“A funny thing happened on my walk up Broadway”

During my encounter with a demon, described in my previous article, I was also reflecting on my belief in chastity, although I would not have used that word at first. Words such as “chastity” and “virtue” sounded smug to me. With apologies to the much-maligned Puritans of American history, I used the word “puritanical” to express my disapproval of moral dogmatism.

And yet . . . I believed in the ideals that animated those dogmas. Sexual intercourse was for marriage. Being unmarried, I practiced abstinence. Even so, I was ashamed of my oddity because, in the cultural climate of the time, my lack of sexual activity was considered pathological. I was lonely, wondering why it was so hard to find someone to marry. My mother had married at twenty-four, and I was now twenty-seven. I was also bewildered, still searching for a direction for my future.

Meanwhile, in August 1987, I took a job with a Catholic foster care agency, McMahon Services for Children. The crack epidemic was then creating a crisis in foster care, and I thought that I might do some good while I wrestled with my vocational and religious questions. The agency had a chapel with the Blessed Sacrament. When I had a few minutes during the workday, I sometimes visited the chapel. I did not believe in the Real Presence, but it was a quiet place to pray.

In my spare time, something inspired me to re-read the books I had loved growing up. There were the fantasy epics: C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series, J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, and Lloyd Alexander’s The Chronicles of Prydain. There was Margery Sharp’s silvery-white mouse heroine, “Miss Bianca,” a role model for me as a child because she combined elegance and kindliness.

Dodie Smith’s One Hundred and One Dalmatians also worked a gentle magic on me. The novel contains an entrancing account of the Dalmatian heroes’ stay at an ancient country house on their way to rescue their kidnapped pups. The house is built of “mellow red brick” and has diamond-paned windows that twinkle in the early winter sunshine. Although it seems deserted at first sight, it is inhabited by an elderly gentleman and his courtly, grey-muzzled black spaniel. The spaniel invites the Dalmatians in and surreptitiously arranges for them to dine on hot buttered toast and to sleep by the fireside. Their human host, aware that he is nearing death, mistakes his canine visitors for the ghosts of the Dalmatian dogs he had loved as a boy, and is delighted.¹ That episode never made it into the Disney movie, but it glows in my memory as the most luminous chapter in the book. I can hardly say why. Perhaps it is because the mansion is a hidden place of beauty and healing.

And then, there were the novels of Frances Hodgson Burnett. I identified with Sara Crewe, the heroine of A Little Princess, although I thought she was sometimes pretentious. When her father’s death shatters her privileged life and reduces her to ragged servitude, Sara retains her dignity by imagining herself a princess. She reminded me that even the name my parents gave me means “princess.”

I was even more moved when I re-read The Secret Garden with its theme of neglected and emotionally stunted children finding healing in a locked and neglected garden. When the heroine, Mary, finds the hidden door and cautiously enters, she sees only a “hazy tangle” of brown and gray branches. She fears the garden is dead, but begins to tend it, anyway. As winter turns to spring, the enclosure bursts into brilliant flower. The roses are the loveliest of the blooms, coming alive “day by day, hour by hour,” cascading over tree limbs and walls, and filling the air with their fragrance.² As I re-read the tales I once had almost memorized, I wondered, “How could I have forgotten how beautiful these books were? I used to believe in their visions of innocence and goodness. How did I lose myself?”

Even as I rediscovered The Secret Garden, some of my daily devotional reading led me to explore, for the first time, the biblical love poetry of The Song of Songs. Reading from the beginning, I came to this passage:

A garden locked is my sister, my bride,
a garden locked, a fountain sealed. (Song 4:12)

I shut my Bible. Perched on the edge of my low bed in my tiny bedroom, I exclaimed, “I believe in chastity! I don’t care if I’m the only person in the whole world who still believes in it!” It seemed to me that I was. Still, I repeated, “I believe in chastity!”

Around this same time, I contacted the ministry of Fr. Francis MacNutt, the Episcopalian priest whose healing prayer ministry had inspired me. I was put in touch with a representative who lived near me and had one meeting with her. I described to her my feelings of inadequacy over sexuality. She responded, “I’ve been listening to you and praying while I was listening. There’s nothing wrong with you sexually. Your only problem is that you’ve been taken in by the false values of a decadent society.”

I mulled over the counselor’s words afterward. How could she know there was nothing wrong with me? And was this a decadent society? It seemed a strange and harsh judgment. This was the modern United States, not the Roman Empire. “And yet,” I mused, “I keep reading in the news media that rates of violent crime are on the increase. Murder, rape, and burglary.³ And we’re obsessed, completely obsessed, with sex, with all kinds of sex acts. And our music is loud, grating, coarse. Our dance is graceless and formless. No steps, no design, just throwing your body around any which way. And our language is crude. Obscenities fill the air like a bad smell. I don’t think I used to hear the “f” word flung about so casually, but I do now. Even in my own educated family, we now use the s— word, and I don’t remember anyone using that word when I was growing up. So . . . we have become uglier. Are we in fact a decadent society?”

I paused before I answered myself.

“Yes, I think we are. And that changes everything. Instead of believing that something is wrong with me because I don’t fit in, I need to recognize that something is wrong with the society I’m living in. I shouldn’t try to fit in. I should try to change the false values that are warping my society.”

With this new mindset, I pondered contraception. I was pro-life, as I had been since I was a teenager, and I believed that life began at conception. That ruled out surgical and chemical abortions. It also ruled out the IUD, which allowed conception but caused the ejection of the newly formed embryo. I knew my parents had used an IUD. My mother had become pregnant anyway, but her irritated womb had expelled the infant together with the device. So, I had lost a sibling to this device. I also had to rule out the pill, which I had read often functioned as an early abortifacient.

But what about the barrier methods? Condoms? Diaphragms? They did prevent fertilization when used correctly. So, they were all right, weren’t they? Still, there was something grotesque about them. You were using rubbery contraptions to prevent your body from doing what it was designed to do. You were working against your own body, as if your body were your enemy. It occurred to me that these methods resembled the things I had done with food when I had an eating disorder. I had found ways to eat and not eat at the same time, and the source of my shame was that I knew these ways were perverse.

I was walking up Broadway as I turned these thoughts over in my mind. My conclusion that the barrier methods were also unsavory resounded through my head and brought me to a sudden stop. Anyone walking behind me at the time would have collided with me.

“I don’t believe in any method of artificial birth control!!”

I commenced an agitated argument with myself.

“What? Are you crazy? How can you not believe in birth control?”

“I can’t help it. I can’t think of any form of birth control I believe in!”

“What do you mean, you don’t believe in any form of birth control? What about overpopulation?”

“I don’t know the answer to that, I just know that artificial birth control can’t be the answer!”

“Men want sex. What man is going to accept your refusal to use birth control?”

“I don’t know. I can’t do something wrong, that’s all!”

Here, I shook myself by the shoulders. “Sara, you’ve always wanted to marry. If you won’t accept birth control, you may never find anyone to marry. Are you willing to accept that consequence?”

I considered for a moment, then answered myself.

“Yes.”

With that, I committed myself, wondering what the consequences would be. I was aware of natural means of family planning, such as the “rhythm method,” but from what I had heard, they were highly unreliable.⁴ I was dating someone by this time, a fellow Episcopalian, and I reluctantly told him of my stance. I was reassured when he did not immediately break up with me, although he found my position puzzling. Too, it occurred to me that the Catholic Church had been teaching all along that artificial birth control was wrong.

“That’s nice,” I thought. “The Catholic Church agrees with me!”

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