I just looked up the day in the Calendar: St. Pope Pius V. The fifth Pius, May the 5th, the fifth month. St. Pope Pius V seems like a good one whose prayers to ask as I begin. He had a long and busy reign and oversaw some momentous stuff.
"What do you write?" I've identified as a writer for decades, even though I still was employed full-time at work which is all wrong for me, for reasons I've only very recently begun to understand. I usually respond, "Christian metaphysics," as it seems to be an effective way to shut down the conversation instantly. If the reply was, instead, "Wow, I thought I was the only one!" or something like that, perhaps a new friend. We get cagey as we age.
However, the actual form and goal of the writing has been eluding me. Last year I made good progress toward figuring it out; just the latest iteration of mindful discernment undertaken seriously in 2017.
I had the idea of memoir. It is mine to tell, and some aspects might be of interest. During the last few weeks on Twitter, the goal became clear: to tell about my experience as a Roman Catholic.
With COVID-19 keeping folks indoors and people feeling restless, spats broke out, even among friends. One topic generated plenty of threads and hurt feelings: the SSPX. Of all the rude questions to ask at a table of strangers at a Catholic wedding, "what's your take on the SSPX?" is a surefire way to wake up the group and distract entirely from bride, groom, toasts, food, everything.
The other topic, just this morning, was a thread of young people jumping in to say things like, "Yeah, I had no idea the TLM even existed, and when I found it - wow!"
For some time now, I've been impelled to commit my life to write full-time. (By "some time now," I mean 45 years.) I've never been closer. :)
COVID-19 has affected some of our employers. Mine is able to participate in "work sharing," and my team was chosen for it, and I got to choose one day a week when I will devote myself to actually starting to write. For that one day, that's all I will do: live the writer's life. It will look like early morning study and scribbles, per usual, but also long walks, leisurely time in the garden, extensive reading, and - yes - writing.
Before now, I felt constrained from writing while still employed. Since on this one day per week for a few weeks I will be forbidden to work at all, I feel psychologically free to take the day exclusively for the writing life.
While my memoir will cover all kinds of things, my experience with the Roman Catholic Church seems like it would be interesting, particular for those young persons just now realizing what the Vatican 2 implementation replaced. I am a convert to the Church who read and studied and prayed her way to Catholicism starting with a close reading of A Manual of Prayers for the use of The Catholic Laity, prepared and enjoined by order of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore. Published in New York by P. J. Kenedy & Sons, Printers to the Holy See. The imprimatur was bestowed by Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore, Apostolic Delegate, copyright 1888, assigned 1916 to John Murphy Company. The New Edition from which I read was copyrighted in 1930 by John Murphy Company.
One of the distinctives of the new edition was the addition of devotions to Saint Therese of the Child Jesus, "The Little Flower." In addition to a prayer, there was a litany to her. She had her spot on the Calendar on October 3. She died in 1897, was beatified in 1923, and canonized in 1925. She was 24 when she died. It was extremely rare for any saint to be canonized with such speed in those days. I was very new to Catholicism, but understood from the Litany that I could ask her to pray for me, so I did. She promptly took me in hand, so to speak, and her sainthood is proven just by that fact, and by her dogged persistence in doing her bit to keep me close to the Beloved we share.
Based on what I see out there on the Internet, it is time for me to buckle down and begin the work I've yearned to do for so long: tell the story of what it was like to enter one Church voluntarily, after much prayer and study, only to have that same Church brusquely tell me in so many ways that I was unwanted because of my love for God in the way it taught me not five years before. Pope Francis would much rather Catholics like me slink away and never bother him again, but he slipped up (as he famously does) and said something to some priests and religious in Ecuador once which led me to discover Our Lady of Good Success, who accurately predicted in the 1600s what we are living through right this moment. God's sense of humor is ever new.
What do you think? Would a story like mine be interesting?
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