The Legions Arrive

I opened my door just moments ago to two tiny old ladies with big, beamy smiles and blue rinses. They told me they were from the Legion of Mary. So I told them that while I had been baptised into the Catholic church, I did not consider myself a member any more. Their brows furrowed a little. It felt a bit like I had just fornicated in front of my aunties.

But they were not to be cowed, these two legionnaires. "Well, that's the great thing about the Catholic church! Once you're baptised, you're in. You're in FOREVER! You can NEVER LEAVE!" She was gleeful, the older, less bobbing-about one. Beads of sweat broke out on my own furrowed brow. "But I want to leave!" I told them. As I began to enumerate my reasons for opting out of the whole thing, while convinced that if they knew the half of it, they wouldn't want to hang on to me anyway, I could see the Legion of Mary Ladies were busy being on Another Spiritual Plane. Particularly the bobbing-about one, who appeared to remain with the angels for much of the conversation. That is, until I mentioned Limbo.

See, the more vocal one was telling me that it was a bit much to be expecting the Pope to go about changing things, like letting women be priests and the like, because, well, because you, er, can't, I think the argument went. So I retorted cunningly: "But he's able to change Limbo, isn't he?"

Well.

At the word Limbo, the bobbing-about one came crashing back to earth with an almost audible wallop and yelped like I'd just summoned the divil himself. "NO!" Oops. "He's not! He's not changing Limbo! Limbo's still there!" Clearly, these ladies were not letting go of Limbo, regardless of what the higher ups had to say. And they weren't letting go of me either. "You're Catholic and you will be Catholic for the rest of your life," pronounced the tiny-but-fierce old dears on my doorstep, even as it began to dawn on them that perhaps I wasn't exactly the most expedient case on the block. So they linked arms, and bobbed off, with this, final parting shot: "You LOOK Catholic and everything!"

What now? I look Catholic? How? What on earth did that mean? Was it the fact that I was still in my pyjamas at 2 p.m. in the afternoon that gave me away? My unbrushed and unfeasibly large hair? Perhaps my furrowed brow? The shifty, guilty look of One Who Has Been Sinning(I was still in my pyjamas WELL into the afternoon after all). I look Catholic? This is most certainly not the look I have been aiming for, unkempt as I may be when legionnaires come to my door. I am alarmed.