give peace a chance

The scourges of war. Nuclear holocaust. The conquest of communism. World peace. After supper, I would enter my parents' bedroom, close the door, kneel down in front of my mother's vanity table, and pray. Keeping the room dark, I prayed the rosary. My lips formed the shape of unspoken words. I cannot tell you why I did not go to my own bedroom; maybe my brother was using it to do homework. I was afraid of getting caught, getting found out. I feared the exact sort of shame, mockery, or teasing I might suffer if it were known I had called a girl. "Ooh! You have a girlfriend now? Ooh!" But surely they knew. After all, did they imagine I disappeared for fifteen minutes to a half hour? I was in the seminary. We commuted. We were allowed to date girls if we wanted to, and I did occasionally, in an innocent and platonic, ideal-Madonna manner. If I attempted to date a girl, I'd tell her I attended a prep school, which was true enough. If talking to the bishop, whose pet project we were, as the inaugural graduating class, we would say we went to a seminary. Same in talking to my pastor. I was another pet project of his, an imaginary ribbon worn on his cassock, a success story in the making. A calling. A vocation. Before I got into Christ the King, Father Grinvalsky and I sat in separate chairs on the flagstone porch of the rectory as he fed me questions about my possible vocation. He gave me a promotional pamphlet to take home. I'd read it over frequently and secretly, jealous of the holy look in the faces of the thirty some-odd boys who would become my friends. They looked serene and sanctified in the tri-fold black and white brochure. Images of Mass, basketball, class, camaraderie. I would wait a year, finish ninth grade at Burdick Junior High School in Stamford. Was the delay my call or Father Grinvalsky's? I never claimed to hear an actual voice calling me, thank God. But what surer path to salvation? What cleaner, crisper way to chastity? What easier way to escape the terrors of sexuality, rejection, and sin than the seminary? Wrong on all counts.

In the reported 1917 apparitions of Mary at Fatima, Portugal, to peasant children, she is said to have urged the praying of the rosary, for world peace and the defeat of communism. One might assume a touch of revisionism in the telling: after all, the Bolsheviks didn't storm the Winter Palace until that November in 1917. The visions are said to have taken place from May to October. This was serious stuff. I took it seriously. My cousins would relate what might be considered a religious urban legend. The first two secrets revealed to the youngsters at Fatima were known and promoted; see above. But there were rumors of a third secret not revealed. My cousins asserted that when the Pope, Pius XII, read the third secret he wept. This did not calm anyone's nerves. 

Before the bedroom rosary routine, two world crises served as practice runs: the Berlin Wall Crisis in August 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. They were scary, drawing us to the brink of annihilation from war with the Soviets. Summer nights not being able to sleep because of dire reports on the 11 p.m. news. Heart-stopping Bulletins interrupting TV shows, afraid that This Would Be The One. (I never considered that any Bulletin on TV would be too late. Whatever they would say would be too late. Thanks for the warning, though. Thanks the extra anxiety in our last moments.) So, I prayed for peace during those crises. Who wouldn't on this side of Christendom? After hearing Kennedy's speech declaring a naval blockade of Cuba ("Cubur"), I went to bed fingering my beads, placing them right next to me by the lighted Princess phone. Somehow the world skated through those nightmarish threats, even though documents still being discovered reveal the ominous notion that we were closer to war than we ever knew! I had no sense that I personally played a part in our escape from Armageddon. Most likely, even the atheistic materialists on the Soviet side lobbed a few made-up prayers to Whoever or Whatever.

A few years later, by the time I was in high school as a seminarian, something in me changed. I felt a greater responsibility, a burden. No, I wasn't solipsistic enough to believe or feel that world peace was up to me and me alone. Nevertheless, I played a part. I had no choice. Hence my duty to pray the rosary. 

I knew the Mysteries of the rosary: Joyful (Monday and Saturday), Sorrowful (Tuesday and Friday), Glorious (Wednesday and Sunday). Each Mystery had five decades with each decade focused on some aspect of the life of Jesus or Mary (e.g., the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection). Each decade began with an Our Father, followed by ten beads for ten Hail Marys, and then came to a single bead for a Glory Be. That bead shared space, if you will, with the Our Father for the next decade. Sometimes after a decade I'd add: "O my Jesus, forgive us of our sins. Save us from the fires of hell. Lead all souls into heaven, especially those in most need of thy mercy. Amen." Or I'd add a special plea for world peace.

Aside from the technical requirements, one contended with distractions, temptations, and mind wanderings. My St. Joseph's Missal offered colored illustrated plates of the Mysteries to keep me on the beam. I tried to ignore distractions of "impure thoughts" as well as alarming visions of nuclear war. My sibilant whisperings, my implorations and supplications, were intended to rise like incense to the heavens. The nearly inaudible mutterings yielded a sound similar to that of the ladies in church, (never men), telling their beads during Mass, my mom included, a hush or shush competing with the priest's loftier Latin orations. 

After my near-nightly regimen (skip Saturday bath night and Sunday evening because we already went to church), I felt neither satisfaction nor comfort; neither accomplishment nor virtue (though I gladly accepted any indulgences my practice yielded; no small matter). It was a duty. And in such a tense and cliffhanger world, why wasn't everybody doing this?

I was simply doing my bit for world peace. It was not unlike the coinboxes we went trick-or-treating with for UNICEF. Every little bit helps.

However, there was a social price to pay. My aunts and uncles routinely called me "pleban" instead of Paul; it was Polish for parson. It was meant to be affectionate, good-humored, and playful, but I didn't need the sin of scandal to be added to the hot coals of guilt for all those invasions of dirty thoughts. And only later did I come to realize my father was destined to be a priest -- until he wasn't (a phenomenon termed a spoiled priest in Ireland). At a big family picnic, Emily, a distant cousin via marriage from Ansonia, ceremoniously gifted me a pair of rubber, cushiony kneepads. "I use them for gardening. You can use them for your rosary." (So much for my routine being any sort of secret.) There were gales of laughter. My ears burned, my face reddened. But I took the kneepads home and I used them. They did what they were supposed to do.

And people wonder why I don't "get down on my hands and knees" to pray? (It's a misnomer; picture it.) It's not just because I can't find those kneepads.