PAGAN BABIES: And Other Catholic Memories

During the nine years she spent at St. Lucy's Catholic School, Cascone, a children's author, gathered enough pithy observations and opinions to fill this short memoir. Enrolled against her will (she protested by hiding in a closet, under a bed and behind a sofa, all to no avail), Cascone endured her years at St. Lucy's by imagining what the nuns' legs looked like and other lofty thoughts. Seen through her not-so-impressionable child's eyes, Catholic school was a comedy of contradictions and questionable practices, including baptism, to which she cavalierly refers as throwing water on the non-consenting. Cascone writes with little fondness for praying Rosaries, kneeling through the stations of the cross and adopting "pagan babies," the practice of giving money to foreign missions so non-Catholic children could be raised Catholic. Her sole happy memory appears to be that of Father Joseph, who went easy on children in the confessional and always asked them to say a prayer for him. Given her own experiences, Cascone decides against baptizing her own child, fearing that to raise her daughter Catholic would subject her to the same education her mother had, even though the church has changed radically since her youth. Cascone's irreverent and often funny recollections would surely be pronounced as impertinent by the sisters who taught her. For that, they will delight many readers who underwent Catholic education as reluctantly as she did and considered graduation an escape from earthly purgatory. (May 20)