It struck me how un-Catholic the school could be at times. During my biology class, the teacher decided to blurt out her own personal views on abortion which ran counter to what the Church taught about the sanctity of life. The odd thing was, abortion had nothing to do with the day's lesson. If one of Bishop Fenwick's goals was to impart Catholic values, it was clear not all of its teachers were on board.
During my Catholic Morality class of all places I got teased for defending the Church's stance against premarital sex. Some of the bullies who made fun of me that day were so good at navigating the different roles for students, they came out smelling like roses. At times they appeared to be nothing more than enthusiastic jocks brimming with school spirit. Some were even Eucharistic ministers during our school Masses. What faculty member would doubt such squeaky-clean outward appearances but I saw the side of them that was anything but wholesome. As these bullies handed out Holy Communion, I sometimes wondered what was going on in their minds.
A nun with a strict reputation named Sr. Nancy helped run the library but I found her to be very fair and reasonable with her students. For one assignment, we had a few weeks to memorize a particular library cataloging system. Almost all my fellow classmates blew this off and I was one of only two students to pass the exam. As a reward, we were exempt from the extra work she handed out to the class that day. A few of the students who had failed actually gave me a hard time for passing the test because in their eyes it was cooler to flunk the exam. Sometimes academic success carried a stigma especially if you were male and somewhat nerdy. I wasn’t a great student but bullies used just about anything they could to cut me down.
Friendships were often hard to nurture at Bishop Fenwick simply because the student body hailed from many different communities all along the Northshore with one classmate residing as far away as East Boston. Since we were so spread out geographically, I never got together with many of the friends and acquaintances I wanted to know better. When you don't have a driver's license, even relatively short distances seem like a world away.
Like some of my classmates, I came from a middle class background and my parents worked very hard to give me a Catholic school education. It was a bit of a culture shock to encounter students who were very well-off and incapable of relating to certain economic struggles. I was flabbergasted to learn one student had been given a brand new Saab not by her parents but by her aunt. The most my relatives ever gave me was 20 dollars in a birthday card…when we were lucky! Another student's parents owned a beachfront summer house in Maine. “Toto…we're not in Kansas anymore.”
I longed for a girlfriend but many of the females at Bishop Fenwick tended to fall into two categories. Those with strong Catholic values were so prudish, they acted like nuns in training. Girls who rebelled against the Church's teachings seemed too sexual. Neither group appealed to me romantically.
A motto I heard over and over again at Bishop Fenwick during orientation was, “Get involved.” This can be a very difficult thing when you start to feel like an outcast. All the hope and optimism I had during my freshman year was beginning to slip away. Many other factors would place me on the path to a black sheep, though.
See my previous comment brother.
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