Repelled by the worst in the Church, yet held by the best

The first time I visited the downtown Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, I found myself in a side chapel that Cardinal Roger Mahony had dedicated to “healing” the victims of clergy sexual abuse. I was shocked to see dozens of school photos left behind by victims or their families that looked just like my brother: the same shy smile, the shock of hacked-off hair.

We had grown up Irish Catholic in the San Fernando Valley in the 1960s and ‘70s, when the abuse was rampant. But I’d never discussed the scandal with my brother. So I called him, and he told me this story: During a trip to Tijuana to build houses for the poor, the teacher, a member of a religious order, tried to climb into his friend’s sleeping bag. The friend kicked him out. Another boy probably didn’t.

Chilled by this near-brush with abuse in my own family, I avoided the cathedral for months. But eventually I returned. With the latest round of revelations about Mahony working to shield molester priests from criminal investigation, friends once again are asking why? Why do I call myself Catholic?

Like most Catholics, I reject a good deal of the dogma. The ban on women in the priesthood and views on gays that drove many of my friends and family members out of the church are just as offensive to me.

But over the years I have practiced the religion on and off, on my own terms. And I still see myself as one of the faithful. Or perhaps the loyal opposition is the right term.

It’s partly tradition. I grew up in a surprisingly insular Catholic world, given that the San Fernando Valley had no “Catholic” neighborhoods. In my mind, the Valley was made up of parishes — St. Mel’s, St. Cyril’s — not neighborhoods, each with its own character.

Families came with giant broods of nine, 10, even 13 kids. I was envious. They were so boisterous and jolly. With only four children, our family seemed meager by comparison.

I value my Catholic education. I did 12 years of Catholic school, barely. Because of my poor behavior, some years I would not be invited back and my mother would have to beg the principal to readmit me.

When I got to college, I found to my surprise that I had been fairly well educated, with the glaring exception of history class, where we spent an inordinate amount of time on the Counter-Reformation.

Like many Catholics, I love the pageantry of the church rites. The gilded censer of incense at Benediction. The altars to Mary we built in shoe boxes, lined with blue velvet.

My father grew up with Bishop Buddy of San Diego. When he came to visit our family in full medieval regalia, we were told to genuflect and kiss his ring. Then the bishop put on swim trunks and dove into our neighbor’s pool. The about-face was delirious.

We were taught moral values that have faded from modern life, but have a place today, like purity and penitence. Life was full of miracles, from the lame at Lourdes throwing away their crutches to the crown of thorns plant in our backyard. My father told me the shrub always bloomed in blood-red bursts right at Easter.

As Catholics, we were also taught to help the sick and poor by performing good works. I volunteered as a candy-striper at the hospital. We wrote the boys in Vietnam and knitted them bandages. I doubt my bandages, with gaping holes where I had dropped stitches and wildly vacillating widths, were of much use. But I loved making them.

Those hand-knit bandages also went to the leper colony on Molokai. This was but one of the gothic horrors we Catholics were wont to dwell on. St. Agatha, whose breasts were torn from her chest as part of her martyrdom. St. Sebastian, who was pierced by arrows. It didn’t occur to me until years later that outsiders would find the iconography distasteful; I found the stories thrilling.

My best friend and I were faithful correspondents, and when our soldier pen pals returned, they offered to take us to Disneyland. I was bitterly disappointed when the nuns forbade it.

Although they wouldn’t say why, it was pretty clear what the nuns feared. We were only in middle school, but the race was on to protect our virginity.

Keeping us virgins through high school was the primary goal of the nuns and many of our parents. We girls wanted to play along, really we did, at least in the beginning. But no surprise, the boys had other ideas. They too were supposed to be saving sex for marriage. But you would never have guessed it by their behavior.

I never figured out how the girls got one message and the boys got another. In the end, we picked the boys over the nuns.

During this period, the church began to lose many of the people I grew up with. Girls were getting pregnant and trying to hide it from school and family, with disastrous consequences. The nuns suspended at least one girl who reported that her friend was in trouble, in callous disregard for both students’ welfare.

The clergy were held to a different standard, as I saw for myself one Saturday. I was sent out to walk my brother home from a sleepover at a household headed by a single mother, a rarity in our world. Sprawled unshaven at the breakfast table, in an undershirt and boxers, was the assistant pastor. He appeared utterly unconcerned that I had seen him in a compromising position.

And really, his secret, if he even bothered keeping it secret, was safe with me. I never mentioned it to teachers or my parents. It wasn’t clear they would have cared. Priests had absolute dominion over us. Parents were happy for any help keeping us in line, with the back of the hand if necessary. Who would have believed me?

So although I had no idea priests were molesting children, I was well aware of sexual hypocrisy in the church. Thoroughly disgusted, I picked a college as far away from my upbringing as I could. UC Berkeley had 35,000 students, 100 times the enrollment at my all-girls school, and was the opposite of insular.

On campus, I rarely mentioned my Catholic background. I thought it made me seem even more hayseedy than I already felt in a new world of prep school students and sophisticates.

But around the edges, I never renounced Catholicism completely. A friend from high school and I sneaked off to the Newman Center, the Catholic campus ministry, for Sunday Mass.

I met Catholics and ex-Catholics, including former nuns and priests, who were carving out spiritual lives and fighting for social justice. When I got involved in journalism, I stuck to my roots, working for an anti-war publication for soldiers overseas.

With the revelations of the rape and abuse of children who reminded me of my brother, I saw an even scarier side to the monolithic authority the clergy wielded than I had imagined. But many of the victims and advocates who fought to rip the secrets from church files and place them before the public were Catholics. Catholics fighting to make the church and the world a better place. Just as I was raised to do.

So I’m a Catholic because I still hope to fulfill the ideals of my youth and do some good. And I’m not going to let anyone — not Mahony or anyone else in the clergy — define what that is for me. It’s between me and my conscience, just as I learned in Catholic school.

gale.holland@latimes.com