How to Be Good

Saint Training, by Elizabeth Fixmer.  Zondervan, 2010, 233 pages.  Age/interest level, 10-14.

Mary Claire, sixth grader at St. Maria Goretti School in Wisconsin, has lofty ambitions: she’s determined to become a saint.  But, as they say, “God has other ideas.”  From early spring to the fall of 1967, Mary Claire’s life becomes a little case study of post-Vatican II changes in the Church, as she wrestles with her hair, her mom’s moods, her dad’s temper, boys, Sister Agatha, and the responsibilities of being the oldest girl in a family of nine.  And sin.  Sin is a killer.  “Before I started paying attention to my sins I thought I was a pretty good person.”

One reason she’s begun to pay attention is the essay contest sponsored by her school, in which students will compete not only among themselves for the prize but also with other parochial schools in the area.  Mary Claire decides to write about why she wants to be a Religious, a surefire topic that raises unforeseen and uncomfortable questions.  For guidance, she begins a correspondence with Mother Monica of St. Mary Magdalene Convent in Minneapolis, and the Mother Superior’s replies are patient and sympathetic. Also wise in the wisdom of this age.  In fact, Mother Monica could stand in for Mr. Worldly Wiseman in Mary Claire’s pilgrimage, though far more kindly and subtle.  “I think that many things happen because God gave us free will, and with all that freedom we create an imperfect world where things happen sometimes because of mean- spiritedness, sometimes because of kindness, and sometimes by accident.”   Our job is to accept the imperfection in ourselves (just drop that burden!) and get on with whatever we feel God is calling us to do.  And how do we know what He wants us to do?  “I don’t know how other people hear God.  I hear by listening in my heart.”

But if the heart is deceitful, and desperately wicked, isn’t that the last place one should listen?  Unless the heart is changed?  And are we responsible for the changing?  The old questions that plagued a young monk named Martin Luther and eventually led to the Protestant Reformation are as pertinent now as they were then, but Mary Claire’s world admits no context in which to ask them.  Scripture is never referenced, only the Missal, and the characters are left to struggle on as best they can.

There are almost too many of those to keep track of: not only MC’s large family, but her school friends and teachers, nuns and novitiates.  Events start crowding the narrative also, for this was the 1960s: race riots, Viet Nam and draft dodgers, Betty Friedan and women’s liberation, Vatican II, the Pill, protest marches and songs, and other momentous events within the living memory of today’s grandparents.  Mary’s Claire’s voice, strong and confident at the beginning, becomes less so as the story continues.  This is in keeping with her doubts, but with so much going on she almost loses her individuality.

Mom and Dad have their faults but also their strengths.  Mom is the one reading Betty Freidan, but while she starts speaking up more for herself, she doesn’t walk out on the family.  Dad, a good man though stubborn, learns to adjust his views.  Most of the characters are decent people struggling through as best they can through their own efforts.  At the same time, the story shows the dilemma of sin in every soul who wants to do good.  Can’t live without it; how to live with it?  Mary Claire’s conclusion is to look within.  Ours is to look to Christ.

For more stories that deal with faith, see Good Christian Girls and Nice Jewish Girls.   Also see Emily’s Christ in Literature series, starting here.

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