Shunned by the Catholics

admin — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 09:33:19 +0000

Had a bit of a strange dream the other night. The theme is a common one, namely dreaming that I am living again in a place I used to live. Most often this is my childhood home, but this time instead I decided to move back to Newman House on Queen’s campus. I had the usual confusion, trying to figure out how exactly I’m going to commute between Ontario and BC, and did I stop renting the place in Vancouver? And am I still a UBC student, or did I switch to Queen’s?

Anyway the dream itself wasn’t really that fascinating, but it got me thinking about good old Newman House. I ended up in this place during my 4th year, because I got kicked out of my awesome pad from 2nd and 3rd year, and had to find some place on short notice. A Catholic friend of mine pointed out that Newman House rented a few rooms out, and one was empty. The thing about Newman House is it’s very, very Catholic. Everybody else who lived there was Catholic, the people who would come and hang out and do bible readings were, well, Catholic as well. The priest, too. Me, not so much. So that was an interesting year of living as an outsider with a group of people who were really doing their very best to be friendly to me.

I think the best example of my outsider status involves the Christmas party, where we played a thrilling game of “Guess the Saint.” Each person had a name of a Saint pinned to their back, where they couldn’t see. Then they would ask questions to other people, who could see their Saint name. The goal was to guess your Saint in as few questions as possible. I was not good at this game. It progressed something like this:

Catholic guy: Did my Saint know Jesus?

Me: I don’t know.

Or, me trying to guess my Saint:

Me: Is my Saint, um, Jesus?
Catholic guy: Jesus isn’t really a Saint. He’s Jesus.
Me: Ok, umm. How about Paul? He’s a Saint, right? Am I Paul?
Catholic guy: No.
Me: I’m all out.

So I sucked at that game. Thanks, Mom and Dad, for raising me as an uneducated yokel.

The year passed fairly well, anyway. After I left Queen’s Newman House sent me newsletters for a year or so afterwards. I was browsing one of these which had the minutes of the executive board meeting. One resolution they passed shortly after I left was something along the lines of “In the future it will be a goal that residents of Newman House will have views and attitudes consistent with the rest of the Newman House community.” So yeah, I think I was singlehandedly responsible for Newman House officially adopting the policy of rejecting heathens.

Garth Shoemaker » Dream

Shunned by the Catholics