Breaking the shackles of religious bondage

My family and I were deeply, fervently Catholic.

Catholic kindergarten and grade school: Notre Dame, New Hyde Park, New York; St. Molloy Catholic Summer Camp, New York; St. Mary’s High School, Manhasset, New York; St. John’s University, New York City.

We prayed the rosary on our knees every night along with my Italian, immigrant grandmother who spoke no English. It was her votive candles around her altar of religious statues on the dresser that set the house on fire one night.

For the first two decades of my life, I sincerely tried to live the teachings of my faith, the teachings I myself taught to children for years in Sodality classes.

When I learned as an adult that my father, then deceased for many years, was my mother’s second husband; that their marriage was not recognized by the Catholic Church; that Father Minstretta’s frequent visits to our home had been attempts to convince my parents to live as brother and sister; that I was an illegitimate child in the eyes of the Church that I was taught I could not exist without, I felt angry and betrayed, and my world imploded.

In a recent New York Times editorial, Naka Nathaniel, a former editor at The Times, claims, “I wouldn’t exist without Catholicism.” I once felt that same way as well.

He relates an incident in which he stood up during mass and loudly decried the continuing child abuse and concealment within the Catholic Church.

“Standing in front of the congregation, I pointed to my son and asked how could I ever let him make his first Communion.” The priest, “looked at me and said the most honest thing I’ve ever heard in a church: ‘You and I have no influence.’”

“I’m angry. I feel betrayed,” and Mr. Nathaniel finally concludes, “It is wrong to support the church.”

The man fervently seeks answers and desperately seeks to protect his son from the horrors of an institution that for decades has protected and hidden known child abusers. I see here a sad contradiction that strikes me to my core, to my own childhood, to the pain from the absence of a father who might have protected me, just as this man struggles to keep his son from harm.

I see myself in the man’s son who hears his father say, “I would not exist without Catholicism.” A child raised, as I was, to believe there is no existence, no salvation, no redemption, nothing, without the Church.

And I mourn for the child who may struggle for the rest of his life with the inheritance of his father’s limited vision. A father — brave, intelligent, caring, protective, loving, questioning his most central beliefs — but somehow unable, or unwilling, or afraid to relinquish dependence on a Church that demands obedient dependence.

Unlike Mr. Nathaniel, I am no longer angry. I no longer feel betrayed. Still, I am deeply, fervently religious. I hold to the hope that more people will recognize that a church can offer support to help find a life of goodness, or that it is quite possible to find that life on one’s own.

Most importantly, we give the greatest gift to our children when we empower them to break any shackles of religious bondage, nurture responsibility, and foster their wings of independence.

Whether priest or parent, a father is obliged to be all the things Mr. Nathaniel is, or I hope, one day may become.

Private about his own religious path, Lew Alessio was ordained a priest in The Church of Life out of Long Beach, California, in 1991. He lives in Greene with his husband, Jim Shaffer.