The Road to Rome--and Back

MOST of us who have given consideration to religious matters assume that we know why we stand thus and so in the tangle of conflicting faiths. If one is a Christian Scientist, a Roman Catholic, an orthodox Presbyterian, he can usually, and with manifest sincerity, set forth impressive reasons for adhering to the doctrines of his sect. It was only after I had passed through radical changes in my religious convictions that I came to doubt whether pure reason plays much part in fixing our attitude toward such questions, and to suspect that underlying our reason there is, as a rule, some emotional drive which determines the trend of our logic. As I look back over the double shift in my religious views, I am led to believe that the average man or woman, even though he be as staunch and genuine in his faith as the Pope himself, is likely to remain unconscious of the forces that control his reasoning processes. In this he is like the little metal ball at the end of a pendulum, which swings back and forth insensitive to the working of the governing mechanism within the clock.

Hoping to throw some light upon the secret coils and springs of the mind which determine the ‘swing’ of human convictions, I shall relate those events of my life which marked my progress along the road to Rome — and back again. As I reflect upon it, it seems to me now that both in becoming a Roman Catholic and later in ceasing to be one I was not at all the conscious director of my destiny that I imagined myself to be at the time. I was the little ball at the end of a pendulum, and forces which I did not understand swung me first to one religious extreme and then to its opposite.

I

My parents were New Englanders, whose standards were fixed by a strict Puritanism. Dancing and other forms of amusement in which my friends found harmless pleasure were forbidden me, and my girlhood was monotonous. In compensation I threw myself into my school work with great ardor and fed upon the hope that I might some day go to college. My father, however, was not prosperous, and there seemed little chance of realizing my ambition unless I earned my way. With this in view I took a short business course after graduation from high school, and secured a position as stenographer in a small city not far from my home. I changed offices several times, little by little increasing my salary and putting aside part of it toward a college education. Life, however, continued drab.

Finally I went to work in the office of a promising young business man, highly respected in the city, who happened to be a Roman Catholic. Within a short time after this I noticed that life had taken on color. My new employer, Patrick O’Neill, appeared to me to be perfection in human form. It surprised me, provincial that I was, to discover that a Catholic could be as upright in his business dealings as I soon recognized my employer to be, and at the same time so human — always ready with an encouraging joke whenever I made a mistake. I had never before known a Catholic, and had given no thought to the teachings of the Roman Church, but I had formed certain opinions just the same — highly unfavorable opinions, based upon such hearsay as I had picked up among my family and friends. Now for the first time I began to question my attitude. The religion of Patrick O’Neill could not deserve the abuse I had heard heaped upon it.

I had not been in the office very long before I learned that Mr. O’Neill was engaged to be married to a girl with whom I sometimes saw him outside of business hours. The information did not affect me except as an interesting item of news. I went on working and saving my money. The months grew into a year, and I realized, without probing the cause of it, that I was more contented with my lot than I had ever been before. My days were full; only the Sundays, spent alone in the city, reminded me how dreary my life had been. At last the time for summer vacation arrived. I did not want to go away. I made the excuse that I would rather stay and keep up my work, but Mr. O’Neill insisted that I needed a rest.

That vacation period seemed an age. With nothing else to occupy my thoughts, I was forced to face the fact that I was in love. The realization filled me with acute distress, and I debated with myself whether it would not be best for me not to go back to the office. That was the only place, however, where I had ever been happy, and in the end I decided to return, resolving at the same time that I would manage somehow to overcome my feelings.

The first day back at the office I remained after the closing hour to attend to some important work that my substitute had been unable to handle in my absence. Mr. O’Neill stayed to check it over with me, but an unexpected turn of events drove all thought of business from our heads. Mr. O’Neill suddenly told me that he had realized while I was away that he loved me; that he wanted to marry me instead of Marie, the girl to whom he was engaged. This engagement worried him a great deal, he said. When he was too young to know what he was about, he had been led into it, largely through pressure from his family. Because he had never been really sure that he loved Marie, he had postponed marriage for years; then, since he had allowed matters to run on so long, he had felt that it would not be just to her to break the engagement. Now he could n’t help himself, he said. Being certain at last that he wanted to marry someone else, he could hardly make Marie an ideal husband. He’d have to pluck up courage, tell her the situation frankly; when he was free, we’d make our plans for the future.

