As promised by Christ himself, when he told Peter the Apostle that “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

Which is to say the Church is protected, to an extent.

Satan has had his way with the Church in the last hundred years, and the fact that the Church is still standing, and is still drawing people to herself, despite the damage he has done (from within as much as without), is testimony to the role the Church has been given, by Christ, in salvation history.

Which isn’t to say those people don’t have what they think are good reasons for their hate.

But the Church is a mystical body, more than an institution, anyway. People who have already decided they hate the Church won’t understand this.

Not that I think the Catholic Church is responsible for all that much ‘bad’, relative to other institutions. One must be able to distinguish between the Church herself, and the fallible men and women who can be said to represent her.

Meaning, in spite of everything ‘bad’ for which the Catholic Church is responsible, or can be associated with.

Of course, I’m not an atheist like Freud was, but rather am a Catholic, in spite of everything.

Which is embarrassing indeed, since here I am, trying to be a writer.

Which makes me sound like I’m bragging, I suppose, but I don’t mean it that way, I just don’t know how to express myself very well.

I’m something of a Freudian, if you want to know the truth. I’ve read a good portion of The Interpretation of Dreams, and all of Civilization and Its Discontents.

I say I’ve “always” held that conception, but I suppose I don’t know if that is true. More likely the conception developed in me, over time, the way one’s personality seems to do, without one realizing it, or understanding why.

It of course is aware of neither our presence nor our absence, but I’ve always held a romantic conception of place, and tend to imbue it with a kind of haunted or melancholy consciousness. As if all locations or vicinities are sensible to the events that occur there, and to the humans that appear there, doing whatever they are doing.

In that case, when neither of us is there, I imagine the coffee shop waiting for us indifferently.

Some weeks he isn’t there, and I end up writing by myself, at the table we usually sit at, or at another table, if the table we usually sit at is occupied. Though sometimes I myself am not there, and he is either there by himself or not there either.

I want to say a little more about Reggie, now that I’ve introduced him, and yet I don’t know where or how to begin my description of him. Not that I have a whole lot to say about him anyway; I actually don’t know him that well, and only ever see him at the coffee shop, where we meet once a week to write, using our laptops.

Obviously I won’t be selling this particular manuscript, as it’s intended for no audience other than myself. The detective novel, on the other hand…if I ever write more than that one sentence…you never know what might become of it, then.

She is getting paid for her labor, anyway, while we will not be paid for ours unless we end up selling our manuscripts to a publisher, which may or may not happen.

Of course, I use that term ‘working’ rather loosely. The young woman behind the counter, the barista, is more clearly working than we are, if you ask me.

Reggie is sitting across the table from me, I should say, at the coffee shop where we both are working, on our laptops.