✥ “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.
— A. T. Skehan
✥ We would like to remind all of our readers that seminarians and those living in vowed religious poverty are eligible to receive complimentary subscriptions. If you or someone you know falls into one of these two categories and would like to receive the magazine, please let us know at subscriptions@thelampmagazine.com. Many thanks to those of you who subscribe at the more expensive “Solidarity” rate for making it possible for us to offer gratis subscriptions. When you sign up for the extra sixty dollars, you are quite literally buying a second subscription for a worthy person who cannot afford one.
✥ Finally, we would like to thank all those who participated in THE LAMP’s Christmas ghost story competition. This year’s winner, Cajetan Skowronski, has appeared in the magazine before—as an interviewee in Dan Hitchens’s report from the silent disco at Canterbury Cathedral (Easter 2024). (Dr. Skowronski was protesting the “Rave in the Nave,” not dancing at it.) At nearly ten thousand words, his story, “The Obelisks of Mortimer Lodge,” is the longest winner of our contest yet. When we introduced the ghost story contest four years ago, we said that we hoped to make it an annual affair: we are happy there has been such consistent enthusiasm for it. Visit thelampmagazine.com throughout the Christmas season to read the runners-up.
