The common writer
Memories of the Mary Month of May

By Diane Cameron

I grew up in a Protestant family. My brothers and I went to Sunday school, got confirmed, and later married in the same Methodist Church on Pittsburgh’s Northside. Overall, it was a good experience. But I always envied Catholic girls, especially in May.

Our working class neighborhood was a mixture of Protestant and Catholic families. Kids were divided by schools: Spring Hill Public or Saint Ambrose Catholic. But it was a close neighborhood and we all played together after school. We were in and out of each others houses often, and one mother could stand in for another when it came to discipline or first aid. The differences were few but to me, the Catholic girls seemed to have something special.

I knew it wasn’t all fun to be Catholic. I felt sorry for my Catholic friends who couldn’t be in Girl Scouts because scouts met in the Lutheran Church and Protestant churches were off limits to Catholics in those days. I also felt bad for them on hot days when they couldn’t wear sleeveless blouses to school. But I did notice that my Catholic playmates had more stuff. Not toys or clothes but Catholicism seemed to provide important accouterment for girls.

In second grade my real feelings of envy emerged. My Catholic friends were having their First Holy Communion. The Protestant church had nothing like it. My friends got to wear poofy white dresses and headbands with flowers and little veils. They were given medals with pictures of saints on them and, most intriguing, they got scapulars.

A scapular consists of two small patches of cloth with holy pictures on them, connected by a long loop of string. I saw friend’s scapulars when we went swimming and they told me that it protected them from the devil and all manner of evil if you were wearing a scapular. But only Catholic girls wore them tucked inside their sleeveless cotton undershirts, and it was a sin, they told me, to take it off. The idea of a passionate commitment to something, even a string with holy pictures, was very appealing.

As we grew Catholicism offered my friends other comforts. As a kid I would have liked a patron saint or a guardian angel, but the Methodist church didn’t offer those. We were counseled in a polite and ecumenically respectful way, that all that stuff was Catholic and kind of magical.

Now this was at the same age that I was fascinated with writing in code, creating invisible ink, becoming a blood sister, playing with the Ouija board and making up secret societies. I was made myth and magic out of anything I could get my hands and mind around.

I think the best thing, though, that Catholic girls got was Mary. She was presented as motherhood and obedience and sweetness, but Catholic girls got a very clear message that there was a woman in heaven, that somebody understood the female side of things.

For Protestant girls, Mary shows up once a year-- at Christmas --to give birth. She might get mentioned on Good Friday—but only in the background. No role model, no intercessor, no friend.

My Catholic pals had statues of Mary. Some had plastic glow-in-the-dark Mary statues, and the older girls had painted plaster Marys, with blue robes and big doe eyes like my Barbie. And Mary was always standing on a snake. I certainly did not understand the symbolism, but it was clear to me at ten that this 12 inch woman had some power you could not buy for Barbie.

Best of all, my friends had May altars. A May altar was basically a table or dresser with an old lace tablecloth thrown over it. They put their Mary statues on it and flowers and candles that they were allowed to light when they said their prayers.

It still strikes me how feminine those altars were. The Catholic girls had total permission to identify with the feminine in spiritual matters. But no one gave little Protestant girls such romantic, mysterious things to do or own.

This carried over into all of a Catholic girl’s life. Mary got prayers, devotions, pilgrimages and even architectural consideration: there is a Marian shrine in every Catholic church; Talk about having a room of one’s own. Mary’s presence meant that the Catholic Church included at least one woman at a high level. In her assumption into heaven, Mary had broken Christianity’s glass ceiling.
We pretty much get the shape of our beliefs early on, and what Catholic girls got was a She and a Her, someone like them, to pray to. And they got all those accessories: medals, scapulars, rosaries, ruffled altar skirts and little white prayer books. Protestant girls got black leatherette New Testaments, Jesus stories, but nothing that said, "We’re glad you’re a girl."
Of course, later, Catholic girls ran into, the birth control issue and the wall that said, "You can’t be a priest. But what I saw my Catholic friends get was faith in their girlhood and an image of feminine power. It’s not a bad way to start out.