Foolishly, but humanly, we did not wait until he had come to an understanding with Marie, but started immediately to talk about the happiness that lay before us. Patrick knew that I wanted to go to college. This, he said, would fit in well with his own ambitions. Although he was thirty years old — ten years my senior — he had never lost his desire to study for the bar. Heavy financial responsibilities had kept him from doing it when he was younger, but now his dependent mother was dead and the two sisters whom he had supported were well married. He had enough money saved to put me through college and himself through law school. Thus was opened out before me a vision of all that I had asked of life — marriage to the man I loved, and a college education.

In the weeks that followed I learned what it means to ‘walk on air.’ But, light-hearted as I was, I could not rid myself of the haunting fear that something might go wrong with our plans. I could see that Patrick was worried. Several times he admitted that he had not yet summoned courage to tell Marie, but that he would have to do so soon because the time for the opening of the University (of which we both had catalogues well thumbed) was drawing near. Besides, he felt that he had done very wrong in speaking to me before he had settled matters with her; it was n’t fair to either of us. Now that he had gone so far in reaching an understanding with me, it seemed harder than ever to ask her for his release.

At length his business affairs were wound up and things were turned over to his successor. Patrick suggested that I go home and rest until he could complete the final arrangements for our marriage — in case he gained Marie’s consent. We jested and laughed about the proviso, but, after I left, it kept running through my mind like an ominous refrain and I could not shake it off. Then one day, soon after I had returned home, Patrick arrived suddenly. With great difficulty and many expressions of self-reproach he told me what I had already guessed only too well.

But even as he explained all that had happened I could hardly grasp what it meant. We had discussed religion only once, when he had asked me whether I should be willing to receive instructions from a priest and be married in his Church, and I had agreed and promised that our children should be reared as Catholics. He never thought, I am sure, of asking me to become a Catholic, and such a possibility had never entered my mind. I knew hardly a detail of Catholic practice. From Patrick’s story, related haltingly under the stress of his emotion, I gathered that he had gone to his confessor and told him of his understanding with me, although he was still engaged to Marie. When he had stated his intention of going to her immediately and asking for a release, the priest had said No: an engagement was morally binding; Patrick must keep his word. I could not understand it at all as he told it to me, but now I realize that my being a Protestant probably had something to do with the priest’s decision, for Marie was a Catholic.¹

Repentant for having led me to build upon mistaken hopes, Patrick suggested with a real delicacy of feeling that he would make whatever amends he could by paying my college bills; nobody need know it. As for himself, he would marry Marie without delay, while he still had the courage. With standards of propriety fixed in childhood, I tearfully refused his kindness and we parted, he assuring me that he would see to it that I had a good position when I wanted one. Not long afterward word came to me of an excellent opening in the city, and, anxious to forget my troubles, I took the next train to work. Once back in town I learned that Patrick had carried out his resolution and had already left for the University with his bride.

II

Through Patrick’s recommendation of me to several of his friends I secured all the extra work I could do, in an effort to keep so busy that I should not have time to brood over what had happened. One night I remained at the office, without dinner, until half-past seven. Feeling faint, I became fearful that if I waited longer I should be unable to reach my room. As I was walking slowly home, my ear was caught by strains of mournful music which sounded just the way I felt. I looked up and saw that I was in front of a convent, all dark except for a few windows on the ground floor, which gave forth a soft light through stained glass. Suddenly the thought burst, upon me that this was Catholic music; Patrick must have heard its like a thousand times. Scarcely knowing what I did, I stepped to the entrance, opened the door, and made my way into the chapel.

At the farther end of the room I beheld a central altar ablaze with many candles. At the foot of the altar knelt a priest, resplendent in white and gold, his face upturned as if he were drawn toward the radiance. Behind him was massed a group of black-robed figures. They, too, looked up as they sang, their eyes held by the same effulgence. I dropped upon a kneeling bench near the door. A sense of security and peace stole over me, and I felt united in spirit with those sombrely clad Sisters as they repeated the melancholy cadences of their song. Why, I wondered, had I not stumbled upon this refuge before? Why had I never sought to know more about this religion that had given Patrick almost superhuman power to follow the path of duty as he saw it? Why did that radiance at the altar make all the sorrows of life seem trifling and insignificant?

