Keeping up with the Catholics (extract)
Published in Stadtsprachen magazine June 2024
“I’m going to worship at the Altar this Sunday, that is, the Berghain.” – my former crush, Ben, an Australian who “lived” in Berlin for a couple of months.
Of course, there were the hardcore believers. The families that went to mass once, if not twice a week. They invited the priest over for a fish supper on Fridays and had too many kids. They said “God bless you” and didn’t swear, and always got to mass early, to score the front row seats. These families were known, and not just by God, but by the rest of us. Those who’d sneak in late to the back of the church, there to see and be seen. The gossips. The adulterers. The scruffy-dressed parents with their trainers and crop-top-wearing kids. The ones who go through the motions, doing the bare minimum, because they want to be part of something. More than a simple prayer to repeat in the dark and desperate hours, it gives them an identity. A community. A reason to feel superior to the rest. And not to forget – a good excuse for a party.
Get the family together for the First Holy Communion, and they’re already talking about the next possible event – “Go on! Have a Confirmation! You’ll get to buy a lovely new dress.” God, the neglected detail in the whole production, what between cutting the 50 Nutella sandwiches into triangles with a blunt knife, hanging the balloons, curling my hair, practising the Irish dance routines, and tidying the house. God sat in the backroom with my aunty’s grumpy boyfriend, both disgruntled to be part of such a heathen scene. Both sulking because no one was giving them the undivided attention they believed they deserved. Perhaps my brother was sitting with them as well. I don’t remember where he was in all of this, which suggests to me he was. Unlike me, my brother wasn’t bothered about putting on the show. I was a girl, being good and making an effort to look pretty for the show were what was expected of me. He was a boy. Being a boy was what was expected of him – mucking about out back, not needing to put much effort into pleasing people, or keeping up the show.
The prelude to the First Holy Communion was the First Confession. I had to sit down with the Priest and tell him my sins. I was stumped, as I was seven. The Priest told me I could confess to fighting with my brother. I hadn’t, as we didn’t fight much, but I ended up having to say a Hail Mary or two as Penance for it anyway. ‘Repeat after me child: “Father, I am sorry for my sins and all those I can’t remember.”’ The same thing happened to my brother at his First Confession. The Priest wouldn’t believe him that we hadn’t been fighting and gave him hot tips on how he could do better. My brother and I generally got on very well, we always understood each other, which wasn’t expected of us, what with him being a boy and me a girl.
*****
While my brother was playing Beyblades at the back of the church, I squeezed into a pair of goodie-two-shoes and tottered all the way up onto the altar in a white hooded robe. Serving on the altar meant that I qualified for the higher-order subsect of the Catholic community. It was a group of do-gooders and oddballs and true believers. I wanted to be good. To be perfect. I believed in those moments I lit a candle for my very Catholic grandma in heaven. I believed when I wanted something. But all the colouring in of the God’s Greatest Gift book in prep for my First Holy Communion, all that out-of-place bell ringing I did on the altar when I had drifted off in the sermon and forgotten when it was my moment to shine, during all of those mumbled prayers and convoluted stories about bearded men in sandals – I did not believe.
But there I was, amongst the hardcorers, washing cars in the church car park to raise money for “starving children in Africa” or some such cause. Our leaders that day were Edeltraud, a German mother from the school who fulfilled all the 90s butch German lesbian stereotypes, (buzzcut, black tank top, don’t-mess-with-me manner), and her husband, Yep Man, a leading professor of fruit fly mating at Cambridge University who said “yep” a lot, especially to Edeltraud. Yep Man and Edeltraud had a grand plan that Sunday morning in the church car park. We would focus our car washing efforts on one of the cars parked in the middle so that everyone would see how amazing we were at car washing. We would pull in more punters, admiring looks, and, I suppose, that heavenly praise.
