Homosexuality and the Catholic Church

I love being Catholic. I always have. I love the Mass and Eucharist. I love the concern for social justice, I love most of the teachings. But there are a few areas I flat-out ignore, and others I openly rebel against. Most of those areas have to do with sex.

For instance, I'm a fan of contraceptives. Always have been, as have most--not quite all, but close--of the Catholic women I know. I once pointed out to a priest friend of mine that if our parish church really wanted people to follow the Church-approved rhythm method, they should find someone to teach the class who hadn't had five children in eight years. He said, "But all of those children were planned."

"That may well be," I said, "but to the rest of us, it doesn't look like the method works. Most of us couldn't procreate that quickly if we tried."

The thing about contraception, though, is that it's a very private issue. Most of us don't go around openly pro- or anti-contraception. You can't tell by looking at me whether or not I use birth control; unless you're my husband, it's really none of your concern.

Homosexuality, and heterosexuality, are intrinsic parts of a person's being, and I've long grieved over my Church's official position on gays. My priest friend above tried to tell me that gay people were "Intrinsically disordered,"--a phrase borrowed from Pope Benedict, alas--"like being born blind," he said.

I said that I thought being born without a uterus, or with undescended testicles, would be like being born blind, but that being born gay was part of the normal variance of God's creation.

I don't know what my priest friend really thought about that. He's good at discussing doctrine, but not himself.

Anyway, the point of all this is that on Friday, sitting down at a Starbucks at the University of Notre Dame while my son went to class, I opened up the South Bend Tribune and got a pleasant surprise. Indiana law had just changed to recognizing same-sex marriage. Notre Dame immediately sent out an email to its employees to say that anyone affected by this change should contact human resources to change their benefits. "Notre Dame is a Catholic university and endorses a Catholic view of marriage. However, it will follow the relevant civil law and begin to implement this change immediately." 

Part of the reason this is awesome is that they could have wiggled out of it--there's a loophole for religious institutions; many faith-based colleges are using it.  (Notre Dame also makes it very clear that LGBT students are welcome on campus. I'm glad about that, too.)

Then yesterday word came out of the synod of bishops currently underway in Rome that the official church is getting a little more open, too. Remarkably, at least to me, the Church--the big one--sent out requests for all Catholics, everywhere, to fill out an online survey before this synod. They asked us what we thought instead of telling us what we should. That was unprecedented. Apparently, much of the world thinks the church needs to become more accepting of gays. The first words out of the synod were that homosexuals had "gifts and qualities to offer." It doesn't sound like much, but, like Pope Francis' earlier comment, "Who am I to judge?" it's a start, and I rejoice in it.

Staying With Bekah

Yesterday I left my sister's charming home and family and came back to Notre Dame to spend a few more days with my son before I went home. Now, at Notre Dame, women are not permitted to spend the night in men's dorms, not even if they are someone's mother. I'm not saying I would have stayed in my son's dorm--that would have been awkward, especially for his roommate--but I am saying that I can't. Several weeks ago my husband realized with something approaching horror that he'd never reserved a hotel room for me for this weekend. On Football Weekends the hotels around here fill fast for exorbitant sums: we were going to be shelling out well over a thousand dollars for my stay.

"I know," I said, "I'll stay with Bekah."

My husband said I couldn't just invite myself to stay with someone. I said I could, because it was Bekah. And I did, and I am, and it's all very good.

Bekah is my friend now that we are all in our forties, but back when I first knew her she was my dear friend Sarah's baby sister. There are three Randall girls, Sarah, Lizzie, and Bekah. Sarah and Lizzie are only two years apart, and I fit squarely in the middle of them. I was Sarah's friend first, but not for long. Bekah was nine years old, a pig-tailed string-bean child who did no-handed cartwheels down the middle of the road when we all walked to Atz's for ice cream. She was funny and quirky and brilliant, just like her sisters, but she was in third grade and we were in high school.

I felt as at home at Sarah's house as I did at my own. We would stay up half the night talking, then bake a carrot cake at three am, then spend part of the next morning struggling to stay awake in the front pew while Sarah's dad said Mass. Sarah and Lizzie shared a bedroom; more than once I fell asleep amidst the pile of books on Lizzie's bed; when Lizzie came in, in the dark, she pulled back the covers, said, "Oh, sorry, Kim," and went to sleep with Bekah.