After prayers the nuns filed slowly out. Several noticed me and smiled a welcome. Their faces shone with goodness and happiness. Could it be that their troubles had all been poured forth into that sad melody and miraculously wafted away? One Sister paused to speak to me. Eagerly I asked her for information about the Catholic Church. She wondered why I was so anxious. ‘I just wanted to know,’ I replied; it was the only true answer I could give.

She put some books into my hands, — an armful of them, — and as I walked hurriedly up the street toward my boarding house I was no longer weary. I was impatient to read deep in those volumes, buoyed up by the hope of finding there the secret of that blessed peace which I had experienced. Late into the night I read, enthralled. Were these really the teachings of the Church which I had so often heard maligned? Even when I went to bed I could not sleep for joy at having found the way of contentment. I realized that I did not yet comprehend the secret, but that with earnest study I should understand.

After this my life was lived for those hours I could spend with the nuns. Under their guidance, and later under the direction of Father Griffin, the kindly pastor of a city parish, I devoted all my free time for months to reading books on Catholic doctrine. At last I was conditionally baptized and taken into the Church.

During these months of confidence with the nuns and with Father Griffin I had never spoken of my experience with Patrick. I saw no reason to. In that chapter of my life there had been not the smallest sin to confess, and it never so much as occurred to me that there could be any connection between this shattered romance and my wish to become a Catholic. True, I had not forgotten my bitter disappointment, but the keen edge of it was dulled and I was content. Indeed, if I had supposed that my conversion was in any way the result of my frustrated marriage, I should have thanked God for the whole painful episode; I should have felt that this was the drastic means He had used to make me realize my need and lead me into the fold.

III

Father Griffin needed a stenographer and I went to work in the rectory office. There, in addition to my regular duties, I did all sorts of stenographic and accounting tasks for the Sisters without a thought of compensation; it was a pleasure to be able to do something for them. As a consequence of this intimate, daily association I began after a while to entertain a serious idea of becoming a nun myself. No one urged me to take this step. On the contrary, everyone in whom I confided cautioned me to wait: God would direct me in deciding whether I had a religious ‘vocation.’ So I prayed for divine guidance, the Sisters prayed for me, and Father Griffin remembered this ‘intention’ each morning at Mass.

During these weeks of special prayer I thought continuously upon the subject of my ‘vocation.’ I could see only one impediment to happiness if I entered the convent — that I should never be a mother. I loved children and felt that life would be incomplete and unsatisfying if I should never have any of my own. In the end I disclosed my feeling to Father Griffin. This, he believed, was an answer to our prayers. My part in God’s scheme was to be a good Catholic mother.

Emotionally unsettled as I was, I received this pronouncement with some glimmerings of common sense. How was I to become a good Catholic mother if I did not know a single man who wanted to marry me? Since I had been working in the rectory office the only Catholic laymen I had met were those who had called to pay pew rent, arrange for Masses, or attend to some other similar matter of church business; and they, if they thought about me at all, had doubtless noticed my devotion and set me down as one who was destined for the convent. Of social life among the Catholics of the city I knew nothing.

Father Griffin was quick to comprehend my predicament, but he was ready with comforting faith. A sincere Catholic always has a way out of difficulties. He can always pray — even for the granting of desires which, to a Puritan, would seem immodest, almost scandalous. God would help me find the right mate. (I thought then, and I think now, that Catholics are more sensible than Protestants in their realistic attitude toward such matters.)

We decided, then, Father Griffin and I, to start a novena to the Blessed Virgin that I might be directed to a good Catholic husband, if this were God’s will. I took a few nuns, including the Mother Superior, into my confidence. She decreed a novena of the entire Sisterhood for this very special intention.

IV

At about this time I had to have some dental work done, and the Sisters recommended a Dr. Leo Murphy. They did not know whether he was a Catholic or not, though his parents were; he never came to Mass, and it was suspected that he had ‘ fallen away.’ At any rate, he was a kind young man. He gave his professional services to the Sisters without charge, and they, in gratitude, were praying hard for him.

I went to Dr. Murphy and found him a large, genial Irishman bubbling over with good nature and good talk. He kept up a running fire of amusing chatter while he worked, which so diverted my thoughts that the hours I spent in the chair seemed very pleasant interludes. One day, when I had expressed my admiration for the Sisters, he burst out: ‘Good gracious, girl, it’s an outrage for you to live cooped up with nuns and priests! You need life and fun. Next week there’s to be a dance, and I’m going to take you to it. I’ll introduce you to some real people.’

