Christ in the Camps

I am a stumbling, doubting, failing, fearful Christian, so I fit right in with the rest of them. I was raised by atheists who, for complicated reasons, sent me to a Catholic school when I was 11, assuming that I was too smart to believe any of the abracadabra and would just focus on the classes.

But they had some other tricks up their sleeves, those Catholics. The first was prayer, which just about knocked me flat the first time I saw its practical application. One of the nuns came to talk with us about some dire issue from the real world; maybe it was Vietnam, maybe it was someone from the parish who was very ill—I don’t remember. She summed up the situation, and I sat there