Being Catholic

My family, especially the older generation (my mother, my uncle, my mother’s friend), is very Catholic. Mama and Helene go to mass even on the weekdays, and Mama will drag all the kids upstairs to pray with her in the evenings. I’ve walked in on her saying prayers at a little shrine thing in her room (I have to walk through there to get to the bathroom) and there’s Catholic iconography in every room. I don’t know it in English, but I can just about recite a Hail Mary in French because I hear it all the time. Moussouba has one praise song on her cell phone, and sometimes Mama will make her play it over and over and over again for her, and she’ll sing and dance and clap along with the music. She talks about Jesu Christ all the time. In fact, she never seems happier or more animated then when she’s talking about the will of God or the power of Jesus.

I went to mass with her and Fatima once. They told me it was at 11, so I got up early enough to shower, eat, and allow about 30 minutes to get there because I had no idea where the church was. I should have known that that wasn’t necessary. Apparently mass isn’t exempt from the Senegalese understanding of “on time,” and we didn’t even leave until 11:30. We got there halfway through the sermon, which I didn’t really understand. I admit to being a little bit bemused that day and not in a particularly good frame of mind to try and understand what was happening. The priest kept asking questions and bringing children up to give the answers, which were usually single words, like “Jesus,” Everyone,” and “the Holy Spirit.” There was music and singing, but no hymnals. Someone would start playing drums and the choir would start singing, and then the rest of the congregation would join in, which was kind of cool but meant that I couldn’t follow along. I didn’t take Communion because I know that, technically, non-Catholics are not allowed to take Communion at Catholic mass, but I don’t think my family or really anyone there was clued into that rule or would have been too bothered by my breaking it. We were only there for about 30 minutes because we’d arrived so late.

The church itself is kind of distinctive. It looks sort of weird and geometric on the outside, which is kind of a theme in African/Senegalese architecture I think, but the inside is cool. It’s a very simple rectangular layout. It’s wider than it is long, which is different from most churches I’ve been in, and the doors in the back, which are kept open during the service, are so big that the church feels like it only has three walls. The walls to the left and right of the pews have huge windows that I can only really describe as “colored.” It’s not stained glass like you see in American and European churches, but its very vivid and very beautiful. The front wall behind the altar is painted in a very simple, striking African style. That said, I can’t for the life of me remember what is in the painting. There was a big Jesus-on-cross-with-crown-of-thorns on the left, but there were a whole bunch of other people painted in the center and to the right. It was either scenes from the Bible or scenes from African history. The church is named Church of the Martyrs of Uganda, so the history thing is likely. I will definitely pay better attention next time I go.

I slept too late to go to mass with my mother this weekend, but I still managed to get in a strong dose of religion. My uncle came by later in the afternoon. He asked me if I had gone to mass that morning, which ended up leading to a more general discussion of my religious practices. He likes to talk to me and find out what I’m learning and what my opinions are about things and then tell me what all his opinions are. I told him that I’m Anglican, and he immediately came out with the one thing that he knew about the Episcopal Church: we have gay priests. I said yes, we even have a gay bishop, and it’s causing a lot of commotion in the Anglican Communion. He asked me if I supported the gay bishop, and I said yes without really thinking of the can of worms I was opening. He got this very serious look on his face and said, “Oooh, that’s not good. Let’s discuss this.”

And so we did. We discussed for probably 10 minutes before his phone started ringing and he said he had to go. But he promised me that he would come back so that we could continue the discussion, and he made good on that promise. He came back that evening and made me talk to him about this for at least another half an hour.

That’s a hard enough debate to have in English, but I did it all in French and not only did I make myself understood, I held my own. I certainly didn’t convince him of anything, and I’m pretty sure he thinks I (and by extension, all American Protestants) am a godless heathen, but he was very interested what I had to say and very patient with me when I was struggling to find the words. It was hard for me not just because it was in a foreign language but also because I’ve never really had this debate one-on-one before and I wasn’t quite sure of how to articulate my position. The conversation was actually much more sophisticated than I would have thought it would be, considering the fact that I was debating the place of homosexuals in the clergy with an African Catholic. But he’s not an irrational homophobe – he’s a thoughtful, modern Catholic. We talked about literal interpretation of scriptures, whether or not the Bible contradicts itself, and whether or not religion should evolve with society or stay constant. The whole time we were talking I was sort of desperate for him to release me, but I’m glad he kept me at it for so long. It was an interesting experience.