“Don’t freak out, but there is a priest on board.” The text came from the back of a plane back en route to Washington, D.C., for the annual Federalist Society Conference, where I planned to spend the next forty-eight hours discussing formal reasoning and rational principles of law with fellow law students and attorneys. Yet, there I was, wondering if there was bad juju on the tarmac.
While most practicing Catholics would be comforted by a priest passing them on the gangway, assured that even if the doors fly off, they’ll still get last rites, I dread the possibility. I come by my fear naturally: my paternal grandmother, the original A. T. Skehan, was a stubborn Irish woman who once refused to fly home to Boston after she spotted a Roman collar at the gate. While my grandfather pleaded with her by phone, she insisted that she had attended nine first Friday Masses in a row, and was therefore assured that she would die in the presence of a priest. So, naturally, outside of her regular reception of the sacraments, she avoided priests altogether.
As I sat on the plane, rubbing my miraculous medal—which I wear as a ring on my middle finger, not around my neck, arguably negating its salvific merits—I recalled the passage from The Screwtape Letters where Wormwood encourages his victim to congratulate himself on his superiority to his secular friends. I scoff at my friends who own crystals and admonish them for opening themselves up to demonic forces. But I cannot give a speech without listening to “Heart of Glass” by Blondie, the good luck song that ensured my dad always would score a hat trick during Sunday night hockey games. And I wear my arms out using a hand-me-down hand mixer when baking, convinced that purchasing myself a KitchenAid instead of registering for it someday will jinx my shot at marriage. But so many of my superstitions aren’t really superstitions, right? Aren’t they prayers? During every exam, including the L.S.A.T., I say three Hail Marys and a Memorare after the timer starts, convinced that if I sacrifice those forty-five seconds, the Blessed Mother will return the favor. I have never made a major life decision without asking Saint Thérèse to send me a rose ratifying my choice (though, to be fair, I’m only twenty-seven and haven’t made that many).
When does a prayer become a superstition? The same nervous attitude that feeds my superstition feeds my scrupulosity about this question. Cradle Catholics such as myself often lightly mock our more zealous convert friends, whose love for Latin and veiling and conciliar history we unfairly deride as Levitical (though I have adopted many of these affects myself—the effect, I suppose, of dating too many converts). But even they join the Protestants in criticizing my rituals.
I know, intellectually, that my salvation isn’t controlled by a brown piece of cloth around my neck. But I won’t take it off. I don’t really have the answer to why I hold fast to this practice. In any case, I didn’t get off the plane. And, thankfully, Notre Dame has confession on Monday morning.
