The first time I encountered Jesus in the Mass was at my best friend’s confirmation. It was our second year at JFK Junior High School, and my friend Mary was working hard to overcome the evangelical efforts of a Southern Baptist friend of mine. Both girls believed their religion was the most true to what Jesus taught. I admired their conviction, but the idea that God loved only people who went to certain churches and punished everyone else was unacceptable.
It was during this time that I learned my father was, for all intents and purposes, an atheist. He never used that term to describe himself, but whenever the topic of God or religion came up, he would roll his eyes, smirk, and change the subject.
Problems with Christianity
My mother’s idea of religion was watching the Christian movies on television, especially during the Christmas and Easter seasons. We watched King of Kings, Moses, The Ten Commandments, and The Robe, among others, at least once every year. My mother and grandmother collected Bibles and pictures of Jesus. They never read the Bibles, but I think they believed having them in the house imparted some sort of blessing. After my mother died, I found seven Bibles in her home. Two I had given her were sitting on her bookshelf in pristine condition; the others were wrapped in tissue and packed away in boxes.
The closest Mom came to giving me religious instruction was on those occasions when she felt it was important to emphasize Jesus’ humanity. She believed that he was a great man with great ideas but that he was just a man and not God.
The problem was, I was starting to like some of the things my Christian friends were teaching me. I found myself thinking about God and Jesus more and more. I even read the Good News Bible my friend had given me and made some feeble attempts at prayer.
The sticking point for me was the biblical and religious prohibition against divorce and remarriage. How could I be a Christian if it meant believing my parents were going to hell because they had committed this sin? My mom explained that she and my dad split up because they fought constantly and it was hurting me. Their divorce protected me and made everyone happier. How could it be a bad thing?
Drawn to the unknown
The day of Mary’s confirmation I walked into the old stone church, and the beauty of the art and architecture swept me into another world. The carved stone, dark polished wood, and stained glass windows were a rich contrast to the grimy, utilitarian buildings of the neighboring streets. As I took a seat in the back, I saw tall, colorful statues lining the side walls. Each stood behind a bank of flickering votive candles in red glass holders. The effect was mesmerizing.
Mom and I watched a lot of parades over the years, but none of them could match the bishop’s procession to the altar. The mass itself, entirely in Latin, felt like a symphony of light and color accented by the pungent aroma of incense.
Toward the end, I saw my friend and several others dressed in white walk up to the bishop and receive something. I couldn’t tell what it was from my distance, half hidden behind a stone pillar, but I could sense the tremendous importance of this moment. As I watched the people in the pews file up to the altar, an almost desperate longing swept over me.
Mary had given me strict orders to stay in my seat, and I did, but it was difficult. I was so drawn to this unknown thing that I envied every person there that day, and I began to consider becoming a Catholic.
Several months later, Mom decided to marry a man who lived in a small town in Arizona. We had moved almost every year since my parent’s divorce, so I was used to leaving friends behind, but it was especially hard this time.
The day before I left, Mary gave me a small, Bible-shaped charm box. Inside the box were two medals and a note. In the note was a line that would stay with for the next thirty-six years: “You will be Catholic someday.”
A stab at Lutheranism
While the first part of my life was not easy, there were periods of relative happiness. But the next twenty years was a barrage of misery punctuated by sexual, physical, and emotional abuse; struggles with alcohol; divorce; and single parenthood. God was buried in the rubble.
I went through a ten-year period of apathetic atheism before God again entered my life and graced me with a certainty that he was real and that he loved me. Six weeks later I was baptized into the Lutheran Church.
My experience with Lutheranism was pleasant enough, but what they called “communion” failed to satisfy the longing I had felt since my friend’s confirmation Mass. And there was the problem of divorce. Nearly two years after my baptism, I made the painful and necessary decision to divorce my husband.
When my pastor told me I would never be able to remarry in the church, I was crushed. While I was in no hurry to get married again, I was still young, and I wanted more children. In the end, I decided Christianity was too hard, and I left the Lutheran Church.
A Solitary Eclectic Wiccan
Convinced I had no place in the Christian religion, I spent the next few years trying out a variety of spiritual philosophies and practices. During this period, my son graduated from high school and joined the U.S. Navy. Two years later, I went to visit him at the naval base in Norfolk, Virginia. While we were sightseeing, he confessed that he had become a witch. I was shocked and concerned, but after he explained a little of what this meant to him, I became intrigued.
