It Runs in the Family Read Online Free Page A

dialogue and disagreement with our parents, grappling with resistance, with faith, with life in community. We saw our parents be wrong sometimes too, which I think was really important for our development, and which later helped us embrace our upbringing.

    There was a whisper behind us: “Those Berrigan kids don’t know the rosary.” Surprised, bemused, maybe a little scandalized—the noises rippled softly through the funeral home’s largest visitation room. I was in college. My mom’s younger brother had died of lung cancer and we were there to pay our respects to Uncle Bill, a handsome, voluble construction worker and father of three daughters.
    We were raised by a priest and a nun, people who literally spoke Latin and who had lived and breathed the essence of Catholicism with a capital “C” for decades. But we were raised in an early-church-sort-of-Christianity that didn’t have a lot of patience for pomp and circumstance.
    There was no rosary involved. Our Eucharist of watered-down wine and old bread was shared around a circle in the living room, consecrated by whoever was “up” that week—by agnostics, atheists, Jews, and even some Catholics whose last confession was a long time ago. I recall that our father gritted his teeth when one woman shared the Eucharist with her dog, and would get mad at us for picking our feet or playing with our fingernails as the host was coming around the circle. But, if we did not show the proper reverence, it was because we were never exposed to the ritual in church.
    Bible study was in the front room on Wednesday nights, with friends consulting the experts—theologians and scholars like Leonardo Boff, Ched Myers, Walter Wink, and William Stringfellow. In time, thinkers like Joan Chittister, Mary Daly, Dorothee Soelle, and Miriam Therese Winter were also incorporated.
    We used a worn Bible stuffed in the glove box or the lunch cooler, and pulled it out at the beginning of every car trip and before each meal, even on job sites when painting houses. We were people who took the Gospel mandate of “Love thy neighbor” and “Blessed are the peacemakers” and “Turn swords into plowshares” seriously enough to plan actions, organize retreats, hold banners, get arrested, and go to prison.
    In short, our church looked like belief and life integrated, and yet in constant tension. We did not learn the rosary. On the rare occasion when we went to church, we mumbled along with the prayers and tried to stand and sit when everyone else did.
    We were all baptized by our Uncle Dan in our Uncle Jerry and Aunt Carol’s backyard. We were confirmed much later on. My sister and I prepared for confirmation with a nun in Baltimore, a stalwart woman who practically ran her parish, since a revolving cast of priests showed up just to say Sunday mass. We could easily distract her from our catechism by asking her pointed questions about the role of men and women in the church. Kate was in high school and I was just out of college when Bishop P. Francis Murphy confirmed us. I wanted to be able to call myself Catholic, to be a member of the tribe in good standing.
    Despite this, I never attended church regularly until the fall of 2001 in New York City, when I just wanted to be in a room full of people feeling and breathing together. I started attending noon mass at Saint Francis Xavier a few times a week, when I would tell my boss I was going to the gym during my lunch break. I loved the little chapel tucked behind the altar, the anonymous fellowship of the twenty-or-so regulars, and the strange combination of rote recitation and deep solace.
    More than a decade later, when I moved into Maryhouse Catholic Worker in New York, I loved vespers. We gathered every night at seven, read the psalms aloud together, and then brought into the circle all those who needed prayer. I found so much meaning in this half hour or so of daily prayer and communion. I looked forward to it. Vespers is old-school