Edeltraud and the leading professor of science had three options. In the centre strip of the car park, there was my parent’s white Citroen car with its GB sticker on it, in last place as we were the latest comers. They threw it some disapproving looks, knowing my family would be in their usual lowly position, leaning on a pillar at the back of the church. Then there was a people wagon with a fish sticker on it, “the symbol for religious maniacs” as my dad called it. In front of that, was Angelica De Luca’s metallic blue soft top with a rosary hanging off the mirror, and the bumper sticker that read “Honk if you got some last night”. I chose to clean Angelica’s car because her daughter was my best friend, her son was my brother’s best friend, and Angelica was fun. Edeltraud and Yep Man averted their eyes and spent the next 1hr 45 minutes of mass scrubbing the fish.
As well as the blue soft top, the De Luca’s had a Mercedes, a big house with a room just for Christmas, many flatscreen TVs, so I thought they might donate quite a bit if they saw how clean their car was. I wanted to score a big donation, not thinking about the number of kids in Africa I could help out, but about how that big donation would improve my status in the church group. Plus, I adored Angelica. Angelica’s car was the symbol of fun. Leaving her son and my brother at home to play with the pet snake in the box room decorated like a football pitch, Angelica would shout “Get in girls!” over “Barbie Girl”, recently released, or “Livin da vi da Loca” – her life’s soundtrack. Angelica was a travel agent and often got to go away to fancy far away places like Florida. She loved to brag about how she’d stayed in the hotel under the sea in the Bahamas, where Riki Martin had shot his music video “She Bangs”. Angelica had confessed to my mum that she had fake tits. Her daughter had whispered to me once in the playground that Angelica had been caught having an affair. Whenever I went over to their big mock Roman villa after that, I imagined her and Riki Martin lying next to each other under her sunbed, while her husband was working in his barbour shop or down in his garage sorting through his multiple freezers full of unidentified cuts of meat. Did Angelica like to honk her horn outside church to get us girls to hurry up? She sure did. At home though, she lay silently in her sunbed that was shaped like a coffin. She cooked a delicious penne with tomato sauce and watched cartoons with the kids at the kitchen table, the sound of colours on crack filling the large room.
As the doors of the church opened and the air thick with the smell of frankincense and farts and all that pent-up boredom escaped, Edeltraud instructed us to quickly chuck our buckets of dirty water down the drain, to stand up straight. No one noticed how squeaky clean the mud caps of the big trophy car for the Best Catholic Family were. Angelica lit up a fag and slipped me some coins. She didn’t notice how her shiny dirty bumper sticker stuck out as much as her new tits, because it was part of her. I didn’t notice, because I had no idea what “got some last night” meant. I know that Edeltraud and Yep Man would have noticed, and I hope that Angelica was not touched by the judgment in their eyes.
*****
Being part of the Catholic Church growing up taught me that people who prescribe to belief systems are not going to live up to the belief system’s demands, because a belief system is abstract, and people are not. They are riddled with contradictions, they have multiple motives for being part of something, overbearing emotions, a character which is unique. A belief system impresses a perfectly symmetrical image on a cardboard cutout, and a person sticks their slightly wonky face though the hole. Even if you pull down your trousers, crouch, stick your rear in the air and angle a mirror to reflect those heavenly beams, the light will not shine out of your arse, because belief systems are not graspable out there. They are abstractions, thoughts and fantasies stitched together in the darkness behind closed eyes.
The Catholic Church also impressed upon me that you cannot dare to question their belief system. They are right, everything else is wrong. I was reprimanded at age 9, for asking the teacher if the Bible could have just been a play, which, over time, people mistook for the truth. My mum was called in. Another time, I wrote an account of our family holiday and included “bloody hell” a few times, because that featured a lot during the long car journey, coming out of our stressed-out Dad’s mouth. That was the truth, but including it was a challenge to their values – so my account was crossed through with a red line and the piece was downgraded. They reinforced this lesson in subservience by promoting humility as a virtue, which, like a toxic graffiti, has taken years and years to scrub off the surface of my character.
The Catholic Church ground down my spirit. I ended up hiding so much of myself under that oversized white hooded gown in order to appear virtuous. Even as a little girl who was trying hard to be good, and cared too much about what people thought of her, I still tripped up, and was often consumed by the feeling that I was doing things wrong.
