When Jonathan Roumie came out and spoke at the National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis, nobody could miss his t-shirt. Though I’m certain it impacted the 50,000 people in the stadium, it struck me personally as a catechist and a horror novelist. That night, from my seat way up in the nosebleed section of Lucas Oil Stadium, I was moved to reconcile my seemingly opposing identities and glorify God with my work.
For years, I felt I’d been living a double life: soft-spoken English and religion teacher by day, responsible, in part, for the formation of eighth-grade students as they made their confirmation. But by night, by weekend, and by summer vacation, I was (and still am) an American Gothic horror writer.
I grew up faithful in a Protestant non-denominational church, and I dropped out of RCIA twice before finally committing and becoming confirmed in the Catholic Church myself. A big part of my hesitation was the role that women played (or did not play) in the Church. Mary Magdalene was the one to bring the news of the Resurrection to the apostles, and yet when I pointed out the lack of women in leadership positions in the Church and asked about it, my questions were often dismissed and redirected. They venerated Jesus’ mother, after all. But it seemed to me at the time that they did all they could to make the Mother of God small, silent and submissive — all qualities our loving God, in all his wisdom, chose to withhold from me.
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I came by this hesitation in an honest way, from a formative experience I’d had in my Protestant church: My youth minister, a woman, was asked to step down because my brothers had turned 13, and women were not permitted to have any authority over men (according to a Protestant understanding of 1 Timothy 2:12). The man who replaced her had an affair with a 15-year-old girl in the youth group a year later. I felt it was understandable, therefore, to be suspicious of a church who would happily set flowers at the feet of a statue of a woman but show reluctance at the notion of listening to a living one.
Finally, when I came crawling back for a third and final time, my catechist calmly and thoroughly answered all of my questions and helped prepare a way for me to confidently step into the Church. This catechist was, of course, a woman, and because she addressed my concerns head on, I converted.
Conflicting perspectives
But at this point, I perceived a complication. Though I knew I was welcomed by Jesus Christ in his Church, I still felt that I didn’t look the part. I had two sci-fi novels published at this point, with hopes of writing more. I still felt a pull toward exploring the darker, unknown aspects of humanity through writing. I was still most attracted to the more disquieting elements of Catholicism: the relics, the mystics, the guerrilla social justice tactics. I never spoke of these things with my Catholic friends, but I read and wrote about them extensively.
For the sake of my new Church family, I began to act as I felt a Catholic woman “should.” I put on floral print dresses and made casseroles for new mothers. I bought cute saint dolls for my children and played with them. I wrote Bible verses on chalkboards and drew pretty borders around the words. Eventually, I went back to work as a teacher, this time in a Catholic school, and was asked to teach religion as well as English.
In the classroom, my two subjects had two different associations with it: Parents of my students seemed to like that I was a published novelist when it came to teaching their children about language mechanics and plot lines of famous literature, but they seemed uncomfortable and suspicious of me and my books when it came to religion. In the middle of my second year of teaching at a Catholic school, my first horror novel for middle grade readers was published. The book is about a girl having a spooky adventure in Rome, but it’s also about the human dignity that children are owed. One of my close friends and colleagues read it and was shocked that it was, in her words, “actually scary.” She told me that she had to remind herself that it would all be well at the end of the book because she knew I wore a veil at Mass. Her commentary gave voice to the distance I felt the community was holding me at: Could a woman who sought to scare children in her writing really be trusted with their formation?
The question scared me as well. Despite being hired by my principal and entrusted by our bishop to provide their religious education, I couldn’t shake the notion that my personal interests and secondary career disqualified me. Veiled or not, I could not dispel my fascination with the idea that all of our sins, left unexamined and ignored, never go away on their own, as we wish they would. They are not biodegradable; they fester, grow, and become monsters. This reality is at the heart of American Gothic, a genre that takes the unreconciled sins of our country — racism, sexism and economic exploitation, among others — and turns them into tangible horrors.
Over several years, I wrote my first novel for adults in this genre and was lucky enough to receive a book deal. But while I held this internal tension in my faith life, I let the contract sit in my inbox. I waited. I prayed. I couldn’t help but think it would be different if I were a man.
Feeling revived
At the Eucharistic congress, I went to confession and confessed a sin that’s presented itself as a pattern for me since my conversion: anger with the Church. I felt that women are still second-tier and held to impossible standards, and I didn’t feel listened to, valued or free to be myself. Instead of doing anything about these feelings, I told the priest, I held tight to the anger. For my penance, the priest suggested I meditate with Joan of Arc, a woman who defied traditional gender expectations and trusted in God enough to lead the French army. He wanted me to ask for her friendship and her prayers that I may grow in valor.
His advice was everything. I prayed with her and felt a surge of courage, though I still didn’t know what exactly to do with it. Without thinking, more heroic names and stories surfaced in my consciousness: Mary Magdalene. Dorothy Day. Flannery O’Connor, who was herself a Southern Gothic writer. For the first time in years, I laughed at myself with these women. What was I going on about, anyway? Why had I believed these lies that the identity God had given me was not enough?
On Saturday night at the Eucharistic congress, one of the speakers I was most excited to see came onto the stage: Jonathan Roumie, famous for his tender and vivid portrayal of Jesus in “The Chosen.” He was wearing an emboldening t-shirt. There, stamped in black and white across the heart of an image of Jesus, were the razor-sharp words with which O’Connor herself expressed Christ’s real presence in the Eucharist: “If it’s a symbol, to hell with it.”
No matter how weird our callings may seem to us, fearing to step into them fully is a denial of Jesus. We are meant to live out our witness by serving as whatever part of the Body of Christ that we are. Though I can see now that it’s a strange combination, my unique roles of teacher and writer are part of the work that will help to build the kingdom of God. I don’t have to arrive early at Mass with a ton of young children in tow, looking as if I’ve just stepped out of a salon, to be worthy of God’s grace. No woman does. We are only asked to be bold when filled with the Spirit and to embrace our missions with courage and joy.
As for me, the revival worked: I do indeed feel revived. I consumed the living bread again this morning at daily Mass, and now I’m back at my keyboard, ready, through God’s grace, to scare people.
