It's Holy Week, and tonight is the first night of Passover. Taking some vacation days and trying to get into the appropriate reflective mood before celebrating a Seder tonight with my in-laws and as I approach Holy Week. Mike Hayes, of Busted Halo has posted a great comment on being Catholic in these troubling times. And the priest at the Oratory Church at St. Boniface in Brooklyn gave a passionate homily on the same topic. The homily won't be posted for awhile, but you can always explore the website and past homilies.
When people ask me how I became a Catholic, or why I'm a Catholic, I blame my mother. Perhaps "credit" is the better term. My mother grew up in central Alabama in the 1950s and attended a Catholic school within walking distance of her house. By 8th grade, she had been confirmed in the church and has been a devout practicing Catholic ever since. She also attended the United Methodist Church to which her parents belonged, and she was a young black woman in the Jim Crow South. Her teachers at St. Joseph's were all white. I mention all this because my mother's Catholicism was formed by these influences. She learned early on that questions were a part of her faith formation, and just because the priest or nun said it, didn't make it true. One of the stories she told my sister and I growing up was her response to a priest who said during a homily that the only road to Heaven was through the Catholic Church. Her response: "my grandmother isn't a Catholic and she's the Godliest person I know. If she can't get into Heaven, I'm not going." My mother knew early on that there were many paths to God--she encountered them in her own home and family, and that's how she raised me and my sister.
I remember many times listening to the homily and starting to fidget about something the priest was saying. My mother, whose habit it was to sit between me and my sister, would lean over to me and whisper "we'll talk about it in the car". After a while I learned to save my questions and discomfort for the car ride. I didn't realize it till much later, but we were learning theology, every Sunday, on the car ride. I would ask my questions, and my mother would answer, not as an expert on Catholicism, but from her own experience. I learned early on that I had a right to ask questions, that my relationship with God was mine, and being Catholic didn't have to mean blindly accepting everything I heard in church. In college, a priest who has remained a friend reinforced this for me, and this is how I've stayed in the Church, and remained Catholic.
As a mother now, of a child who describes herself as "half-Jewish, half-Christian", I find myself looking back to my mother's theology lessons as I attempt to answer my own daughter's questions. Recently at mass together, she started asking a lot of questions during the service. After the third one, I looked at her, smiled, and said "we'll talk about in the car. Now listen to the priest." Glad I drove that morning.
