Monday, November 12, 2007 at 12:12am
Catholic guilt and its consequences
Column: Woman at the Well
My return to Dominican College in San Rafael was a complicated homecoming. I met with Sister Nicholas, chair of the English Department, to receive my assignments. I was to teach Remedial English and Journalism, which would involve creating and publishing the school newspaper. In the course of that meeting, in addition to advising me to please look up the spelling of words before I wrote them on the blackboard, she asked, "When are you going to marry that nice young man you live with?"
Having fully embraced the finer aspects of Catholic guilt at this point, I knew what I must do.
Rodger and I immediately began to plan our wedding. We met with a priest at St. Rafael's Church who advised us on canon law: We must promise to have children and to raise them in the Catholic faith. We promised. We must attend premarital counseling with the diocese in San Francisco. We did.
A wonderful young priest assured us that we should listen to our own conscience regarding birth control. Thank God, once again, for Vatican II.
We were married in a simple ceremony in the chapel at St. Rafael's in August, just before I started teaching in September. My father "gave me away" and took pictures. My sisters were bridesmaids. We wore simple off-the-rack dresses. Rodger wore his first suit. My mother, my aunt and uncle and a handful of friends were there.
I had a migraine all day. Something in my bones told me that although Rodger was truly my best friend, we were not meant to be married.
I did not know then that he was suffering from clinical depression. All I knew was that he didn't work, watched too much television and couldn't seem to change. We almost never made love. After three years together, only one of them as official "husband and wife," I made an ultimatum: Either we work on the issues that are keeping us stuck or I am leaving.
He said no. I left. It was the hardest decision I ever made in my life.
When he changed his mind just six months later, I had already moved on. It was out of the slow cooker into the fire, but I would need some 10 years to really figure that out.
My year as a college English teacher had some interesting moments. I was young (and looked it), and some of my students found it difficult to acknowledge my authority. The journalism class had several strong-willed and troubled students. My student editor-in-chief went on to a life of insanity and violent crime. Several students tried to impeach me because I insisted we publish news and not just poetry. We stayed at the printer's long into the night each month producing final layouts. These students got plenty of hands-on experience.
On the day of final evaluations one of my charges approached me after class and told me, "Kristi, I don't want you to feel bad about my evaluation. I don't think I learned anything in this class, but I have decided to major in journalism and become a writer." How does one respond to such a statement? I smiled. She'd learned everything I had hoped she would, but not in a way that she could quantify.
Remedial English was challenging. Most of these students had never learned to read or to write. Where to begin? I decided motivation had to come first. There were young Catholic girls (mostly) who were going to college because their parents expected it. Now I challenged them to stop wasting their parents' money if they didn't want to learn. And if they wanted to learn, then they needed to figure out how to read and write. We worked together and individually to make that happen.
After one year of teaching I was informed that a Dominican sister would be replacing me in the coming year. I was laid off, which meant I could collect unemployment until I found a new teaching position. I had yet to finish my oral comprehensive exams for my master's in English Literature, but my thesis on "The Theme of Incarnation in T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets" received an A-plus.
I left Rodger. The Catholic Church no longer felt like a home for me. Divorce made that clear.
I moved in with my girlfriend Helene and began a year of volunteer training to explore what I might do next with this wild, wonderful life God had given me.
(To be continued.)
— — —
Rev. Kristi Denham is pastor of the Congregational Church of Belmont, California (United Church of Christ). Her email address is {email RevKristi@aol.com}RevKristi@aol.com{/email}. © Copyright 2007 by Kristi Denham.
Having fully embraced the finer aspects of Catholic guilt at this point, I knew what I must do.
Rodger and I immediately began to plan our wedding. We met with a priest at St. Rafael's Church who advised us on canon law: We must promise to have children and to raise them in the Catholic faith. We promised. We must attend premarital counseling with the diocese in San Francisco. We did.
A wonderful young priest assured us that we should listen to our own conscience regarding birth control. Thank God, once again, for Vatican II.
We were married in a simple ceremony in the chapel at St. Rafael's in August, just before I started teaching in September. My father "gave me away" and took pictures. My sisters were bridesmaids. We wore simple off-the-rack dresses. Rodger wore his first suit. My mother, my aunt and uncle and a handful of friends were there.
I had a migraine all day. Something in my bones told me that although Rodger was truly my best friend, we were not meant to be married.
I did not know then that he was suffering from clinical depression. All I knew was that he didn't work, watched too much television and couldn't seem to change. We almost never made love. After three years together, only one of them as official "husband and wife," I made an ultimatum: Either we work on the issues that are keeping us stuck or I am leaving.
He said no. I left. It was the hardest decision I ever made in my life.
When he changed his mind just six months later, I had already moved on. It was out of the slow cooker into the fire, but I would need some 10 years to really figure that out.
My year as a college English teacher had some interesting moments. I was young (and looked it), and some of my students found it difficult to acknowledge my authority. The journalism class had several strong-willed and troubled students. My student editor-in-chief went on to a life of insanity and violent crime. Several students tried to impeach me because I insisted we publish news and not just poetry. We stayed at the printer's long into the night each month producing final layouts. These students got plenty of hands-on experience.
On the day of final evaluations one of my charges approached me after class and told me, "Kristi, I don't want you to feel bad about my evaluation. I don't think I learned anything in this class, but I have decided to major in journalism and become a writer." How does one respond to such a statement? I smiled. She'd learned everything I had hoped she would, but not in a way that she could quantify.
Remedial English was challenging. Most of these students had never learned to read or to write. Where to begin? I decided motivation had to come first. There were young Catholic girls (mostly) who were going to college because their parents expected it. Now I challenged them to stop wasting their parents' money if they didn't want to learn. And if they wanted to learn, then they needed to figure out how to read and write. We worked together and individually to make that happen.
After one year of teaching I was informed that a Dominican sister would be replacing me in the coming year. I was laid off, which meant I could collect unemployment until I found a new teaching position. I had yet to finish my oral comprehensive exams for my master's in English Literature, but my thesis on "The Theme of Incarnation in T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets" received an A-plus.
I left Rodger. The Catholic Church no longer felt like a home for me. Divorce made that clear.
I moved in with my girlfriend Helene and began a year of volunteer training to explore what I might do next with this wild, wonderful life God had given me.
(To be continued.)
— — —
Rev. Kristi Denham is pastor of the Congregational Church of Belmont, California (United Church of Christ). Her email address is {email RevKristi@aol.com}RevKristi@aol.com{/email}. © Copyright 2007 by Kristi Denham.