The Monsignor

The Monsignor is the master of the church. What he says, goes. He is a naturally large faced man, but his facial bone structure is not the visual problem. Because encasing his very large cranium is a perfectly round, spherical ring, of fat. His face is almost a perfect circle. His eyes are beady. When he smiles, you can see where his face used to end and where the fat begins. It is disconcerting.

I think I make him uncomfortable. I shake his hand firmly—a sign of respect, my uncle taught me. The Monsignors hand shake is very limp. And he is uncomfortable with eye contact. I make it a habit to look people in the eyes when I talk to them. I find it helps me listen. It helps me read the emotion behind their words. Most people really like it.

The Monsignor shies away from eye contact. His uneasiness isn’t helped by the fact that I focus only on his eyes. I can’t bare to look at the fat ring while he’s talking. I can’t look at his mouth or his nose. He looks like he is talking with his face squished into the hole of a giant donut. I seriously might laugh in his face.

So I stare in his eyes or I look around the room. I ask a lot of questions to keep him talking—distract him from my odd behavior. He seems to be very uncomfortable with questions. And I always ask a lot of questions of everyone. I like understanding things. So I ask for clarification when the Monsignor speaks.

And I think I’ve broken an unspoken rule. I think I’m about to receive a stern talking to. I don’t think I’m supposed to engage with the Monsignor on that level. I shouldn’t talk to him as an equal. I shouldn’t shake his hand and be assertive in a conversation. I should stand in humble awe of his close-to-God-ness, or something.

At least that was the sense I got last Friday. I was working alone. My supervisor took the day off. I ran into the Monsignor in the rectory kitchen. I was wiping down the walls with Windex and a paper towel—one of my weekly duties. He had heard that an old friend of mine had recently died.

He moved to start offering condolences and preaching, but I cut him off. I interjected with some vague Buddhist sentiment like: well even the stars are born, live, and die. It’s the order of things.

I quickly switched topics to the earthquake in Haiti, but the conversation was stilted, and the Monsignor quickly retreated to the next room. I was in mid sentence as he walked out. He closed the door behind him. [Note: This particular door has never been closed since I’ve worked in the rectory.]

I’ve been puzzling over this encounter all weekend. Especially since the two old ladies in the main office were bitter cold to me for the rest of Friday. Tomorrow I face my supervisor after the long weekend. I fully expect a reprimand.

I’m guessing the Monsignor was deeply offended by my ability to conceptualize my own loss, and appropriately grieve for it, without the word of mouth recitations of a two thousand year old book—a collection of platitudes really, recited by a man I have only known for three weeks. I must be evil, or something.

Stay tuned…

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Tags: Atheism, Buddhism, Catholic Church, Literature, Philosophy, Writer, Writing

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