MY CATHOLIC EDUCATION

“ … I … surprised Sister Lucina and Father Mick …”

As an Australian kid, in Grade 2, I remember Sister Lucina, a Carmelite nun, ordering us: “When you go to sleep at night you should always fold your arms across your chest in the form of a crucifix.”
She carefully demonstated this, placing her left hand on her right shoulder and her right hand on her left shoulder.
“I would never go to sleep without doing this first,” she stressed. “If I were to die during the night, I know I would be delivered straight to God. Now you should do the same. Don’t forget!”
Our parish priest, Father Michael – or “Father Mick” – as we always called him secretly, re-enforced this instruction with the advice: “And that includes you boys, too, not just the girls. Keep your hands up here, like this, and it will protect you from impure thoughts.”
We were never sure what he meant by “impure thoughts” – one of his favourite topics – mainly because we never had any at that innocent age. Nonetheless, we trusted the priest’s guidance and did our best to sleep in the awkward position he so strenuously advised. Whenever I did it, however, I usually blocked the blood flow to my hands and finished up getting “pins and needles” which nearly always kept me awake for five minutes or so.

All this happened among a predominantly Irish-Australian community in a northern suburb of Melbourne.

Father Mick always showed a great curiosity in other habits when we attended the confessional – the little box-like thing at the rear of the church where we confessed our recent sins to the priest (“God’s representative on earth”) and received our penance, or punishment, for being so evil, disobedient and rebellious.
I rarely had any real sins to reveal, so I came to create them, just to justify my presence. I used to say: “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. I swore 4 times last week. I talked to Ronnie Cassidy during mass …”
Usually two or three sins were enough to satisfying the priest.
Sometimes he would enquire: “Have you had any impure thoughts?”
“What’s that, Father?”
“Well,” he uttered hesitantly, “have you handled your privates?”
“Oh. Yes, I have, Father. Lots of times.”
“I see,” the priest said. “When did this happen? “
“When I went to the toilet, Father, for a pee.”
“Oh, I see … Well … that doesn’t really count, does it? … For your penance say three Hail Marys and two Our Fathers.”

Sister Lucina spent the majority of her time in the classroom giving us religious instruction, mainly based on the Catholic catechism. This list of questions and answers we had to learn parrot-fashion, reciting the question, then the answer. Or sometimes the girls collectively posed the question and the boys collectively responded.
In between, to keep it lively, Sister Lucina sometimes told us biblical stories, such as the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve and their sons, Cain and Abel.
A good yarn, I thought, but it didn’t make much sense to my searching mind.
One day I asked Sister: “Adam and Eve were the first parents, right?”
Sister answered: “Yes, that’s correct. They were the first people on this earth.”
I went on: “They had two kids. One was called Cain. His brother was called Abel.”
Sister: “They weren’t kids. They were children. But go on.”
Myself: “Then Cain murdered Abel.”
Sister: “Correct again. But why are you repeating all this?”
Myself: “I’m just thinking … Cain killed Abel, and God sent him away to another place where he found himself a wife …”
Sister: “All true. But what’s the point?”
Myself: “Where did the wife come from if Adam, Eve and Cain were the only ones on earth?”
Sister (very angry): “How dare you question the bible, the word of God! It isn’t your place to ask questions, young man. You just accept what you’re told, and you won’t get into any trouble.”

They were cruel times.
We were taught with a text book in one hand and a leather strap or length of cane in the other.
Our Catholic education was always equated with pain.
If a lesson was wrong, a mathematical problem incorrectly presented, a spelling wrong, you had to extend your arm, palm upwards, and the strap or stick was brought down with a sickening crack. Some kids believed if you coated your hand with chalk dust or covered it with saliva, the impact would be lessened. I had my doubts about that. I was frequently punished with the strap and cane and, according to my experience, the chalk and spit were completely ineffectual.
For really decadent deeds, such as being caught perving through a crack in the wall of the girl’s dunny (toilet), or wagging it (being truant), you were given “the benders” – that is, made to bend over a desk and given “six of the best” whacks across the backside.
Sister Lucina was a particularly vicious disciplinarian. She used to acquire a particularly sadistic glint in her cold eyes as she watched her thick leather implement raising ruddy welts on young, white flesh.
Afterwards, she always looked flushed in the face and strangely excited, as though the exercise had given her some sort of exquisite private pleasure.

One time a mate and I peed in the holy water font at the church entrance because we wanted to see the girls and nuns dipping their fingers into it and blessing themselves as they entered.
Wet fingers to the forehead, the belly, the left and right shoulders, muttering: “In the name of the father, the son, the holy ghost, amen.”
As the fingers passed the nostrils, startled frowns ensued, followed by more inquisitive sniffing, then the horrified stare of recognition.
Our spontaneous giggling inevitably incriminated us and we were summoned to the presence of Sister Lucina and Father Mick in the school’s office.
“I’ve never heard of anything so disgusting,” said the good nun. “How could any good Catholic boy do such a terrible thing? You will both be severely punished for this awful sin.”
“Bend over that desk, both of you,” the priest ordered, and he produced a cane, a thick one, which he swished once or twice.
We were each given six “cuts” across the backsides. Willing ones, too. Afterwards we were weeping and repentant, and our bums were tingling, numb and sore for hours.
As we cleaned the holy water fonts, my mate complained: “Jesus, we only did it for a bit of fun, eh?”
“They ain’t got no sense of humour,” I rejoined. “They’re serious old buggers, them nuns and bloody priests.”

When I was in the third grade, one day I blundered into an unused upstairs classroom and surprised Sister Lucina and Father Mick who were canoodling behind a mobile blackboard. She was partly undressed and I could see one of her breasts, fully exposed and being gently handled by the lusty Father Mick who had his pants half down and was breathing enthusiastically.
Hastily, they both withdrew out of sight and simultaneously I was ordered from the room. I was too young and innocent to realise what I had interrupted.
In more enlightened years, of course, the realisation flourished vividly and I knew they had been up to no good. It was a sobering experience to be confronted by the fact that the nun and priest were essentially human after all and were capable of being naughty like the rest of us.

Some years later I graduated to one of Melbourne’s most prestigious Christian Brothers’ colleges, one renowned for turning out professionals, such as doctors, lawyers, capitalistic entrepreneurs and miscellaneous misfits.
Almost from the beginning the other students warned me, and all newcomers, about certain brothers who were known molesters. As I recall, there were two main culprits.
The warning went like this: “Don’t ever be by yourself with Brother … or Brother … because they are sexy buggers and they’ll try to get into your pants.”
Not long afterwards a tearful pupil confessed to his parents that he had been sexually molested by one of the afore-mentioned Brothers.
Very quietly, without any announcement, the offender disappeared from the college and we later learnt he had been transferred to another boy’s school inter-state.
Another youthful colleague who confided of a similar fate was told by his Mother: “You have an evil mind, son, to say such a thing about one of the Christian Brothers. You should clean out your mind.”
I was never comfortable in that place and managed to get my mother to have me transferred elsewhere.
However, after leaving school and taking up journalism, the Christian Brothers college suddenly decided to adopt me as one of their own successes and I was invited to give an address at an annual Old Boy’s Dinner.
I can’t remember now all that I said, but I mentioned something about the futility of being “educated” by unenlightened and unqualified tutors, that sometimes it was absolutely necessary to leave school in order to get an education, and I finished up with the statement: “Perhaps I didn’t learn much of importance from my days at this college, but at least I was taught everything they knew.”
For some strange reason, I was never invited back to their Old Boy’s Dinners.

-C. O’Roie.

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