Had To Begin Somewhere

When Rich first approached me with the idea of his joining the Catholic Church, I panicked. While all that he was learning was new to him, it was very familiar to me. He’d lived his life for more than fifty years without serious thought about the Catholic Church. His only understanding of Catholicism was what he had learned in Bible College, and seminary, and from a few conversations with a Catholic priest and some Catholic friends.

I wondered if Rich knew what his decision might bring into our marriage. I tried to point out things that might be different for us, such as my exclusion from the Lord’s Table, and that we would be at odds about so many long held traditions, but he couldn’t hear me. In fact, no matter how often I pointed out those differences, I did not seem to have his attention, and I perceived his responses as negative. I came to believe he thought of me as an antagonist. He, however, couldn’t understand why I wasn’t seeing the truths he was discovering – truths he wanted to share with me as he has shared other spiritual blessings during our lives together. So, I was frustrated with what I perceived as his anger at my questions and he was frustrated at my tears and outbursts.

Looking back, I shouldn’t have tried to point out the actual and potential problems. I should have let him go about the business of doing what he felt he had to do. He was determined to discover as much as he could about Catholicism. Standing in his way only delayed the process; but I had some deep issues that motivated me.

To understand what seemed to Rich as my emotional and irrational objections to his desire to share his new understanding of the Catholic Church, and why I dared not encourage that clear call of God on his life, I need to take a moment to explain.

The foundation for panic began in my heart when I was four.

A pivotal moment in my life, one that brought years of subtle rejection, took place the afternoon my sister first became ill. My parents were not at home. When my mother returned to our apartment she was dismayed to find our caretaker hysterical and firemen resuscitating my baby sister. I rushed from my bedroom to tell Mom how I had tried to help, but the shock of the event overwhelmed her. She lashed out at me. And unknowingly she allowed that day and the days that followed to embitter her. Her focus became my sister to the exclusion of everything else. I must have seemed a burden. She went about the motions of parenting me but did not begin to recover hope and affection until my brother was born five years later.

If I had no acceptance at home, where could I expect to find it?


My maternal uncle was married to a Catholic woman, and my paternal aunt was married to a Catholic man. Their families were well-meaning toward me, and during my younger sister’s frequent life and death visits and admissions to the hospital, I spent many Sundays in one of their homes.

On Sundays, my mother’s brother, a non-Catholic, stayed home. It puzzled me that my aunt, who was always gracious and welcoming to me, and included me in every family outing, would on Sundays rush her sons out the door while I ate breakfast alone. I often asked to go with them, but she typically evaded my request by telling me my uncle was in the yard if I needed anything. So I would wander the house or watch television until my aunt and cousins returned from Mass. I assumed they didn’t take me with them because my parents and I were Protestants.

My father’s sister and her husband were both Catholic. I remember them as huge people who brooked no nonsense. The first time they took me to Mass I imitated them and knelt after we arrived at the pew. My aunt gently pushed me toward the seat and firmly whispered to stay seated. I sat there until I was told to kneel at the Elevation of the Host. At that time my aunt confided to me that Jesus was now present and they would soon go forward to receive Him. I looked very hard to see Jesus. When the family processed forward I was again told to sit. Jesus came to this church, but I was not invited to meet Him.

This, along with the definitive theological pronouncement from one of my Catholic cousins, who told me that as a Protestant I was going to hell along with the Christ killing Jews, sealed my relationship with the Roman Church. I was not angry with Catholics. I simply developed a gut level feeling that the Roman Catholic Church did not want me around, nor did it consider me of much worth.

When I returned with my parents to our Protestant church and heard again, “…Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight, Jesus loves the little children of the world,” I sighed in relief. Jesus loved me.

My husband didn’t realize it, but I expected to be forever an outcast within any local Catholic church because I was not Roman Catholic. Worse, I also knew I’d be barred from taking communion with Rich. That knowledge caused me increasingly severe emotional stress. Communion was the foundation stone that was set into our lives the day we were married. We celebrated Communion as our first act as man and wife – an unusual request, our Evangelical Baptist pastor told us – but one he agreed to.

I was convinced the Catholic Church viewed my love for Jesus, and His for me, as improbable because of my incorrect doctrine and lack of participation in the correct rituals. I was convinced they believed Christ, my Savior, could not bridge that gap and call me His own. The pain of the childhood separation from my mother and from my aunts and uncles’ families morphed into a conviction that I would be separated from my beloved husband in the same way.

I began to have nightmares.