Of Tattoos and the Trinity
Terrance W. Klein | May 29 2015 - 9:35am | 1 comment My nephew has a tattoo. Perhaps, more than one, but, as I pause to picture, I can clearly remember only the one. It’s a simple gothic cross, running the length of his right bicep. Although we live a little less distant than a two-hour car drive, we dwell in different worlds. He’s just under thirty, never married. He struggled to finish high school. Until the drop in prices, he was employed in the Kansas oil fields. When I would see him at my mother’s home, his voice abandoned its native languor only if one coaxed him into describing oil field work, the challenges that weather, terrain, and technology presented. Like so many of his generation, Confirmation was my nephew’s passage out of Catholicism. There were no struggles with Church teaching, doctrinal or moral. No conflict with clergy. The institution simply vanished from his life when he took his first job and moved out of the home. Had it ever been a part ...