A DAD'S LIFE:Ceremony has become a rite of passage for the children
WE HAD the elder communionised at the weekend and nobody was smote down. Nobody even smoldered in the church, and there were a few there from whom smoke should have risen. Everybody smiled and chatted and commented how gorgeous and happy she looked. She was elated, the centre of attention and revelling in it. It could have been 1979, the year I danced through the same performance.
Except it isn’t. It’s more than 30 years later and the church has been consistently exposed during that time to be a diseased and corrupt animal. It continues to spread a homophobic and avaricious dogma, alienating not only those it has hurt in the past but also those who seek solace in their religion and are astounded at continually emerging revelations.
Initially, the thought of having the child make her communion stuck in my craw, but I felt weak in the face of the cultural stranglehold the church has. To deny her this rite of passage would have been to deny her a place among her contemporaries.
I would have preferred she not make her communion, but the missus, who had serious reservations of her own, felt it was an important ritual for the child to be part of. We argued long and hard, over and back, pros and cons, and got nowhere. The school is non-denominational, so no pressure came from that side. In fact, they have a well-oiled procedure that encourages kids not actually taking the sacrament to still be involved in the build-up, along with the rest of the class.
That would have done me. And, for a while, the missus said it would do her, but it quickly became obvious it wouldn’t. She has happier memories of communion than me, it has lived longer and brighter for her. As experiences go, this was something she felt would be a great loss to the elder were she to miss it.
Democracy ruled, and we laid the decision at the child’s door. Which was utterly unfair. The poor kid, realising she was being asked to choose one parent over the other when all she wanted was to be part of the party, nearly choked on her communion wafer long in advance. “Go ahead,” I said, crumbling, “do it, enjoy it, have a great day.” Her relief was a solid thing.
And that is how, against all my natural inclinations, I found myself sitting in a freezing church in May, pious child beside me, all in white, hands clasped, listening to the old lines being trotted out and finding no personal comfort in the familiar.
We do good communions though, it has to be said. Each kid had a part and each delivered their lines as if Jesus himself were on their shoulders. The múinteoir had them singing and dancing, bringing a bit of zest and flavour to proceedings The stage production was exact, the timing impeccable. The rest of the staff showed up to either whip the choir into shape or just offer moral support, and parents from the class above manned the party back at the school afterwards. Whatever dilemmas I was struggling with, there was a sense of community and purpose throughout.
Even though the service lasted 90 minutes and the church could have done with a bloody great Superser heater, in the end I was happy the elder got to do this. I had presumed I would feel like a fraud, that my being there would be wrong but it didn’t happen quite like that. Yes, the lines washed over me and their hypocrisy seems more astounding each time I hear them, but I watched the elder as she recited the words she had worked so hard to remember every night for the previous month and realised that this really wasn’t about me.
She believed all that she was saying and all that was being said to her. She embraced the possibility of being accepted into a warm and loving spiritual community and a future of eternal life and happiness. Who wouldn’t?
This will probably pass. She will grow and question and the church will undoubtedly continue on its dismal, inflammatory, self-serving public relations plan with further revelations seemingly inevitable. She will, like the huge majority of kids on that altar last Saturday, walk away from the very thing they have professed eternal commitment to. She will leave, but at least she will have felt part of something bigger than herself, her family and her school, for however long that lasts.
abrophy@irishtimes.com