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Beyond Pancakes

At the Easter Vigil in 1991, at our local parish, I was confirmed into the Catholic faith. It was, of course, profound. Not because of my deep understanding of the faith, but because I was making a public proclamation of my Christianity. There, with my family present, I crossed the line. I was raised with no sense of faith, and now I was embracing faith.

Being Catholic didn’t really have anything to do with it. The man I married was Catholic. Through the sharing of his faith with me, I knelt before God, accepted his existence, and begged his mercy. It would have been silly to become, say, Baptist. My husband was Catholic and that was good enough reason for me.

In a way only a woman can manage, my conversion was purely of the heart. I loved the Mass, and was often brought to tears. As a mother, I related to Mary and I was brought to a greater understanding of sacrifice and of duty. For reasons I was unable to explain, I loved the history of the Church—the tradition and the unity.

Still, I was a “liberal” Catholic, a blissfully ignorant don’t-get-into-the-“issues” Catholic. My only understanding of oral tradition was the Knights of Columbus pancake breakfast the last Sunday of the month. Yes, I was a pancake Catholic. 

But those “issues” came up so stubbornly and persistently that I could no longer consider them subordinate to my ignorance. At that time we joined a group of Christian homeschoolers. Although we were a small group, several denominations were represented. 

There was never any outward hostility in our homeschooling group. In fact, we were so ignorant we didn’t realize that the Catholic Church has such a bad rap among Protestant denominations. An Anglican priest, whose family was in this group, befriended my husband. Upon their first meeting the Anglican commented that most of these people we were associated with did not consider the Catholic faith to be Christian.

We were quite taken aback by this revelation. As we came to know the group better, people started to ask us questions about our faith. I believe as they got to know us they realized that we were Christians. But that we were Catholic was an anomoly. The questions that came our way seem almost silly now, but at the time we had only one-word answers to give.

“Why do you worship Mary?” “I thought you believe you are saved when you get baptized?” “Why do you rely on the pope to determine your faith?” “But the Catholic Church is so corrupt!”

The list goes on and on. I was troubled by these questions but not to the point of researching to find answers for them. I believed that God had his reasons for creating the Catholic Church, and there must be some good answers out there somewhere. My husband, on the other hand, had a fire lit under him with all these questions. He got onto this “defending the faith” kick . . . oh, please. Just be a good fellow, go to Church, and, for crying out loud, don’t talk to me about hell. I’m not going to live with my back against the wall.

A few good books got him started—Catholicism and Fundamentalism, Surprised by Truth, and Rome Sweet Home. Then This Rock magazine fell into his lap and with it a barrage of other apologetics material. There was no living with him.

Intolerant as I was of his growing interest in apologetics, one issue that refused to be laid aside for me was birth control. Even before I became a Christian the whole idea of birth control seemed a little odd to me. After all, the natural outcome of having sex is having babies. One of the natural outcomes of marriage is a sexual relationship. We entered into our marriage with the ideal of having a large family but I could not imagine just continuing to have children ad infinitum.

So without consulting God or my husband, I decided that we would have children only until I was thirty-five. I suppose I thought I would be wiser than God by the time I was thirty-five. As I began to understand the Church’s stand on the issue of contraception, I began to see the light. God didn’t want me just to have a big family; in fact, he may not even give me one. He wants me to trust him, to give my life to him, to lean not on my own understanding. 

“But whose understanding? There are so many interpretations of God’s word,” I lamented. That’s when I began to understand the necessity of Christ having invested authority in his Church through Peter. A light went on for this pancake Catholic.

As irritating as my husband’s newfound passion for apologetics had become, some of his understandings were starting to sink in. Mainly, I had never seen him so interested in any subject like this—I was strengthened by his propensity to learn and understand his faith.

United in spirit, my husband and I march forth to steep ourselves in Catholic culture. We grow in faith, in understanding, and in our ability to evangelize the one true Church founded by Jesus Christ. From paganism to pancakes to prayer and penance, we work out our salvation in fear and trembling.

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