When Sarah, Lizzie, and I were in college, Bekah moved with Sarah's parents to San Diego. She went to high school there. I saw her at Sarah's graduation from Yale, and at Lizzie's wedding a few years later, and then not again until Sarah's ordination weekend over twenty years later. It didn't matter. I knew Bekah--know Bekah--the way I know my own family. And so I feel asleep comfortably on her air mattress last night, at home with one of the Randalls yet again.

Hanging Out with Louie and Fred

In the past five years, I have been blessed with becoming an aunt four times over, most recently to a darling boy I will call Fred. (Note: his parents do not call him Fred.) He was born 16 days ago, and his older brother Louie just turned 2, and so I'm visiting and attempting to be useful by cooking, changing diapers, wiping countertops and noses, and gazing lovingly into Fred's tiny quizzical face. Just now my sister's taken Fred in for one of his baby checkups, but she forgot something and momentarily came back, which put poor Louie into a tailspin caused mostly by his being up a large part of the night. I picked Louie up and kissed him and carried him to his bed, where he protested loudly for exactly five seconds and is now, according to the baby monitor, sound asleep. The dog is blissful. All is well.

I miss cuddling small babies. I miss the smell of their hair and that sweet spot on the back of their necks. I miss toddler enthusiasm--how eating grapes can be a cause for clapping and celebration. My children are mostly grownups now. I really enjoy them the way they are now, I wouldn't want them to still be babies, but I'm also really enjoying this brief retreat to a stage I left a long time ago.

On the other hand, I got called Grandma at the pediatrician's earlier this week. Please note, dear universe and especially my own children--I am not nearly ready for that.

Little Boys Throwing Footballs

I spent last weekend on the campus of the University of Notre Dame, where my son is a sophomore. Usually the first weekend in October is spectacular there-the multicolored leaves glow against the backdrop of a crisp blue autumnal sky. This year we got clouds, and rain; at kickoff time on Saturday it was 39 degrees and raining with a 33 mph wind. Miserable weather, but I still had a lovely time.

Notre Dame has expanded considerably since my husband went there 25 years ago. The new buildings are gorgeous, but retain a certain Gothic feel so that they fit in quite in nicely with the old. It's a beautiful place, and an excellent school. I feel very fortunate to have a child studying there.

On football weekends, even ones with horrible weather, the place is packed. All sorts of people wander the campus. This week alumni band members joined the regular band on the field-hundreds of them-and I heard one old man say in passing to another, "remember, back in '54, when you were here as a freshman--" and his companion cut in, "you mean the first time I was a freshman?" Men and women wearing blue and gold packed tn Basilica for 8 am Sunday Mass. You see all sorts, but what gets me are the little boys throwing footballs.

They race across the lawns, weaving in and out of trees, running imaginary pass routes, ducking imaginary defenders. "Dad, dad!" they yell, arms outstretched, reaching for the blue-and-gold Nerf footballs sold by the hundreds in the campus bookstore. Maybe they come to one game a year, each individual boy, the way my own son did, but every game you will see these boys. I want to grab their parents, show them my grown-up son, say, careful with that football, you could be starting something. Make them feel like they belong here, and maybe they'll push themselves all the way through high school. Maybe you'll never have to tell them to do their homework, or study, because they've got the reflection of the Golden Dome in their sights, they know what they want and they'll work to come back here. To walk the sidewalks every day, not just on game day, and watch the children throwing footballs and think, I used to be that kid.

Maybe. If you're very lucky, that could happen to you, to your own boy or girl.

Lovely All Over Again

Once upon a time, I went to college, intent on becoming a biochemisty major and then going to medical school. It seemed like a really good plan, until I turned out to hate my first-semester biology class and love my first-semester chemistry. Fine, then. I would be a chemistry major and go to medical school.

