The age of reason was six, we
were told, my first grade classmates and I.
With it came the ability to distinguish evil from good, right from
wrong, and the state of sin from a state of grace. Our baptisms had freed us from the guilt of original
sin, a guilt that even then I wasn’t willing to acknowledge because it wasn’t
fair. Now, through confession and the
Eucharist we would be fully members of the one, true, apostolic and universal
church, unlike the poor, dead, un-baptized African babies who were condemned to
the spiritual and sensory deprivation of Limbo.
While
far away in Moscow , Khrushchev was denouncing
Stalin, and in New York City
We
were told the Mysteries. Ah, the
Mysteries; the Trinity, the Immaculate Conception, the Virgin Birth, the
Resurrection, the Ascension, the tongues of fire and the infallibility of the
Pope. And somehow I began to acquire the
elements of an image of the source of all evil as a large, black, monstrous
apparition with horns on his head, cloven hooves, ass’s ears, claws, fiery
eyes, gnashing teeth, a huge phallus and a sulphurous smell. All this before the Second Vatican Council,
when the priest turned around and started speaking English instead of Latin and
we were told not to say Holy Ghost anymore, it was Spirit, Holy Spirit, because
we didn’t believe in ghosts.
