"Catholic"- GerIta

"Catholic"

*I realize that the Catholic and Protestant denominations are hardly accurately portrayed in regards to homosexuality and themselves and their interpretations, and it more so varies by church and priests/pastors; it is just for the sake of the story, I am not trying to offend anyone, and the bottom line is that this POV is a real one (and the story idea mattered to me).

It wasn't as though ours were totally separate religions; I worshipped the same God as Feliciano. While he would be attending his morning Mass, I would be sitting in a pew in a Protestant church just the same as him. A few times, I had even allowed him to bring me with him to one of his beloved cathedrals, and I had sat right next to him through the sermon, and in turn, he had been happy to accompany me to my different services, though I knew that he did prefer his own priests, regardless that he would never say such a thing aloud. It just made me smile to think how kind he was to me, always wanting to spare my feelings, even when he knew it wouldn’t really hurt me.

So it wasn't that I worshipped some pagan deity and had totally separate morals from Italy, we were both Christian.

It was just that, while occasionally I might have a minister declare that it, "Doesn’t matter if you’re black or white, rich or poor, male or female, gay or straight, immigrant or German - God loves you, and He wants you just the same, and He compels you to share this love with others around you!", I could be sitting in Mass with Italy and instead hear the same damnable, poorly-Latinized lines of Leviticus, listen to the same sins of man in the case studies of Sodom and Gomorrah, and have Paul yet again misinterpreted for me in Romans and Corinthians. And I would sit and wonder where the stories in Matthew and Luke went, what happened to Ruth and Naomi, David and Jonathan, and above all, where did the Christ who walked with prostitutes and lepers, who befriended and lifted the damned, who saw the good in every man or woman before Him, who loved all those with and against Him - where had He gone? And how could He let me sit here, with His priests saying these things before me, and just leave it at that?

No, it wasn't that we had two completely different religions, but sometimes, watching him in one of his services, gazing with rapt attention at his priest and seeing him analyze every word and add it into his sense of right and wrong, divine and sinful, I couldn’t help but feel as though perhaps we did.

Because how could I believe my God loved me, despite whoever I loved on this earth, when it appeared as though Feliciano's God - the one his priests showed me with their chosen passages and easy interpretations, never mind that it could be the difference between Divine acceptance and rejection, hatred, abomination - couldn’t stand the thought of me, though supposedly He had made me perfect?

"Feliciano?" I whispered, coming out of Mass with the happy Italian beside me.

"Ve~ yes, Luddy?"

And my heart melted all over again at the sight of him, his head tilted in curiosity, his smile still in place at the joy of my accompaniment today. And I almost couldn’t do it at the sight of the man before me - so sweet and innocent, so uncorrupted and pure, so oblivious to the torment I faced every day just knowing him, hiding how I felt for him -  yet it weighed so heavily on my mind, the words came out before I even had time to convince them otherwise.

"Am I going to go to hell?" My voice was so quiet and low, and I wouldn’t meet his gaze, that it almost didn’t even matter what I said, my behavior alone would have been enough to agitate Feliciano. But coupled with my words, I forced myself to look at his face, to see his brow creasing in worry and his smile slipping in concern, and I knew even before he frantically reassured me with a wild "No, no! why would Luddy even think that, of course not!!" that I couldn’t tell him the truth - it could ruin us, and I was well-aware I could not survive with Feliciano hating me as some disgusting creature with lustful intentions for him. No, better to lie, better to keep things hidden, shoved into the darkest corner of my mind, better to torture myself but not destroy us. Better to feel the sharp pain of always being with him, but knowing he could never be mine; no matter what ever happened between us, Feliciano could never love me back, not as I loved him, not as I would always love him, suffering in perfect silence.

So instead of telling him it was because I was gay, and I couldn’t reconcile that between myself and our God - who seemed more and more to be split, two very separate Heavenly Rulers based upon Feliciano and I's beliefs which needed to be held by Him - I muttered something about having done terrible things in the past, and Feliciano put on the expression of empathy and compassion and pained understanding he always wore when I talked about the War or the Holocaust or my former boss.

And as he wrapped his arms around me and I returned the hug, burying my face in his short curly brown hair, I couldn’t help but to think that this was so wrong - I was so wrong - and the man holding me now would surely run as fast as he could if he knew the truth about me, retreating quickly from the abomination before him so as to be saved from the flames of hell himself before I could snare him in my grasp.

No, we had the same religion, but the disparities between them could be so crippling, so shameful, so deadly….