My brother didn’t bother to move his mouth during prayers, didn’t bother to hide the fact his only motivation for coming to church was the promise of free bourbon biscuits being served in the church hall afterwards. He always forgot to spell ‘the Lord’ with a capital L. The Catholic school didn’t let him sit the national exams at age 7 because they said he would mess up their statistics. They rejected him, and he felt that deeply. The Catholics crushed his spirit in one foul swoop.
Now we have both been born again into new belief systems.
*****
My new religion makes sense, given that our parents are left-leaning, given my eagerness to be a well-liked person, given my high-minded moralising and love of fun. It makes sense that I find myself checking a Sunday morning schedule once again, but this time it’s not pinned to the church’s big wooden door:
8.30 Father Filip (Polish mass)
10.45 Father Tony (Main mass)
13.30 Father Diego (Latin mass)
But rather, stuck to a big black door in Berlin:
8.30 DJ Sparkles
10.45 DJ Killa
14.00 DJ EMyay
Crowds come for the outfits, the mingling, to be seen, and be on the scene. Stand at the back and gossip. Stand at the front and feel the eyes of the crowd on you, adoring, envying. Face the man elevated above the rest, worship him.
The rules when entering the Catholic Church (spoken and unspoken)
– Obey our commandments
– No backchat
– Dress appropriately
– Reject, pity or convert the people not like you
The Christian belief system may be fading like an old al fresco, but the pattern of its underlying sentiment is getting traced and stencilled somewhere new – as a line-drawn tattoo on a bicep in Berlin.
Next to the lineup and entrance fee, the techno parties in the leftist alternative scene’s clubs write on their doors:
“No Nazis, No racists, No homophobes, No sexists, No transphobics. No ablists. This is a queer-friendly, anti-oppression, safe space.”
Many also now write a list of rules:
“Always ask for consent, even for a hug.
Don’t assume anyone’s pronouns.
Don’t dress in a way that is cultural appropriation.
Watch your privilege.
No photos.”
Once again, I feel part of something, a community that is upholding virtuous beliefs – we didn’t just come here to meet people and have a good time. We’re not just at a party to dance and flirt and gossip, to spill our story along with our drink. No, we are here to create a better world, be a better person, to be admired.
Once again, despite my best efforts to just swallow the wafer, I find myself not in the front row with the painfully straight-backed few tattooed with angel wings. I am not in the middle with the majority, who have the popularised principles pinned to their sweater which will change with the fashions and the times. I am, once again, bopping about at the back, unable to muzzle my questioning mind. Again, questioning the system, which I should have learnt, is risky business, when one is questioning a system of beliefs.
It’s Edeltraud and Yep Man reincarnated as two privileged cis men. They’re wearing their halos as little gold hoop earrings, that glint with the fashionable suggestion that they are queer, even though they are not. They’ve parked themselves in the middle of the dancefloor, so they can patrol the party with their eyes. Judging, judging, judging. This month, they have taken a vow to not take drugs. They let the world know via an Instagram post how blessed they are to experience a party sober, to feel so radiantly alive amongst such a wonderful community of like-minded people. They do not mention that the attempt at sobriety was sparked by their girlfriend dumping them because of their drug problem. They do not mention that they are drinking beers throughout their saintly night. With their sharpened senses, and even more elevated moral status, not even the smoke machine can cover up the party people’s sins.
Almost simultaneously with the Instagram post by Yep Man Reincarnate the next morning, I received a WhatsApp message as long as the night had been young from Edeltraud Reincarnate.
“Fionnuala, your behaviour yesterday was unacceptable. You were the drunkest loudest person on the dancefloor. You and your friend thought it was appropriate to challenge the word of the community, and when I made you see the reality of the situation, you did not listen. You were whispering about myself and Yep Man 2 on the dancefloor, making us feel unsafe. As if you dared to question the community that Yep Man the Second and I hold dear to our hearts. I chose to overlook all the negative aspects of your personality over the past years, but I simply cannot any longer. You need to do some serious work on yourself to be a better person. Clearly the therapy is not helping you. Another trip abroad is not going to help you. Look at how Berlin has been going for you the past years, clearly you are doing a lot wrong…” The message goes on to outline paragraph by paragraph all the ways I am a terrible person. From my friend working for Meta, to her boyfriend being “an instrument of the imperialist state.” To how I responded to my boyfriend’s misogynistic comment three years ago. He ends by saying he will consider talking to me again when I have done a serious amount of work on myself to be a better person.
