Pauline’s poem

This is a guest post by Pauline Fleck.

Pauline is a trans woman. She describes her experience of joining, and then leaving, the Roman Catholic Church in the context of feelings of guilt and questions of identity.

The day I left the C of E
I felt it was revealed to me
That I should find my own true home
Within the holy church of Rome
I loved so much about the church
I knew that over was my search
For truth and authenticity
And for the sacred mystery
Enacted when the mass was said
And consecrated was the bread
And when I drank the holy wine
I knew Christ’s blood had entered mine
And each time that we heard the mass
Our prayers up to God’s throne would pass
Our offerings, these holy things
Transported up on angels’ wings
Our priests offered mass every day
To take our sin and guilt away
And told us to salvation win
We must avoid all mortal sin
And if our sins were unconfessed
Our fate would be with the unblessed
Condemned to dwell eternally
In pain and endless agony
And if by mercy and by grace
We were not sent to that dread place
Yet still by fire we would be purged
Of all the sins our flesh had urged
Until we’d fully paid the price
Not paid by Christ’s own sacrifice
And satisfied by our own pains
The debt which after death remains
Unless our friends, those left behind
Could find a way to change God’s mind
By paying priests to say a mass
And cause our soul from pain to pass
And through the treasury of grace
Forever see God face to face
So I would pray to God each day
To take from me my sins away
And gave to the church all my trust
Saved for myself all my disgust
At my disordered inner state
Which but for grace would seal my fate
The priests all said it was a test
And priests are men and men know best
To let God help me mortify
And to myself learn how to die
So by the love of God inspired
I tried to do what God desired
And hid from all what lay within
The secret life I knew was sin
Hoping for masses to be said
To free me after I was dead
From the pains for me reserved
The punishments I had deserved
I never thought that church I’d leave
I now don’t know what I believe
Even the good old C of E
On all who are LGBT
In parts for us has much disdain
And no doubt wishes for us pain
When we at last our maker meet
And tremble at his judgement seat
The God I love I know loves me
And I have faith in God’s mercy
And I trust God will gently say
That God created me this way
And that at last I have fulfilled
What for me God had always willed
And I can live eternally
As she whom I was born to be.