Her cellphone rang a little after 11 a.m., just as she wheeled the double stroller into the primate exhibit at the Denver Zoo.
Even before checking caller ID, Bridgid Mosley knew it was her husband, Chris. He had been monitoring the Internet all morning. She heard excitement in his voice:
“It’s Cardinal Ratzinger,” he said.
As the bells began to ring that Tuesday in Rome and a name was attached to a decision, many American Catholics slapped hands to foreheads in dismay. No, no, not him. He will set the church back 50 years.
Mosley stood on the pavement and squeezed her eyes shut. “Thank God,” she murmured.
Joseph Ratzinger, who served as the previous pope’s watchdog over doctrine, is just what the church needs to corral the strayed, to return to the rules, for goodness sake.
This is validation, or maybe even vindication, for a brand of piety the 35-year-old Mosley embraced as a young girl and never let go.
Even within her parish at Pax Christi Catholic Church she often feels like an outsider, in conflict with those who want to set the old ways aside.
Recent polls show American Catholics split nearly down the middle on whether the church should loosen its hold on traditional doctrine to keep it relevant.
But Mosley doesn’t buy it.
The way she sees it, the Catholic Church is like a kids’ soccer team. You do what the coach says, and you play by the rules. You don’t get to pick and choose.
That day at the zoo, talking into her phone, two children kicking at the stroller, Mosley could have been any suburban mom.
Except, of course, she was the one who couldn’t stop grinning.
Hers is a conviction, a loyalty that is as unwavering now as it was when she was a girl in a white dress at her First Holy Communion.
“You go with what you know. You go with what feels comfortable,” she says, circling the riddle but never fully explaining it.
“I was shown a strong faith by my parents. I think it rubs off on you whether you want it to or not.”
Faithfulness comes from obedience, she says. She is an obedient person. She craves order. But that is only part of her story.
She possesses a feistiness as she dishes on men or laughs at herself. Meek doesn’t exactly come to mind, as she can swear with the best of them: “I learned my best cuss words in Catholic school.”
Maybe it’s birth order. When you’re No. 8 of nine children you learn to hold your own.
In fall 1994, Chris Mosley, a 28-year-old up-and-coming associate at Sherman & Howard law firm in Denver, met Bridgid Rawley as she stepped through his door.
She toted a six-pack of beer, a housewarming gift for his roommate, whom she knew from the University of Denver.
He was struck by this funny, smart, dark-haired beauty with porcelain skin. “Anyone who brings beer to my house is going to be my friend for a long time,” he told her.
A week later they met again when a group of friends went to Old Chicago. He brought a date. She was pleasantly undeterred. “You ought to ditch (her),” Mosley whispered to him.
Within weeks they were a couple. On July 27, 1996, they were married.
Her family threatened a wedding boycott because he was not baptized. He quickly took care of it at Corona Presbyterian Church in Denver. After the wedding he converted to Catholicism.
“I never felt that the way she practiced her faith was a drag or a burden,” Chris Mosley remembers. “I kind of liked that she was old-fashioned.”
He grew up in an upper-middle-class family in Fresno, Calif. His mother rejected organized religion, yet never discouraged her son’s innate spirituality.
His wife was raised in a cloak of privilege and piety in Greenwood Village. Attending Mass was non-negotiable. She went to parochial school until her parents pulled her out, worrying that it was becoming too liberal.
Her mother never encouraged her daughters to venture far into the career world; teaching or nursing would be fine jobs until the babies came.
“That’s such (expletive).”
She slammed down the phone, tears stinging her eyes. It was six years ago. Mosley was locked in a crisis of faith. She had called her priest, looking for … what?
Compassion. Understanding. Maybe even permission.
Mosley knew she and her husband would be great parents. They knew the church wanted – practically required – them to have children. But biology had failed them. She couldn’t get pregnant.
She had taken the first steps into the world of reproductive technology, popping Clomid to stimulate ovulation and trying artificial insemination once. Neither worked.
She called her priest, the one who had married her. “Certainly it is wrong,” he scolded her. The Catholic Church rejects scientific baby-making as taking into man’s hand what belongs to God.
“He’s not married, he’s never had a child, never wanted one,” she railed.
Reluctantly, they made an appointment with Dr. William Schoolcraft, one of the nation’s leading experts in fertility treatments. It felt wrong.
Chris Mosley worried that the conflict was tearing his wife apart. Then, two days before their appointment, Mosley discovered that she was pregnant. No drugs, no medical procedure needed.
“Absolutely, I think it was divine intervention,” she says. “I offered it up to God that I wanted a baby and he said, ‘Yes.”‘
Son Rory was born June 26, 2000. Madeline came 18 months later.
The couple would like more children. But she’ll never consider reproductive technology again. It’s a candy store Mosley refuses to enter.
On the Feast of Pentecost, the pews at Pax Christi were bursting with young suburban families juggling infant carriers and shushing fidgety toddlers.
The Rev. Ken Przybyla, wrapped in a brilliant red robe, consecrated the bread and wine to become the body and blood of Christ. All around him, 600 people were on their feet in prayer.
Bridgid Mosley quietly dropped to her knees.
Her pink dress pooled on the floor because there were no kneelers. She felt the eyes of others on her, one who swims against the tide of a parish that stands in praise of God rather than kneel in subservience.
The priest was not pleased that she had chosen to make such an independent statement in a parish that values community. Even her husband stood.
“It’s the body of Christ,” she insists, “and you should be on your knees.”
Those who track American Catholics say those under 35, especially married ones with children, hunger for traditional rituals. Being a conservative in a parish Mosley finds increasingly liberal can be wearisome.
Even as the Mothers Group at Pax Christi decided to string colored beads onto rosaries for a craft project, only four group members showed up when it was time to pray the rosary.
“Sometimes,” Mosley says, “I wonder if I should just find another parish.”
WHAT CATHOLICS SAY
When Catholics were asked about Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger being named pope:
– 81 percent of American
Catholics approve
– 13 percent disapprove
Those who approve:
– 27 percent reported
being “very enthusiastic”
of the choice.
– 46 percent “somewhat”
enthuastic.
– 15 percent “not very”
enthusiastic.
– 9 percent “not at all”
enthusiastic.
When Catholics were asked
just after the naming of Pope Benedict, 50 percent said he should maintain the church’s traditional policies. This was
an increase from a month before, when 41 percent
said they should be maintained. In October 2003, only
33 percent said traditional
policies should be kept.
Source: ABC News/Washington Post
poll, April 24, 2005