Catholic Witch

by Mathew Katz

via: http://blog.jrn.columbia.edu/site/coveringreligion/2009/03/05/how-to-be-irish-catholic-and-a-witch/

When Deborah Meyerriecks and her 12-year-old daughter Felicia went to their church in South Ozone Park, Queens, last week, they got some funny looks. One regular churchgoer approached them after communion and asked Felicia why they were there, since she had opted not to have a confirmation.

“That’s true!” Felica gleefully replied. “But I didn’t decide not to be Catholic anymore. I just opted not to confirm it now.”

Felicia decided not to be confirmed because she refused to agree to never practice any other way—or to vow that being Catholic is the only right way.

That’s because the Meyerrieck’s aren’t just Catholic. They’re also witches.

As improbable as it sounds, there are a handful of North Americans that have managed to define themselves as an unlikely combination: Irish, Catholic, and a witch. They revive—or some believe, continue—the pagan traditions of pre-Christian Ireland while at the same time embracing Catholicism. Irish Catholic Witches like the Meyerriecks go to Church, attend mass, and take communion, but also burn sacred candles, cast spells, and celebrate traditional pagan holidays—the Sabbats and esbats.

Pagans believe in a singular creating force that’s divided into male and female aspects—the God and the Goddess. With this in mind, important Catholic figures fall into the confines of Pagan beliefs, Deborah argues. To her, the most important person in Catholicism isn’t Jesus—it’s Mary, whom she sees as just the most recent incarnation of the Goddess. Every time she’s in Church, Deborah says her mind focuses on Mary as a strong symbol of feminine spiritual power.

“I was always raised trying to balance being Catholic and being a witch,” she said. “And one day, after my grandmother was explaining what Mary’s all about, I just thought ‘Oh! So Mary is just another name for the Goddess!’”

The idea stuck, and her family incorporated that into their century-old hybrid of pagan and Christian beliefs.
Pagans are spread few and far between in the United States, and so much of their community and knowledge exists on the Internet. A simple Google search can turn up a wealth of websites created by Catholics who embrace paganism and Old Celtic spiritual figures, but few Catholics actually have both traditions in their heritage. For Deborah and Felicia, it all goes back to Ireland.

Their family lived in the rural west of the country for hundreds of years. According to Deborah, they were isolated from every other family and did things their own way—a specifically pagan way.
In 1905, Deborah’s great-grandmother immigrated to America, at the age of 12. She had been told to go find a coven, a support network that would help her acclimate to her new country. Finding no witches, she integrated herself into the local church.

“To her, it looked like a coven,” Deborah said. “They gave her the same sort of help, they just referred to the gods by one name. It’s sort of what she’d believe.”

Deborah’s family’s coming to America coincided with the Celtic Revival, a period between the late 19th and early 20th centuries that empowered the Irish literary and artistic spirit with a resurgence in art and literature that drew upon pre-Christian Celtic traditions.

Ann Dooley, a professor of Celtic Studies at the University of Toronto, said that she doesn’t see the continuation of such pagan traditions as entirely unreasonable, especially in rural areas.

“Clergy were, until the beginning of the 19th century, a little thin on the ground [in Ireland], so there are a bunch of ways that traditional belief systems could survive,” she said. “There’s a Christian vision to solve problems, but there’s also a whole world of fairy and otherworldly belief to resolve tensions. Belief systems in Ireland are always heterogeneous, always mixed, and authority imposed from above—the Catholic Church—never fully controls what is always being created from below.”

She is, however, a bit doubtful about the concept of modern-day Catholic Witches. She describes it as an invention of tradition. Back during the Celtic Revival, she said, paganism wasn’t taken seriously as a faith.

“New paganism built on Celtic ideas isn’t really a native Irish phenomenon,” she said. “The traditions aren’t marked by much academic scrutiny. Some are consciously revived and reborn, but not accurate to history.”

Whether or not Celtic Witchcraft is historically accurate may be questionable, but what Church doctrine has to say about it is concrete.

“The very notion is actually moronic,” said the Rev. William Wizeman, a priest at Corpus Christi Church in Manhattan. “If someone said they were a witch, I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t give them communion. Not at all.”

Deborah says she is open about her dualistic faith, but she kept her pagan beliefs from her own monsignor until she accidentally wore pentacle jewelry in Church. He approached her, and she told him all about it. To this day, the two often have backroom debates about how compatable the two faiths are.

Still, Deborah is conscious of the risks her priest takes by continuing to give her communion. She insisted on keeping his identity a secret.

“If he acknowledged that he gave me communion even though I’m still a practicing witch…”

She pauses.

“He’d probably get into a lot of trouble.”

Still, she said that she’s not all that concerned about breaking the rules. When she goes to church, it’s not an all-compassing experience for her, but it is a unique one.

“It’s like listening to your father who only got half the story right,” she says of her regular mass. “But he’s pompous and full of himself and thinks that his story is the only one. But because you’re the kid, you kind of keep your mouth shut, smile nice, and nod. But he’s not telling me what to believe. I’m not going to contradict him in this forum.”

While she’s had trouble expressing her pagan faith in the Catholic world, Deborah’s also faced her own share of discrimination from the pagan community. Two years ago, she was recruited by Where The Earth Meets The Sky, a coven of secretive pagans practicing on Staten Island. In a formal introduction, she told the group that she was both Catholic and a witch. In a succinct reply, they cut ties with her.

“They said I haven’t fully embraced witchhood yet,” Deborah said. “That I had too many attachments to the Catholic Church—which to them is completely evil.”

While acceptance of all faiths and gods is a fundamental tenet of most pagan faiths, many in New York’s pagan community hold a grudge against the Catholic Church, in part for itslegacy of Church-sponsored witch-burnings and smears against witches.

Reneida Amoros, a witch living in the Bronx, grew up in a Catholic family, said that she was raised with the idea that being a witch is an evil thing.

“It was hard to kick, even after I became a witch,” she said. “We’ve got no problem with what they believe, but a lot of Catholics just won’t leave us alone.”

For now, Deborah is determined to continue to practice both facets of her faith. Her daughter is leaning more and more towards pure paganism, and her son has given up religion entirely. She may be the last Catholic Witch in her family, and she says she won’t let anyone—of either faith—stop her from believing the way she wants.

“It’s okay for me to practice multiple ways,” she said. “Where do they think I’m going—because I’m bi-practicing? I ain’t going there! I don’t believe in Hell.”

http://blog.jrn.columbia.edu/site/coveringreligion/2009/03/05/how-to-be-irish-catholic-and-a-witch/