My heart thumped. I had always wanted to dance, but I did n’t know how. ‘That’s all right,’ he laughed. ‘I guess you’re not too old to learn. I’ll teach you myself.’ So it was arranged that we should meet several evenings at the home of a friend of his, where he would give me the necessary lessons; and before the day of the dance arrived he pronounced me ready to take my place on the floor. I took from my trunk a gown I had purchased to wear at college parties with Patrick O’Neill, and, forgetting all about the disappointment that had caused it to be packed away unused, I went to the dance with Dr. Murphy and had a glorious time.

After this he escorted me frequently to dances, to the theatre, and to concerts. Meanwhile I continued my work at the rectory office and my intimacy with the Sisters, and went to Holy Communion every morning. At parties I refused refreshments after midnight so that I should be ready for this religious rite at seven o’clock, and this always annoyed Dr. Murphy, provoking him to say unkind things — not about me, for with me he was gentleness itself, but about the Roman organization. Little by little I learned that he felt he had great grievances against this Church in which he had been reared — grievances which I shall not go into here, since they belong to another story. Suffice it to say that he was a declared agnostic. He was good to the Sisters, he said, because he believed in being good to everyone; that was his only ‘article of faith.’ If he was especially kind to them, it was because he was more sorry for them than for anybody else. They were ‘victims of a misleading religious system.’

Such talk worried me greatly, but I could not argue with Leo; he seemed to know my responses before I spoke. Meanwhile it appeared to me that in every other respect he was an answer to my prayers for a husband; if I had any doubts upon this score, he finally put them to rest by asking me to become his wife. He had hesitated to ask me, he confessed, because he disliked the idea of being married by a priest. At first he did not think he could bring himself to make the promises which he knew would be demanded of him. Now he was ready ‘to submit politely to some priest’s futile blessing,’ and would give his word that any children we might have should be given Catholic instruction as long as I wished it. With characteristic frankness he added that he knew I would n’t hold him to his promise very long. He was n’t sure of many things, but he was sure of this: once I was happy in a home of my own, I should soon laugh at my obsession with religion.

I was touched by Leo’s concessions, made against convictions which were very dear to him, and I knew he would keep his part of the bargain even though my steadfastness should prove him a poor prophet. Still, I could give him no definite answer. How, I asked myself, would Father Griffin look upon this marriage? When I consulted him about it I was prepared for his disapproval. I suggested that my marriage to Leo might be the means of bringing him back to the faith, since I was praying for him incessantly.

But Father Griffin stood firm. ‘No, child, you’d lose your faith. The precious gift of faith must be guarded no matter what sacrifice it may entail. And think of your children. In spite of Catholic instruction, they would probably become atheists. Don’t yield to this temptation, my child.’

Finally, after weeks of vacillation, I sent Leo away, but even then there were moments when I came near weakening and reversing my decision.

V

Father Griffin understood the moral struggle I had gone through and suggested that I needed a change of environment. I’d better go to college. He knew I had some money saved for this purpose; if I needed more, he would see to it that I had enough to finish my course. I did not like the idea of borrowing money, but Father Griffin’s suggestions were not to be lightly put aside. So, although it was then the middle of the school year, I set off for a college for women that was conducted by nuns. Here I stayed several years, and in the search for knowledge I managed for a time almost to forget the ache at my heart.

After graduation I returned to my former city and secured a position teaching in a high school. I was kept very busy, but the monotony and emptiness of my life made me feel again all the pain of my earlier disappointments. Several times Dr. Murphy telephoned and asked if he might see me. I was tempted to renew our friendship, but, knowing it to be both foolish and dangerous, I refused to let him call. I made frantic efforts to find something with which to occupy myself in my leisure hours. One Sunday it was announced at Mass that there was to be a convention of the Holy Name Society the following week; women of the parish were urged to help in serving dinner to the visiting members at the Knights of Columbus Hall. I gladly volunteered.