A better person.
“Say sorry for your sins and all those that you can’t remember.”
I do not respond. The next day, Yep Man 2 sends me a message. Briefer, covering the pain points of my personality and behaviour over the last 4 years of our friendship that Edeltraud 2’s had not. His bullet-pointed list included how I smoked their weed, and that I wanted Edeltraud 2nd’s girlfriend to not schedule her birthday party on the same day as my big book event I had been preparing for months, and how I questioned Edeltraud 2nd’s cultural appropriation orders before a festival 1.5 years ago. He did not think I truly believed my own arguments, I just wanted to be antagonistic. Again, rounding off with that I need to do a hell of a lot of work on myself to be a better person.
After I picked myself up from being beaten up behind the back of the new church, and run over by The Bestest People in The Community’s sticker-covered car, rather than follow their command to become a better person, I thought hard about what being a good person actually means.
I imagine the “good person” as the model in a life drawing class. Naked. Raw. Each person in the class with a sketchbook in their hand draws their idea of the good person very differently – and we’re not talking about the wideness of the butt. The priest draws a choir boy. Angelica draws Riki Martin. Edeltraud 2 and Yep Man 2 model the perfect person on themselves, but spend a painful amount of time reworking the details that signify an identity – the gender-neutral clothing, the skin tone. My brother, maybe he would draw his indoctrination coach Noah Revoy in a power stance. Me, I would draw my Grandma in heaven, as she believed in heaven, so that is where she will now be.
That naked being posing before you, vulnerable, is not a lump of clay you can prod at with a stick, pinch into your imagined perfect form for everyone else to adorn. But go on, draw your little sketch. Just know though that it won’t get the gold star because there is no one here able to judge one person’s impression of “good” as being better than another’s. We’re all formed of lumpy, bumpy, contrasting bits badly stuck together. Your smoothed-out belief system does not exist beyond your abstract sketch and printed-out rules. You are nothing special in your progressive convictions. The Catholics are not remarkable with their contradictions. People are nothing special – there is nothing you need to strive to be to keep up with them.
Calling people out for behaving in a way that is not to your liking doesn’t make you a good person. Putting ‘they/them’ in your bio because you feel insecure about being a straight man and want to craft an image of being a progressive person doesn’t yield admiration, in fact, it attracts a few sceptical looks, because you are exploiting ‘they’ and undermining people who are actually nonbinary. Dressing up in a way that suggests you may suck a dick as well as just want to get your dick sucked by a woman, doesn’t make you any better than the rest. Telling people to “check your privilege” over and over and over until the meaning of that sentence is so diluted it washes over your followers like a speck of tonight’s dust dissolved in tomorrow morning’s Lucozade. Oh, aren’t you better for declining a line of cocaine with a disapproving shake of the head, instead getting out your little baggy of speed. WOOF WOOF WOOF! Grrr. WOOF! Yes, we see you – guarding the designated “safe space”, to keep everyone entering it in check, putting them on edge. Preempting their potential cultural appropriation with a series of “I do not want to see this! Do not do thats.” Making yourselves feel good by making others feel bad, doesn’t make you a better person. Blowing your new identity up with your belief system’s enlightened ideas will not let you float up above us, because you cannot detach yourself from your heavy, unforgiving personality. The blood of Christ, the fairtrade organic beer, do not enrich your being with empathy, nor swell your heart. The “better person” does not exist in collective consciousness where there is no altar, only a stage.
****
So, after rejecting/ being rejected by the Catholics, I ended up in a new belief system, which, again, didn’t really work out for me. I had to start questioning everything when my brother became what my new belief system deemed to be absolutely the worst – just pure evil. He and his kind are everything that the big “No –ists” sign on their entrance door is supposedly meant to deter.
