find that meaning
in my reflection. Instead, I felt empty.
Nowadays, there seem to be few links tying
me to the Church. Sure, I still attend Mass, but
only on the big holidays like Christmas and Eas-
ter, and mostly out of tradition. Last year was the
first time I truly gave up something for Lent in a
while. The pain of not being able to enjoy all of
the great cuisine Ann Arbor had to offer, while
strong, offered me the first deep connection to
my faith in a long time. I felt like I truly made a
commitment, and stuck to it for once, something
I had lost in the mad dash of life.
While I am hopeful this will one day lead
me to commit more to my Catholic faith, those
issues with the Mass remain, and every day it
gets harder and harder to commit myself to the
Church. Though I may not attend church much
anymore, I still try to have the moral code of
Catholicism guide me, even if I often fail miser-
ably. I just hope holy people like Father Ed can
one day forgive me.
A loss of meaning
BY ALEXANDER COTIGNOLA, STATEMENT COLUMNIST
ILLUSTRATION BY JACK SILBERMAN