Wartime lies - Louis Begley [44]
The catechism class was held in a room behind the sacristy that was cold and smelled of sweat. Tania would come with me, stay in the church until the lesson was over, and then quickly lead me away. She didn’t want me to wait for her after class, she didn’t want me to get into conversations with the other children, and she didn’t want me to walk home alone. I knew that was what she would decide, and although I did not tell her, I was glad. I had become afraid of other boys. Also, now that food was very expensive and hard to find, my appetite had become voracious. I dreamed about eating and ate too much whenever I could. I had become fat, with a round little stomach. Polish children were usually thin; I had always been thin in the past. I thought the boys in the catechism class would pick on me because of my fat stomach.
Father P. gave us a book of questions and answers and prayers to study. He led us in prayer; Tania told me to watch carefully how the other boys prayed, when they knelt down, when they crossed themselves, and to do the same. It was all right to be a little slow, but I should not let it be noticed that I didn’t know the custom. Then Father P. spoke about the subject for the day and called on us by name to answer the questions in the book. He read them aloud slowly. I found it was best to give the answers exactly as written in the book. I also found, as I studied the book and listened to Father P., that my personal situation was desperate and despicable.
There was no salvation except through grace, and grace could be acquired only through baptism. It was true that Jesus took with Him to heaven, when He ascended, the virtuous ancients who died before He came, but that door to salvation was now closed. I asked Father P. whether savages living in our time away from the church could be saved if they were good, and he was very clear about it: the ministry of Jesus was complete. Virtue without grace could not suffice. He explained it by the example of the Jewish people. The patriarchs of the Old Testament were included in the harrowing of hell. But after the Lord’s birth, the Jews broke their covenant with God, crucified His Son, and remained rebellious to His teaching. It was evident that every Jew, even if he did not break the Commandments, was damned.
If that was true, my case was worse than that of a savage. A savage might live in ignorance of Jesus, but I was born and lived in a Catholic nation; it was my father’s and now my own decision to reject life in Christ. And it could not even be said that I was not breaking the Ten Commandments. Bearing false witness was forbidden; serious lying and hypocrisy were the same as bearing false witness; I was a liar and a hypocrite every day; I was mired in mortal sin on that account alone, even if all the other evil in me was disregarded. It was, of course, possible for me to be baptized. I now knew that this was a sacrament that could not ordinarily be repeated, so that it would be necessary to find a priest to whom we could reveal that I was a Jew and had not been baptized before. Baptism would wash away the Original Sin I was born with and, I thought, my other accumulated sins as well, but how could I go on lying and not fall again into mortal sin that would put me on the road to damnation? On the other hand, even if Father P. was wrong about