Believing my brother, who I love so much, who I know is so empathic and kind, to believe he is basically the devil – I couldn’t just swallow that. Hence this project, hence my fights with my former friends, hence spinning out from ‘good’ ‘better’ into a few years long psychodrama, ejected from the safe space, where I will land way outside the pearly gates, at eye level with my brother, because I really want to understand.
So where did he end up? I assumed we were on the same path through the woods, seeing the same things, thinking similar thoughts, following the crumbs of dropped wisdom to seek a better understanding of it all. Then, when I focussed on “my path” for a little too long, and turned to look, he was gone. When I called out to him, the response was not at all what I was expecting. I shouted “Brexit”, I heard an echoey “yes”. I shout “immigrant” he responds “no”, I shout “black lives matter” he screams “white lives matter!” I scream “woman” He shouts “bitch”. In a quieter voice, I say “sister”. Pause. “Brother” comes back to me, but it’s now pitch black, I can’t make out where it came from. So I retrace our steps.
He stood outside the Catholic Church back then, rejecting and rejected, not caring about pleasing anyone, not being seen. So he’s ended up outside again. He didn’t get close enough to read the sign on the door that said “No Nazi, No Sexists, No Racists No etc.” He just heard the whoops and cheers from afar, the beats that pumped out “Look at me. You are wrong, we are right. We are big, you are small. We are forward, you are back. We are hot, you are not, we are smart, you are dumb, we are so good, so right, you are so white, so straight, so problematic, we are better than you!” He heard those rumbling beats like he’s heard Father Tony’s mumbling mass and thought, “fuck that”.
So he met a bunch of guys also kicking about on the periphery. Under all the boomboombooms of the new Sunday spot of congregation, they’re spitting out the Kool-Aid, rinsing their mouths of the holy water. Scheming. Firing up the dustbin and burning their feelings of rejection. The smoke is rising, rising. Those inside worshipping themselves, calling each other out, having a bloody good time, they don’t notice the smoke growing thicker and thicker outside their progress, creeping into the perimeters of their safe space. The lights go on. Party over. Putting on those sunglasses as you exit your personal utopia ain’t gonna shield you from the hell that’s been brewing all around you.
My brother adopted this new belief system – which is hateful, which is cruel, bitter, and regressive. It represents the opposite of what I don’t just believe, but know him to be. His new belief system is wildly inconsistent, reactionary, stringing together a collection of mismatched beads, which his “tribe” fumble as they mutter the theories freshly spawned in society’s negative space – from anti-vaxx to great replacement to anti-communist to pro-Putin to misogynistic to even some kind of mutated Christianity / spirituality. This new belief system, despite its unwieldy nature, is still a belief system, so it holds him firmly in a box with a duct-taped bottom. It helps him feel secure, in that the box shelters him from the feelings of being so lost. Of course, these boxes are not made to measure. I struggle to understand my brother because the new box he sits in does not fit his big heart. I want my brother to break the flimsy cardboard walls that contain him, that restrain his thinking and now separate him from us. But, as he is now on the cusp of 30, it is harder to convince myself that this is just a phase, when at this age, one’s values, and beliefs, seem to become more fixed.
Maybe I have to accept that my brother has a new roof under which he worships now. I hope he rocks up late, and stands at the back, listening only for the cues to join in. Following the dress code (gilet fleece), and going through the motions (mixed martial arts on Thursdays), in the Telegram groups just to check out what’s going on – scrolling through the messages but not contributing to the conversation. To feel found in the dark, all scared and alone, and have been taken into a community, to belong. I hope he questions what they tell him, at least some of it. Please let at least something not feel quite right. I hope he winds them all up with his glaring contradictions – like hanging a rosary at the front whilst sticking a crude bumper sticker on the back, by liking a women-hating comment, whilst at the back of his mind, worrying that his sister’s boyfriend is not treating her right. I really hope, that my brother does not truly believe.
Keeping up with the Catholics displayed at Artesumapaz Artist Residency final exhibition January 2024