After dinner on this occasion Father Griffin brought up and introduced to me a man from a neighboring city. From the first, the serious attentions which John Garrett offered me made it plain that he was looking for a wife, and I suspected that Father Griffin had told him my story. He asked if he might see me home and I consented, although it troubled my conscience to give even so slight an encouragement to a man to whom I was not particularly attracted, and who had made it only too evident that he was very much in earnest.

He came to see me several times, and after a few visits made his proposal. I had every intention of refusing him, but before I could speak he urged me not to be hasty — to think it over prayerfully and give myself time to know my own heart.

As usual, I carried my problem to Father Griffin. He spoke of Mr. Garrett in terms of highest praise: he was a good man, religious, kind, generous; besides, he could offer me a fairly good living. All this I granted, but I did not love him. ‘That doesn’t matter,’ my fatherly adviser assured me. ‘Love will come in due time after you are married to such a man. You prayed once, very fervently, for a good Catholic husband. Now that your prayer has been answered, years after it was offered, will you not do your part in trying to make yourself love a man who is suitable in every respect? God may not favor you again, my child, if you reject the one He has sent you.’

I protested to Father Griffin that I could not even think of marriage until I had paid back the debt I owed him. He waved this objection aside, saying that he would feel better repaid by seeing me do what was right than by my offering to give him mere money.

In the end he wore down my resistance, and thus it was that I became Mrs. John Garrett.

VI

John was thirty-two years old when we married. He had always conformed strictly to every moral injunction of his Church in the suppression of human desire. Before our wedding he had not even offered to kiss me. My life had been equally austere. Now, thrown suddenly into marriage, I suffered a great emotional shock. There was tragedy in the situation for both of us.

Disturbing as this was, it was not my only worry. Soon I was preparing for a baby and was very ill. John was as considerate and kind as a husband could be, and I reproached myself for my inability to repay him by a return of his affection. I determined to make up for it, as well as I could, in other directions. It began to look, however, as if I should never again be well enough to do for him the many things I had resolved to do. The next year there was another serious illness, and a second baby. One after another they came — a steady procession of helpless infants to be tended, and parallel illnesses which unfitted me to perform my duties as a wife and mother. It seemed unfair to all of us, but I knew the strictness of Catholic teaching upon this point² and prayed for strength.

When my health failed to improve, I went at last to my confessor and asked if there was n’t some way by which I might avoid having children quite so rapidly. He replied that a Catholic may not interfere with the working of ‘natural laws’ except by a complete suspension of conjugal relations. This sacrifice I could not demand of John, since I had already done him an injustice in marrying him.

Children continued to come until I had eight in as many years. Bills piled up. Nothing multiplies as rapidly as bills when one is trying to support an ever-increasing family on a modest income. We had to mortgage our home and found it difficult to keep up the interest, and we were always at our wits’ end to know how much of what bill to pay each month.

While we were in the midst of this financial struggle our parish priest decided to build a new parochial school, and every family in the parish was taxed for the project according to its resources. There was hardly anyone in the community who could pay his share without sacrifice, and many families would be even more closely pinched than ours. In spite of this, I wanted to go to the priest and ask him to excuse us, or at least to reduce our ‘contribution,’ but John would not hear of it. With him, Church obligations take precedence over all others. So I conjured and scraped, cut down on milk and fruit for the children, stopped buying meat almost entirely, patched night after night on old clothes to make them hold together, and somehow paid our tax toward the school.³

By this time my reason had begun to show occasional signs of rebellion against the unquestioning submissiveness which the Church required of its members. Some of the judgments pronounced by the priests appeared to me to be debatable, to say the least, and I proceeded to debate them with myself. I felt keenly the injustice that resulted from the application of ‘infallible’ dogmas to every problem that arose, regardless of the individual circumstances involved. Always, however, my indignation burned itself out in secret, and not even my husband suspected how perilously close I had come to an open rupture with the Church. I did not even realize it myself. I regarded myself as a good Catholic — more critical than I had formerly been, to be sure, but still a good Catholic.

VII

When my eighth child was four months old, the doctor told me that I should have to undergo a serious operation if I wanted to live to rear my family. How we should be able to manage the expense I did not know, but John was determined that everything possible should be done for my safety. He secured a loan through a second mortgage on our home, and I went to the hospital. Our physician, who was a Protestant, had made it clear that I could never have another child after my operation, but since this extreme measure had to be taken to save my life I had no notion that it would be wrong.

