01/26/01

Despite all my links to the early Huguenot families of the New Paltz patent, I was brought up solidly in the religious traditions of my Noonan ancestors as an Irish-Catholic. This was the same with my half-Huguenot father before me. It does seem kind of funny that we went Pope like that after so many generations resisting. Maybe it’s all a wash anyway. I figure the same atrocities that were committed against my Catholic ancestors by Protestants, were committed against my Protestant ancestors by Catholics. . .

Even before all that Father Pipala mess broke, I was having issues with church. On the anniversary of Dad’s death-- Sunday after Ascension Thursday-- I decided to go to 9 O’clock Mass alone. I think Phebe was working that morning. ‘Course I showered and shaved and gussied up as I usually do. Well, maybe I hurried too much through, I don’t know now. Turns out, as the church filled up, this snooty little boy and his snooty mother sat down in the same pew next to me. A minute didn’t go by before the little boy pinched off his nose and said loud enough for most of the church to hear, Someone smells like poop!

Wouldn’t you know that mother stood up, and marched away to a different pew with the boy without as much as a word to her son or a word spoken to me.

Sometimes the smell of manure is like the sin of humanity, I said to her as she left, you can scrub as hard as you like, it’s still there no matter what.

Years ago you were strange if you didn’t smell a little like cow shit in church. It was one of those things taken as a given and no one noticed it. Only the priests were able to discern the true reality because of course most of them wouldn't do a day of manual labor on a farm if their life depended on it. That’s why priests got so much into using incense. That’s why they learned to walk down the aisle with that shit and hit everyone with it. No wonder I got male chest cancer breathing in all that shit when I was younger. It was actually an early measure to mask the foulness of the peasantry. . .

Phebe’s more Irish than me, yet she’s had less resistance to walking away from Catholicism than I’ve had. She’s been going to a Presbyterian church with a lady pastor lately. She started out going as a guest to some coworker of hers, the same lady that's trying to get her to run for the school board. . .using her maiden name! Phebe's even been singing with the choir, got all these old Protestant hymns down pat. One time I told her if I heard There Is a Green Hill Far Away one more time I was gonna run out into traffic on the Quickway. Funny it used to be the Catholic churches that had all the Democrats and the Presbyterian churches that had all the Republicans, but now it almost seems it's been turned all the way around the other way.

Just remember to vote for Phebe Noonan this Spring for the school board. Her husband and son may be felons, but she is not.

Good fucking gracious