A Ticket To Heaven

A Ticket To Heaven

Our Lady of Lourdes School

Philadelphia, PA

1962-1966

I went to Catholic school and the nuns at my school pride themselves in knowing everybody’s family business. They spewed negative, judgmental inferences as if it were their duty part of god’s work. And they would often prod and probe all sorts of private family matters. Divorces were shamed. Families that said the rosary together were praised. Public recognition was made of those who attended Sodality with their mothers. And the discovery of a non- Catholic family member was scorned and ridiculed. “These people were not going to heaven,” a nun once told me.

As a seven-year-old this thought weighed heavy on my heart. My grandparents weren’t Catholic. Ida, my grandmother, was raised as a Catholic but left the church when she married my grandfather, Jack. He didn’t have any religion background but when we cornered him for an answer he told us he was a Mason. And while I didn’t know what a Mason was, I did know that wasn’t good enough. You had to be a Catholic if you wanted to go to heaven.

 If Ida and Jack were at our house on Sunday, Ida joined us for church. She wasn’t really going because of her religious convictions. She was just going because she always like to be part of the crowd. Jack would stay home and enjoy the quiet and complete the Sunday crossword puzzle. And I would saunter off to church worried about his soul.

Jack was a very kind man so I couldn’t understand why he didn’t want to be Catholic. I prayed for his conversion. And whenever I earned a crucifix or a religious statute for good behavior, I put it away for Christmas or for his birthday. I would take it out wrap it as nicely as I could and presented to him on one of these special occasions.  He would thank me with such a sincerity that I thought for sure he loved his gift. And deep down I hoped that this cross, this rosary, this statue would be the one gift that finally sparked a glimmer of conversion in him. But it never did.

Years later after Jack was long gone, my mother and I talked about all these religious artifacts that my siblings and I gave him in abundance. My mother told me the behind our backs he would laugh at the collection of religious artifacts he had received. “Great!  Another damn crucifix,” he would tell my mother and the two of them would laugh.

I don’t know if there is a heaven or not.  But if there is, I am sure Jack will be there.  And I hope those mean-spirited nuns are elsewhere.  What audacity to frighten little kids.