The day before the operation John asked the priest of the parish in which the hospital was situated to call that afternoon and hear my confession. When he arrived at my bedside, I had only the usual peccadillos to confess. The priest listened to my recital, and when it was finished inquired about the nature of the operation I was contemplating. I explained frankly. Then he asked my age. I told him. He looked very grave.

‘You are still of child-bearing age,’ he said. ‘ Are you aware of the fact that after this operation you could have no more children?’

I replied that I was.

‘And do you know that such an operation is forbidden by Catholic teaching, and that to submit to one is a mortal sin?’

‘I did not know,’ I answered faintly.

‘Well,’ he said, with evident kindliness, ‘it is too bad you did n’t know before you went to all the trouble of coming here, because now you won’t be able to carry out your plans.’

At first I hardly realized what he meant. When I did, I tried to explain that I had to live to care for my eight children and — this actually popped into my head as a dominant consideration — to help pay the bills. My husband could never make ends meet if he had to depend on a housekeeper; she would not even try to watch her pennies as I did. And my children would run wild like little ragamuffins. I’d have to have the operation — there was no other way out for us.

‘I know,’ the priest said gently; ‘you’re nervous and upset. Just now you can’t trust God to care for your children and help your husband out of his difficulties if you should die. You think they could n’t get along without you. But they could, with God’s help. Anyway, you won’t act contrary to Catholic teaching. If you should persist, I could not grant you absolution.’⁴

For a while, overwhelmed by a sense of the momentous choice I had to make, — and make immediately, — I was unable to think. When at last my reasoning processes began to function again, it came to me in a flash that Dr. Murphy had once prophesied that my religious views would probably undergo a change when I knew more of life. I had to admit, now, that he was right, and in the firmest tones I could command I announced to the priest that I would not alter my plans.

Next morning I came out of the ether glad that the ordeal was over, and since then I have never regretted my decision. I did the only sensible thing I could do under the circumstances, and from that moment I ceased to be a Catholic.

VIII

Before taking leave of the Church in which I was for so long a devout communicant, I should like to set down here, in a spirit of fairness and justice, a few observations which have been strikingly brought home to me by my own experiences. Most of the charges that are leveled against the Roman Catholic Church by ignorant, unthinking people — particularly during a political campaign when a Catholic is running for office — are scandalously false. At one time this fact impressed me as a strong argument for the Church, and perhaps it is. At least no one can blame Catholics for replying that, if their enemies have to conjure up malicious falsehoods, their faith must be impregnable to attack by honest methods.

And indeed the list of virtues rightly attributable to the Roman Church is a long one — too long for me to itemize here. Suffice it to say that many of its staunch adherents are the salt of the earth. Any religion which can produce this result in human lives can claim a great deal for itself.

I often think that the strongest asset of the Catholic Church is the method it employs to triumph over all the ills that flesh is heir to. At the very moment when a kindly pastor is most acutely sensitive to suffering among his people, he advises them to court hardship. The stony path is the way of salvation. Sorrow is accepted by devout Catholics as the absolutely essential means of gaining happiness. The more intense the pain, the greater the reward. They see in the divine plan a ‘reason’ for suffering; so they welcome it while worldlings fight against it, try to escape it, and plunge into a mad scramble after diverting pleasures.

It does seem superhuman — this conception of pressing an agony to one’s breast and converting it, as if by miracle, into a token of divine favor. And perhaps, after all, it is better to be buoyed up by such a faith, even though it be only an illusion. As for myself, I would give a great deal if I could return to that little convent chapel where the ’light’ first burst upon me, lay my troubles upon that radiant altar, and, even though I could not forget them as I did in those early days, at least accept them as blessings in disguise.

Freud tells us that continuous repression, without satisfying compensations, may make people ill, causing them to lose control of their nerves, and, in extreme cases, their minds. I have no doubt that the harsh repressions of my youth had something to do with my conversion to Catholicism, To the masses of mankind, for whom manifold thwartings of ambitions and wishes are inevitable, the Catholic religion ministers powerfully as a soporific, just as it ministered to me upon my first contact with it. Its beautiful ritual, its hierarchy of ever-helpful Saints, its soothing emphasis upon heavenly rewards, provide effective outlets for all the emotions born of defeat and disappointment. It is no wonder, then, that millions cling to this Church as they cling to nothing else in life.

