a churchgoer for God. I was a committed Catholic. Nothing kept me from weekly Mass and Communion, but my participation in the age-old ritual of the Mass was still the fullest expression of my Catholic life.
I should say here that I was keenly aware that my age had made my conversion easy for me. I was past the age of child-bearing. I was married to my childhood sweetheart, who had graciously consented to marrying me in my church. Therefore I faced no agonizing questions as to how to be a Catholic day in and day out. I didn't confront the church's teachings on birth control or abortion. I didn't confront the church's teachings on any particular form of excess because mine was a fairly conventional life. I didn't smoke, drink, or gamble. I spent some time - and I hesitate to mention this for obvious reasons but I think it is germane here - I spent some time trying to give away some of the money I made to others for whom it might make a difference, and I contributed to the support of my church. But these things I'd done before my conversion.
Secular humanist values had always prompted me to try to share some of the benefits I received as the result of my writing. I was a committed Democrat, and it was part of my Democratic Party consciousness that I provide medical insurance for my employees and that I pay the premium for them and for their dependents. I can't claim any of this was specifically Christian.
I wasn't really "born again" in Christ, so much as I was home again and safe in Christ, and the only subject really weighing on my mind was that of my writing, that it reflect more my current beliefs.
The pedophilia scandal began to make national news.
Catholic priests were accused of molesting teenagers and sometimes children.
This was an ugly and demoralizing matter for Catholics.
I didn't want to believe this had happened. I didn't want to believe the scope of the problem. In sum, I didn't want to face that such a pattern of behavior could have existed among our clergy. And it prompted me, for the first time, to do some reading about the present church.
I chose not to read about the scandal itself, though there were no doubt responsible books in circulation about the priests accused of molesting children. I wasn't ready to confront the material. I chose rather to read something of the recent history of Catholicism - a subject I'd always avoided in the past.
My approach was historical to the point of being musty. I wanted to know what sort of men ran the church today, as opposed, say, to the type of men who'd run it in the Middle Ages, or the eleventh century.
So I read a big thick biography of the present pope. I read the biographies of the popes before him. And I took away from this reading the simple conclusion that these were pious and dedicated men. Pope John Paul II, Pope Paul VI, and Pope John XXIII were men of unquestioned holiness. All right. Things were good at the top. That is what I wanted to know. The church would weather this pedophilia scandal as it had weathered other scandals. The church would reform itself. It had to reform itself. Even as a little Catholic girl, I'd known the church was constantly reforming itself. It was "the rock pitched into space" and nothing would halt its progress.
Of course, these books took me through some of the recent moral controversies that had affected the church - the birth control crisis under Pope Paul VI; the ordination of women rejected by John Paul II - but I didn't pay much attention to these issues, and I did not have the theological preparation necessary to tackle the entire question of Vatican II and its many documents and what these documents had meant for the church.
But reading about the piety of the popes had a particular personal effect on me. It tended to remind me of my own early inclinations as a Catholic, to give my life totally to God.
As I read about the vocation and dedication of Paul VI, I revisited my own childhood desire to be a priest, and then to be a nun.
My reading began to include more devotional books; and I became fascinated with the Stigmata: the means by which a saint or holy person receives the wounds of Christ.
Of course I still had my