I had four classes per semester, and I tried to use the one that wasn't part of my major or pre-med requirements to have some fun. Freshman year first semester: biology, chemistry, calculus, and an English class on T.H. Lawrence and Thomas Hardy. Second semester: biology, chemisty, calculus, and child psychology. Sophomore year was physics, organic chemistry, and a qualitative chemisty class--four labs a week. So you can imagine that when my roommate suggested that we both also take an education department class on Children's Literature, which met only once a week in the evenings, I was all over it.

I had never quit loving children's books. At some point in my teens I moved myself to the adult's section of the library, but never entirely--I browsed the children's new books section and read the books of the kids I babysat for. But I'd never met anyone who wrote for a living, much less wrote books; I'd never considered children's literature as a genre; I loved to write, but never thought of it as something someone could do as a job.

That semester, the Children's Literature course at Smith College was taught by a local woman named Patricia MacLachlan. The semester happened to start about 3 days after she won the 1986 Newbery award for her book Sarah, Plain and Tall. Ms. MacLachlan was relaxed, grey-haired, and gave off an artsy vibe I adored. Her class looked systematically at every type of children's books, nursery rhymes one week, picture books, animal books, all the way up to YA fiction. We quite often had guest lecturers who were also published authors.

I loved having middle-grades novels as my assigned reading. I loved getting to know so many stories I'd somehow missed. I loved researching one book inside-out for my paper for the end of the year.

Then, one afternoon in early spring, I wrote my first real piece of fiction. For some reason a friend took a photograph of me that day--I was sitting on the couch in my dorm's family room, feet tucked up, a notepad in my hand. Waiting for someone, but I don't remember who.

I typed the handwritten manuscript and printed it out, to see if it fit what I now understood to be the parameters of a picture book. Then I balked. It wasn't a "real" story. I wasn't a real writer. I was a future physician, in fact, and I'd recently declared myself a chemistry major. (I loved chemistry.)

My roommate took me by the elbow. She told me firmly that the only way to guarantee I stayed unpublished forever was to never ever let anyone read my book. And she marched me to Professor MacLachlan's office, where I stuffed the manuscript under her door.

At the end of the next class, she called me up to her podium. Looking at me over the tops of her glasses, she asked sternly, "Are you serious about writing?"

To my astonishment I found myself saying, "Yes."

"Okay," she said. "You need to join the Hatfield section of the Society of Children's Book Writers. They meet next Thursday night. Do you have a car? Okay, then call Barbara Diamond Goldin-" she scribbled down a number "--and tell her I said she has to give you a ride. And then this weekend there's a conference at UMass. You need to go to that. Registration's closed but call Masha-" another scribbled number "--and tell her I said to let you in. And tell Barbara you need a ride to that, too."

Then she handed me my manuscript. She'd written one word across the top. The word was "Lovely."

It took me another 12 years before my first novel was published under my own name. I went to the Hatfield SCBW(later I) group that Thursday, and the conference that weekend. I learned and read and wrote and learned. I babysat Barbara Diamond Goldin's kids (now we have the same agent). I graduated with an honors degree in chemistry and I got into medical school and I went.

For six weeks.

Meanwhile I wrote and submitted all sorts of bad manuscripts. I got rejected a zillion times. Everyone does. Meanwhile, that one word--lovely--sustained me. I published magazine articles and did some freelance editing; I ghost-wrote 14 series books.  My first novel won a Publisher's Weekly Flying Start award, and I sent it to Patty, as I now called my former teacher, with great pride.

Yesterday my publisher sent me the final jacket copy of my latest novel, my 16th, The War That Saved My Life. I hadn't known this, but they'd asked Patty for a quote. "A moving story with an authentic voice," she wrote. "Beautifully told."

Thank you, Patricia MacLachlan. Thank you for every single thing. I still have the manuscript you returned to me.

Death of a Minivan

I expected cancer, not a massive heart attack.

The van, when it died, would die by inches.In fact, it had long ago started a slow decay. The CD player didn't work anymore. The light behind the clock had burnt out, so that you could only tell time in the daylight. The left back vent window, if accidentally opened, might stay open for days, before mysteriously agreeing to shut again. I didn't mind. I liked my 2004 minivan.