In spite of the seemingly unwise advice given me by Father Griffin, I shall always think of him with sincere affection. It was his interest in my welfare that made him appear dictatorial. He once intimated to me that he had himself made supreme sacrifices in becoming a priest, but that he felt fully repaid, knowing that he was doing that for which he would earn an eternal reward. He could therefore, in all honesty, urge others to go and do likewise. He only preached what he practised.

I also realize that mistakes made by individuals within any organization should not be held against the group they represent. Father Griffin, in advising me as he did, was perhaps not typical of the Catholic clergy. His insistence upon my marriage to John Garrett and the insistence of Patrick O’Neill’s confessor upon his marriage to Marie were based, at least in part, upon purely personal opinions, and should not be construed as involving doctrine that is hard and fast in its application. The Roman Church does discourage ‘mixed marriages,’ — rightly, I believe, — but it allows many exceptions to the rule. It may also be that my hospital confessor applied the teachings of the Church more strictly than is customary in such cases.

However this may be, I have merely stated truthfully the facts as they affected my own life, and have tried to show why it was hard, and in the end impossible, for me to follow the instructions of my spiritual advisers, and how, in my resistance, I found that I had ceased to be a Catholic. Perhaps I was unreasonable in letting my faith be touched by such personal considerations, but — reasonable or unreasonable — that, too, is a fact, and I have set it down along with the rest.

IX

Sometimes as I review the series of extraordinary situations through which I have passed, it almost seems as if some god — the Spirit of Irony, no doubt — had chosen me for his most bizarre experiments. As I reflect upon it, it is clear that much of my unhappiness would have been avoided if the sequence of main events had been altered. If I had been a Catholic before I met Patrick O’Neill, the priest might have come to a different conclusion about Patrick’s engagement and I should have married him. Or, again, if I had ceased to be a Catholic before I married John, I should probably have become the wife of Dr. Murphy. It is all very puzzling. Why could not at least one of the changes in my religious beliefs have occurred soon enough to permit me to marry a man I loved? Some people may believe that such shifts in one’s fundamental ideas depend wholly upon the accidental interplay of circumstance and environment; if this is so, I can only conclude that chance worked against me, and it is just too bad.

It may be, though, that these changes in attitude are not the result of mere chance. They may be brought about through the operation of definite but elusive laws. Perhaps I became a Roman Catholic primarily because I loved a Roman Catholic and was unconsciously moved to imitate him. Then, reversing the process, perhaps I slipped from the faith because, married to a Catholic more devout than myself and a man toward whom I have never been able to feel the sympathies of a wife, I was unconsciously driven to the opposite pole of thought from him. Whatever may be the mysterious truth, — and I know very little about theories of human behavior, — it seems to me that if my experiences reveal anything about the matter they show that emotion plays the dominant rôle in ‘conditioning’ and determining our convictions.

If this is so, it follows that our boasted reason is by no means the reliable arbiter of our destiny that we like to think it is. Once our emotions have driven us, willy-nilly, to take up this position or that, reason comes along like a dutiful handmaiden and spins out a beautiful rationalization to justify us in what we have done. May it not be that this is the stuff of which even the most shining faith is made? Indeed, it seems to me that cherished opinions in politics, theories of social and economic justice, — in fact, all our beliefs, — are spun out thus to uphold us in what we have already deeply felt. Because such cases as mine are comparatively rare, most people go on living within the little closed circle wherein they were born, believing more or less fervently just as their fathers did before them. The great majority of human beings are able to follow the even tenor of their lives from the cradle to the grave without once being forced, as I was in the crisis at the hospital, to take a seemingly impossible step which runs counter to all their settled convictions. The moment such an action is decided upon, it cuts through the shoddy of too easily assumed beliefs, and one’s sincerest emotions surge to the surface to crystallize as a new orientation of faith.

Perhaps, then, my little history may serve to throw a ray of light upon those darkest recesses of the mind where faith is enshrined, and from whence fanaticism often lifts its ugly head simply because the believer never really understands why he believes as he does. Perhaps on some distant tomorrow, when the terra incognita of the mind has been thoroughly explored and charted, human beings may be brought to understand that the same emotional forces which make religious zealots of some of us are also at work making doubters of others. Then at last will come the dawn of an era of broader sympathies and more genuine tolerance.