A Faith No More

When I arrived back in the States after attending my aunt's funeral, I remember how decisive my thinking became, especially after a ten-hour plane trip across the Atlantic.  It was just like I remembered in the fifth grade when I played "do or die" on the basketball court, except now as an adult I had played Around-The-World...for real.

All the questions I had ever asked myself about writing and all my previous failures as a writer were washed away in my mind with a clean slate once I was on US soil again excited to get lost in the drama of writing this story about Catholic priests and turning it into this "fun" mystery about pedophiles.  There wasn't anything to stop me now, except for St. Francis telling me that I was never officially baptized and that my RCIA classes would have to add that something extra, in"sin"uating that I could never be a "real" Catholic unless they baptized me. 

Along my journey of writing about the priests and children, I would entitle my notes A Faith No More. This would also apply to me knowing that I would eventually have to come face-to-face with the fact that to write a story about pedophilic priests would be writing against what the church stood for, which to me seemed to be about money and power, two things that I wouldn't normally dare write about as a broke introverted writer. 

In fact, looking back, I wouldn't make this journey again just for the very fact that I grew tired justifying that my efforts were somehow the right thing to do.  Even now, I'm not sure I could say out loud that my eight years of writing and researching The PriVILEged were the "right" thing to do, but I can offer with confidence that I felt called to illuminate to the world the fact that just because Catholicism has the most rules doesn't mean they're better than everyone else.

Along the way it felt that I was playing "do or die" with the mafia standing behind me as I wrote the story.  And before I wrote each night I said to myself, "I can DO this," and every night when I was finished writing, I said, "I could DIE for this." Still, I felt the story needed to be told even if this was the only story I ever wrote before I met up with the Sopranos.