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Be fruitful and multiply
Infertile couples who are members of strict religious organizations often find themselves vilified by the church.
By Michael Kress
[02/23/00]

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[02/17/00]

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By Susan Straight
[02/17/00]

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As a matter of fact, I thought, I don't think this is the church for me. But we did attend Mass for a short time, finding little inspiration in the priest's fund-raising sermons and lackluster community spirit. When, a few weeks later, two sets of donation envelopes arrived from the church, one preprinted Mr. and Mrs. with my husband's last name, the other in my name alone -- as if I were the mistress to the couple -- I began church shopping.

I visited a Polish Roman Catholic church where I was the youngest by nearly 40 years. I went to a Unitarian Society fellowship service where so many faiths were recognized it seemed a hodgepodge of political correctness. I stopped in at a Presbyterian worship where the ex-hippie priest quoted more T.S. Eliot than Scripture. Then I came to a tiny white Episcopalian church with a bright red door that looked like it belonged more in New England than in Westchester County.

Also Today Be fruitful and multiply Infertile couples who are members of strict religious organizations often find themselves vilified by the church. By Michael Kress

The rector was a woman whose two young sons were among those seated around the altar during the children's homily. (I figured one of them was hers when he blurted out, "Do you have to talk about Jesus again?") The service was very close to the Catholic Mass, with the most apparent difference being that the congregation responded "Ah-men" rather than "Ay-men."

The priest, a former financial analyst, told a story in her sermon about visiting her sister at Christmas some years back, when her sister was a young mother and the priest was not yet a priest but a successful Wall Street executive. Guests were expected imminently at the sister's house for Christmas dinner, and to the future priest's ever-organized mind, her sister was far from prepared: The house was a mess, the turkey needed stuffing, the kids were still in their pajamas. She came upon her sister in the living room with her little girl nestled in her lap, both of them staring up at the Christmas tree. The sister glanced up sheepishly. "She loves to look at the tree," she said. "She wants me to look at it with her."

More than any other sermon I've ever heard, that one has stuck with me. The fact that it came from a priest who was a woman and a wife and a mother helped too. I've found a sense of community in a church that has become much more than a place to worship on Sundays. It not only recognizes me as distinct from my husband but even has a prayer in its Book of Common Prayer for the adoption of a child that's been said three times for each of our children. No bells are rung during the consecration and all are welcome to receive Holy Eucharist, Episcopalians or not.

I still occasionally go to Mass with my mother. There are those rituals I miss: the lighting of votive candles, for example, and seeing those statues of the Blessed Virgin that I grew up with. I don't, however, miss the hierarchy that prohibits women from being ordained. And I still look up when the altar boy -- or girl, now -- rings the bells. But the difference now is that I'm not waiting for anything to happen.

So I am taking classes to learn how to be an Episcopalian, but I'm not rejecting my Roman Catholic roots. I think of it more as keeping my faith.
salon.com | Feb. 23, 2000

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