Years ago I read an article about prioritizing spending. You could divide everything you spent money on in two ways: truly necessary (food, clothing, shelter, transportation, insurance) and frills (travel, horses, books, yarn, golf--for my husband, golf). You could also divide everything two other ways: those that bring you joy (food, shelter, horses, books, yarn) and those that don't (clothing except really cool shoes, transportation, insurance). Everyone's lists will be different. Then the trick is to totally ignore frills that don't bring you joy (for me, I don't know--flat screen TVs? Netflix? scuba diving?) and minimize how much you spend on necessities that don't bring you joy (transportation) so that you can maximize how much you spend on frills that do bring you joy. Which is why, two years ago, I bought a new horse instead of a new car.

I don't love cars. I love having transportation, but pretty much for me it ends there. A friend of mine recently bought a luxury auto in a bright cherry red; she adores it, and I'm pleased for her, but I would never buy such a thing. I'd be thinking all along, "Heck--for that money you could get a reasonable car AND a trip to Italy," and I'd be in Italy, baby, buying shoes. And food.Yet my horse, Sarah, cost about as much as a reasonable car, and to me she's worth every stinkin' dime, even after yesterday's little tussle over the liverpool.

I loved the minivan because it had lots of room. Because the children each had their own seat, and couldn't shove each other. (Ok, they could, but their boundaries at least had strict definitions.) Because I could take five pony clubbers and another grownup to quiz rally, even with all our luggage and snacks and study material. Because for ten years, when I got in it and stepped on the gas, it went. And while it got old and dilapidated and was never sexy, it was reliable and cheap, which was all I ever wanted.

When I parked at my husband's golf club it was usually the worst car in the parking lot, including those owned by the wait staff and cart boys. I didn't care. I had exactly zero ego points assigned to that car. I plan to have exactly zero ego points assigned to my next one.

Because the minivan, rest in peace, is truly dead.

Yesterday I drove to Faith In Action without incident. When I was finished working, I drove to the bank. The van seemed a little funky, but I have to drive very slowly there past an elementary school, so I didn't think much about it. After the bank I had to drive uphill, and at first the van simply wouldn't. I pressed the accelerator and the engine raced, but the wheels themselves barely moved. Eventually I got to flatter roads and was able to achieve speeds of nearly 20 mph. Something was certainly very wrong. As I pondered my options (Did I attempt to continue to the library?) the ENGINE DYING light came on. I'd never had that happen before. So I put on my blinkers and limped to the Honda station. Attempts to resuscitate failed. I held health care power of attorney for the minivan, so that when they informed me that the transmission had broken (cost of repair much greater than value of minivan) I pulled the plug.

I'm going to the dealer today to get all my CDs, books, and horse stuff out of the old van, and to find out what my options are for burial. Meanwhile, I'm in the market for a car--something low-key, probably used. That new car smell costs a couple thousand dollars, and I can go ride in Florida for two weeks for that.

We Lost September

The first time I sit down to my desk every morning, the first thing I do is tear off the top sheet of my Dilbert-A-Day calendar. (My husband has given me Dilbert-A-Day calendars for at least the last 12 years. I will be very sorry if they ever stop making them.) Anyway, today, when I changed my calendar, I was horrified to discover two things:

It is Wednesday.

It is October.

While I was in Chicago, the two to-do lists I left on my desk procreated. I now have an URGENT list, full of marks like this: !!!!! That is stuff I have to do before, um, two pm tomorrow, when I am leaving town for ten days.

I'm going to see my beautiful son at Notre Dame. Then I'm going to spend the week with my sister and her family, including the very newest member, darling Fred, and then I'm going back to South Bend for another weekend with my boy, and it'll all be fabulous except it's starting tomorrow. Also, what happened to September? Usually that month has 30 days, but this year it had 10. I know it can't be October yet.

It's supposed to be cold in South Bend this weekend. At Notre Dame you typically get one football weekend that's blistering hot, one that's cold, relentless rain, and at least one that's snowing. I thought that a game the first weekend of October had a chance to be the Glorious Game, the weekend that is perfect fall, crisp blue sky, lovely flaming leaves. Maybe that'll be my second weekend there. For the first we're heading for relentless rain.

Okay, sorry, short post. I'm headed off to do battle with the lists.