Growing Up Catholic

18 years in 600 words

Although my soul is no longer in her keeping, I owe my physical existence to the Roman Catholic Church and her pro life teachings. I was born the second of five children into a traditional Catholic home of the 1950s. My Mom once told us, “If it weren’t for the Pope, four of you wouldn’t be here.” We went to mass every Sunday and I attended All Souls School through fifth grade. In the fourth grade I wanted to be a priest. I still have the reply Father Foxhoven wrote to my letter about how to prepare for the priesthood. Then in seventh grade I discovered girls. (They didn’t bother to discover me until years later, and then only one or two.)

My sense of calling didn’t survive junior high but my Catholicism did. I faithfully attended Holy Trinity, regularly went to confession, occasionally wore a scapula (ask your Catholic friends what it is) and saw the world through Catholic eyes. I had never read a Bible; we didn’t have one in the house. I had never been inside a Protestant church. I was fairly serious for an Anglo youth. At one stage I remember saying 100 prayers every night before going to sleep. It isn’t as pious as it sounds; you can whip out a string of Our Fathers and Hail Marys at a pretty fast clip.

My siblings tell me I had a bit of a temper. I do remember chasing my sister out of the house with a butcher knife but I don’t remember hitting my sleeping mother with a hammer. Domestic violence aside, I was an easygoing kid. I had to be since I only weighed 117 pounds in high school. I played JV football and basketball, scoring 12 points in all for the Mighty Rams. I acted in a few plays, was in the chess club and the national honor society, and wound up as student body president of Sheridan High School my senior year (99 in my graduating class). I had been elected vice president but the president got pregnant and had to resign.

Toward the end of my senior year, the only girlfriend I’d ever had dumped me. Three weeks after I took her to the Senior prom she married a 26-year-old ex-marine from her neighborhood. This devastated me and I started looking for something else to give meaning to my life. I joined a Sunday night catechism class and one of the assignments was to spend an hour in meditation each week and to write down my thoughts. I have been journaling ever since.

That fall (1970), a high school buddy named Rick invited me to a Bible study at his sister’s home. It startled me how these ordinary people could read the Bible and pray directly to God without a priest present. They were studying the Gospel of Mark and on the evening of January 10, 1971, I prayed to receive Christ, not sure what all that meant. My life changed over the next few months as I got involved with these people. They were part of a newly-formed house church and I was their first convert. I later learned the group belonged to the Plymouth Brethren. If you’ve ever listened to Prairie Home Companion, the Sanctified Brethren to which Garrison Keillor belonged as a boy are a branch of the PBs.

To my Catholic upbringing I owe:

• my belief in God
• my love of family
• the knowledge of right and wrong
• a well developed sense of guilt (not as powerful as Jewish guilt, but still pretty strong.)