An Interview with Catherine Corman Parry

Question: How would you describe yourself in 60 seconds or less? Who is Catherine Parry?

Catherine: Well, who is she? She mostly spends her days picking up after people, and tries to help her little family grow, and worries a lot about those people. She likes to read mystery novels—not the bloody ones, mostly the English kind—and likes cats. And dogs, but she has a cat.

Question: When did your love for the scriptures begin?

Catherine: When I was very little, toddler age, my mother bought a bible stories book, I think it was a Golden book. She used to read that to me, among other things. I noticed that it has an awful lot of annotation in it, from my pencil. And so I must have enjoyed doing that.  

But it was when I was a junior in high school, that’s when I started reading seriously, and trying to do it daily, which has been an on and off project for decades.  I’ve never had a strategy [for consistent scripture study]—it’s just sheer will power when I do it right. It’s just, “No, read that, don’t do that. Read that first, then do that.” And when I’m successful at making myself do that, then I’m a consistent scripture reader, and when I’m not, then I’m not.

Question: You’ve proclaimed your love for the Bible. Why does this book of scripture speak to your soul?

Catherine: I’m not sure, but both the Old and New Testament do. The New Testament of course because of Jesus—there’s just nothing like seeing Him act, and hearing Him talk, while he was mortal, to be an example for what to do in our lives. He is the only one who will never fail us, so watching what He does really gives a sense for what I can do, even though my life is so different from His. The Old Testament too—I really like the Old Testament. It may have been how I was raised. My mother, though a member of the church, probably did more with the Bible with me than the Book of Mormon, so it may have been that. The Old Testament is great fun because you do need to have some sense of how to read literature to read that successfully. You have to think about what you’re reading there, you can’t just take it and say, “Oh yes, that’s lovely,” because a lot of it really isn’t lovely at all. You have to find out what to do with the book of Judges, and how to deal with the Benjaminites, and things like that. And I quite enjoy that.

I also enjoy short story collections, and it’s kind of interesting to get this collection of diverse—and I’m going to call it literature, but that doesn’t exclude it from being inspired—this diverse literature together and sort through it. How do they read this? How do I read this?

Question: You've also spoken of your affinity for parables. What is it that draws you to the parables?

Catherine: I’m drawn to the parables because they allow—in fact even insist on—multiple possibilities of interpretation. They don’t mean just one thing. There are limits to what they can mean, but each time you read it you can see something slightly different. And many things can be addressed in one parable.

In the parable of the ninety-nine sheep we’re all thinking of the shepherd leaving the ninety-nine and going out to get the one. And when you teach that in a class, you talk about there being more joy in heaven over one sinner that has repented. The first thing that students want to do is say, “That’s probably a translation error, because there wouldn’t be more joy over a sinner that comes back than over all of the ninety-nine that never sinned.” And you can discuss that for a little while. But, eventually you end up saying, “Well, it’s a casting problem, isn’t it? Where do you cast yourself in this?” Well, we all cast ourselves as one of the ninety and nine that are left. But the truth is, there is no ninety and nine. We’re all the one. The Lord is always going out after us, the sinner. And if you cast yourself as one of those who doesn’t sin, then you resent the attention given to the sinner. But if you are the sinner, then you are so grateful for the joy the Lord feels after bringing you back.

The Lord makes that really clear in the prodigal son. He could have ended the parable with the rejoicing. But he adds that second part, of the elder son who resents, and that’s where we are. He knows His audience—that’s where we are. I like the way that the Lord’s parables, but also just the way He talks, will do that, will turn the tables on us, and let us think about ourselves, and not just about “the other one.”

Question: What do you hope happens for women who attend this class?

Catherine: I would very much like for the women to come away with the sense that there is more in the scriptures than what we usually see, discuss, and perceive in a lesson; that they can become very personal little documents for us to read. And that they can come away with actual ways to behave or respond in this life—respond to what life throws at you. And, I’d like them to come away with the sense that they can “close read” the scriptures. This is not an ivory tower experience for those who have studied the scriptures at great length. This is something we can all do. We read it, and we reread it, and eventually biblical language becomes familiar, and at that point we just read and understand.

Question: What would you like the sisters to come prepared with as they enter our learning space each week?

Catherine: I’d like them to come, I suppose, with open minds to some things: to the ability to read, to maybe stretch a parable or an event in the Lord’s life beyond what they’ve usually seen it to be. I’d like them to come either with a testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of God already or, to be open to forming that. The foundation I’m going to work from is that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and that what He did in His life was perfect. I’m not going to assume that He made mistakes; I’m going to assume that when He says something He doesn’t say it out of racial bias, which is one of the stories we’ll look at, that He doesn’t say it out of ignorance—occasionally He says it out of anger, but it’s a calculated anger that He wanted to express for a reason—and therefore, we can take what He said or did as absolutes, and we can work from there to find out why He did what He did. So, if it looks like He responded to the alternately Greek or Syro-Phoenician woman with a sort of racial bias, I assume He did not have racial biases, therefore, what was He trying to do? Let’s look at it and see what we can learn from what He did. We’re not going to just write it off as a mostly good prophet who had his own biases. So, I do need them to bring either that assurance within themselves, or a willingness to accept that, as that’s where I’m going to start. That won’t ever be a basis for discussion--whether or not He knew what He was doing. My assumption will be that He did.