When incognito is impossible

A few weeks ago I joined a writers’ group. I thought this would be helpful not only for my writing, but for meeting new people in Edinburgh. As I work from home, my social circle is restricted mostly to neighbours and church friends. It is time to get fresh perspectives.

The writers’ group meets once a week at a bookshop near Edinburgh Castle. When I went to the first meeting, I noticed a few things. First, almost all the writers were men. Second, nobody seemed to have published anything. Third, the writing was very interesting. I was intrigued.

After listening silently through the first half, I felt confident enough to make suggestions. One man had written a promising story, but a few details seemed incredible. For example, a priest character, from a poor rural area, had a silver hip flask.

I suggested that the priest would not have had a silver hip flask, as he was unlikely to be making much money.

“I don’t know,” said another man. “Don’t we associate priests with high living? Look at Friar Tuck.”

Friar Tuck?

“Do you know how much a Catholic priest makes?” I asked him. He was silent.

I had joined this group incognito because I didn’t want to be Googled and identified as a Catholic. Catholics in the arts risk spending a lot of time arguing or being drawn into deeply personal conversations about faith. I wanted just to talk about writing. 

At the second meeting, one writer mentioned gleefully to another that he had sent his new story to Cardinal O’Brien, the archbishop of Edinburgh, and received a reply. The second writer, the Friar Tuck man, made faces at the thought of the cardinal. I thought that odd, but I just listened to the other stories, gave advice, read my own story and enjoyed the advice I received in return. Then the cardinal’s correspondent read his story, an attack on some local Catholic nuns he resents because they run a soup kitchen on his street, “ruining the property values.” It featured a stupid nun, a cartoon cardinal and the return of Mother Teresa.

I had to leave before the writer finished his story and read the cardinal’s critique. However, I wondered if there had been a public outcry over mismanagement by these nuns. I looked online and found only the writer’s story, the letter from the cardinal, which the writer had posted, and the writer’s impassioned reply.

My heart plummeted. I began to wonder if I shouldn’t drop out of my writers’ group. Although I didn’t want to get dragged into discussions about Catholicism,  I didn’t want to sit silently before anti-Catholic remarks, either. I felt terribly disappointed.

But I went to my third meeting anyway. It began with a poem. The poem included the words “mass genocide.” We fellow writers puzzled out the meaning of the poem. The Friar Tuck man suggested that “mass genocide” referred to genocides carried out by Catholics (Mass, genocide), like during the Inquisition or by Catholics’ “complicity with Mussolini.”

The poet said, no, that was not what he meant, and I successfully fought the impulse to say how offensive, how ridiculous, how utterly gratuitous I found the suggestion. 

Then the cardinal’s correspondent read his next story, a science-fiction fantasy, and it included a cartoon cardinal obviously based on the cardinal himself. This character wore gold and scarlet robes and a pointed hat. He boasted that after his campaigns in Scotland he had been put in charge of the Inquisition.
Two references to the Inquisition in half an hour. My heart began to race.  My eye sought out the door to the washroom, for I thought I might actually be sick. I believe in freedom of speech. And if there’s anywhere where someone should be able to write and present whatever he likes, it’s a writers’ group. On the other hand, I had never in my life been silent when people made ignorant remarks about Catholics. My conscience was divided against itself.

It could be an interesting, if painful, experiment, I thought. For once I could just keep my mouth shut. People in all kinds of minority groups must go through life not reacting to every offensive comment. Maybe I could do it, too. Maybe sometimes the bravest thing is not to speak out, if you are that kind, but to be silent.

But a funny thing happened later that night. I woke up at 2 a.m. swallowing compulsively. It was as if my brain thought there was something stuck in my throat. And after a very bad night and while nursing a very sore throat, I was sure I knew what it was. It was the words I should have said: “Writers are supposed to capture truth. And as a Catholic, I can tell you that you haven’t captured the truth about Catholics.”
(Cummings McLean is a Canadian writer and author of  Seraphic Singles.)