Faith of My Grandmothers

Mary on a Half Shell was a common sight in my hometown neighborhood. Those ladies with a deep devotion to the Virgin Mary who felt obligated to share it with the entire world (often in thanks for an answered prayer) submerged half a bathtub into the ground, enhanced the presentation by cementing rocks to the outside of the visible tub half and planted a Virgin Mary statue within. My high school was 60% Roman Catholic. Several college friends graduated from Catholic high schools on Long Island with lower percentages of Catholic students. There were ten Catholic Churches within two square miles of my high school. In sociology class we discovered there were a couple more Italian bakeries than Catholic Churches in our city but were not surprised that bars were the most plentiful establishment in town. Everyone knows that in the Northeast wherever there is a Catholic Church you'll find a bar on the opposite corner. The men need some place to wait while their women attend mass.

My maternal grandmother didn't have a Bathtub Mary but she did have a lighted picture of Christ (it replaced the traditional Crucifix with the hidden Last Rites Kit usually found above the headboard) on her bedroom wall and an Infant of Prague statue on her dresser. I have my grandmother's bedroom Crucifix and my cousin has her Infant of Prague statue complete with several seasonal wardrobe changes. When we visited Prague I made sure we saw the original Infant of Prague statue in honor of my grandmother. It looked just like hers. I lit a candle in every European Catholic Church we visited just as my grandmother did every Sunday after mass at St. Anthony's in East Utica. I also had a mass said for my grandmother and the rest of our deceased family at the St. Anthony Basilica in Padua, Italy. During their 1964 trip to Italy to finally meet my grandfather's family in Bari, my grandmother bought each of her children and grandchildren an Italian gold religious medal that she wore around her neck on the way back home to avoid paying the customs tax. I wore mine religiously until my son grabbed it and broke a link. It sits fixed (thanks to my wonderful husband) in my jewelry box awaiting safer times.

My paternal great great grandmother was a nun. Together she and her sister emigrated to America from Germany. Her sister married a Civil War veteran who had emigrated from Germany years before. My paternal great great grandmother instead chose to dedicate her life to God and joined the same order of nuns in Syracuse, NY as recently sainted Mother Marianne Cope (http://blessedmariannecope.org/). When her sister died during the birth of her fourth child, my great grandfather, she left the convent, married her brother-in-law and raised her sister's children. Depending upon who was remembering, my great grandfather was either so sickly or so lacking ambition that he rarely held a steady job. My great grandmother was the family breadwinner working as a house maid for the Everson's, one of Syracuse's most prominent families. While my great grandmother worked her mother-in-law looked after her children. My grandfather, his brother and sister began their day by attending mass each morning before breakfast. My grandfather broke his family's heart when he disappeared for ten days and married a Lutheran. While my father is not Catholic, he chose to raise his children as Catholics. His paternal aunt and godmother shared our family's German Catholic heritage with us. My great aunt was never blessed with her own children so she and her husband adopted our family and were our grandparents minus the official title. When my great aunt died she entrusted me with the cross her grandmother received upon joining the Sisters of St. Francis. It too sits safe in my jewelry box although it isn't a piece I'll ever wear.

My family continues to self identify as Catholic even though over the years our weekly mass attendance has become spotty. The beauty of our Italian Catholic heritage is that we remain secure in our identity. Italian Catholics have never had any problem separating our faith from the foibles of the current administration of our religious institution. Italy has more churches per capita and the lowest per capita regular weekly mass attendance among Catholics of any country in the world. I remember my first introduction to Cafeteria Catholicism. As a six year old studying for my First Communion, the nun told us that only Catholics could go to heaven (Pope John Paul II publicly corrected that misinformation in a papal encyclical written in the early 1980s). Worried for the eternal fate of my father, I asked my mother back in 1967 if that was true. She calmly told me not to worry because contrary to what the Church may think, it doesn't know everything. Thus began my true education in Catholic religious doctrine.

I wasn't surprised a few weeks ago to see pictures of the Breezy Point Virgin Mary all over the Internet. While her grotto may be a bit fancier than the repurposed bathtubs of East Utica, she symbolizes that same Catholic faith shared over the centuries by billions. For us it isn't really about big institutions or fallible leaders. It is all about faith. We know better then to ever try to rationalize it or God forbid, ever try to make sense of it. We leave the intectualizing to centuries of theologians who still can't agree how many angels can sit on the end of a pin. We simply believe. For all the things for which we have no explanation, we rely upon our faith. Maybe Marx was correct that religion is opium of the people, but it doesn't matter. When all is falling down around us we rely upon our faith to see us through. Breezy Point Virgin Mary is a sign for us that no matter how awful the tragedy, our faith remains ready to help us survive. It is this faith passed down to me from my maternal grandmother, my great aunt and my mother that I am trying to pass down to my son. I pray that the statues, crosses, medals and other symbols that helped sustain countless generations of our family by reminding them to keep the faith also help my son remember his inheritance of Catholic faith just waiting for his embrace.