I was never moved by Mass and the priests of my youth left me cold. But Sr Agnes Philomena? That's a different story. She smelt of candles and incense and of the convent down the road. And like the most efficient guardian angels she appeared at the door when we needed her most. Sr Agnes Philomena was goodness and love wrapped up in the black robes of the Sisters of Charity. I recognised her pure spirit even as I began to grow suspicious of the Catholic Church. She went from house to house around the parish. Slowly, purposefully she walked the walk.
My mother could tell Sr Agnes Philomena anything, which is how she came to know all our family problems. She gave us clothes and money and moral support. She enjoyed us and was proud of us. She wrapped up talc and bath salts for our Christmas presents and always hid a fiver in the packaging, which is how they sometimes came to be opened before Christmas day.
She brought us the Catholic Messenger. It was small and red and had the best children's puzzle page. I'm sure this is why, despite my antipathy towards organised religion, I've never been averse to a good browse of even the holiest publication. I don't know where you'd get the Messengernow but I read another Catholic paper these days. It comes through the door every month free of charge. I sit down with Alive!and a cup of coffee prepared for the fact that most of what I read there is going to totally wreck my head.
You see, Alive!is a Catholic monthly newspaper that promises never to pander to what it calls the "ongoing push to destroy Christian morality replacing it with the relativist 'equality agenda'." This proud boast makes it deeply uncomfortable reading for anyone who supports, say, gay marriage, abortion, divorce or comprehensive sex education in schools.
Still, I enjoy Alive!because it offers a glimpse into a world that most of the time I forget exists. It brings news of events that you'd never hear of otherwise. A National Rosary Rally in the Phoenix Park to pray for an end to the crisis in Catholic education: "Your children and grandchildren need you there!"
Letter writers to Alive!say things like the sex education strand of the national curriculum should "be outlawed immediately". In an article headlined "Time to get tough on marriage-wreckers", the editor takes Joanna Trollope to task for her novel A Village Affair: "Marriage is first and foremost about being procreative, welcoming the children God may give and rearing them in a loving home."
The following extract is from a story in the Editor's Jottings section of the paper, under the headline "Women are dying for sex". "A young woman who swallows the contraceptive pill is a fool; or she has been kept in the dark about the physical, emotional and spiritual damage it may be doing to her." See? Totally head-wrecking.
There's also a Media Watch section, in which newspapers are monitored for godlessness. My colleagues Shane Hegarty and Ruadhán Mac Cormaic get a good going-over in the last edition. Hegarty for writing an article about science and faith - "Rationalist lunacy," according to Alive!- and Mac Cormaic for reporting on a major study that suggests the pill does not increase a woman's chance of developing cancer. My favourite part of Alive!is the back page, where there is a satirical column, a letter written by a devil to a "trainee temptor". "It's lovely," writes Dumbag the devil to Nettles, his pupil, "to see how watery Catholic spirituality has become."
Flicking through the October edition got me thinking about Sr Agnes Philomena. In one of the only articles that didn't make me want to bang my head against the wall, Fr Owen Gorman writes about devotion to St Philomena, which began in 1802 during excavations in the Catacombs of Priscilla in Rome. The remains of an early martyr were discovered under three funeral tiles bearing the inscription Pax Tecum Filumena (peace be with you, Philomena). This made me think of Sr Agnes Philomena as a young nun in the 1930s choosing the name that would inspire her vocation.
I hadn't spoken to her in years, but after reading the article I called the convent to thank her. She sounds the same as ever and when I tell her why I've rung she bats away my gratitude, saying "it was a privilege".
I tell her I can't believe she is 94. And she laughs. Alive!Ever deserving of the exclamation mark. Pax Tecum, Philomena.