Back home I went to the Internet to find out as much as I could. I learned that modern witchcraft went by several names: Wicca, Paganism, Druidism, Asatru, Shamanism, and goddess worship. Wicca was by far the largest and most popular of these groups, so I began there.
I bought every book I could find on the subject, joined online forums and groups, and filled my room with crystals, herbs, pentacles, candles, incense, statues, and other idols of “the craft.” Before long I was able to call myself a Solitary Eclectic Wiccan, which meant I was not interested in joining a coven, and I could choose practices and gods from any source that appealed to me.
The most appealing aspect of paganism, by far, was the assurance that there was or no sin or hell or devil. All of this was made up by the Catholic Church to keep people in line. This meant I no longer needed to worry about the ultimate fate of my parents, myself, and other people I loved. Pagans were, above all, tolerant and accepting of all people and all beliefs—except, of course, Christianity.
Pagan myths
One of the first things a new pagan learns is the story of the “Burning Times,” that period in history also known as the Witch Trials. According to my pagan acquaintances, 9 million women were burned at the stake by the Catholic Church for the crime of witchcraft. These women, the story goes, were nothing more than peace-loving healers and midwives who tended to live on the outskirts of towns and villages.
At this point in my life, I was willing to believe anything that put Christians in a bad light, but as time went on I learned the pagan version of the Witch Trials was a myth.
Scholarly evidence puts the number of victims at 30,000 to 50,000 women and men over a 400-year period—still a heartbreaking number, but nowhere near the 9 million cited by influential Wiccan author Gerald Gardner. And while the Catholic Church was no doubt culpable for a small percentage of the deaths, the secular authorities in the affected countries were responsible for the vast majority of arrests and executions.
This wasn’t the only pagan myth. One year, as the spring equinox approached, I started hearing claims that the Catholic Church invented Easter to suppress the widespread worship of the goddess Eostre or Ostara. I wanted my pagan friends to be right, but I also knew that the religious holiday was based on events in the life of Jesus Christ.
I decided to research Eostre, hoping to unearth some evidence that the Church was persecuting pagans. Instead I discovered that the word Eostre may have been used by Anglo-Saxons to designate a period in early spring and not a beloved goddess.
The final blow to this myth came when I learned that the celebration of Jesus’ Resurrection was called “Easter” only in German and English. In many other languages the name is derived from the Latin pascha (Greek, paskha). In Spanish it is Pascua, in Greek it is Pascha, and in Portuguese it is Páscoa.
Then there were the pagan claims that the biblical accounts of Jesus’ life, especially his death and resurrection, were plagiarized from the myths of pagan gods such as Mithra, Osiris, and Isis. Yet when I read the mythologies of these gods, the similarities were virtually nonexistent.
Despite feeling I was constantly being misled, I soldiered on with my pagan practices. The attraction to Wicca and paganism became less about historical accuracy and more about creating a new spiritual practice. I focused on the lunar and seasonal cycles, learning about old folklore practices and creating a sense of sacredness in my home and my life. I performed simple rituals aimed at creating positive energy, helping our gardens flourish, and communing with a generic goddess.
Encounters with truth
One day I was chatting online with some pagan friends who were drawn to the legends of King Arthur and the island of Avalon. One of these friends mentioned a poem or story that she claimed was pagan in origin and later “Christianized.” I no longer remember the name of the poem, or even who or what it was about, but this pagan-to-Christian claim is so common, and so often false, I immediately went to the Internet for verification.
On my first search, the results were pages and pages of Catholic websites. I reworded my search parameters and tried again. The results were the same—nothing but Catholic pages. I tried several more times with the same results. Frustrated and angry, I gave up. The next day I tried again, and this time I decided to read one of the Catholic pages.
What I read was reasonable, cogent, and historically accurate. For the first time in a long time, I felt I was being told the truth. Even the claim I once rejected—that the Catholic Church is the original church instituted by Jesus Christ—was historically and biblically verifiable.
The next day I drove to the bookstore and bought several books on Catholicism. Within a month, I was “trying out” different Catholic churches by attending daily Mass.
Fortunately for me, Mass was now celebrated in English, and I was able to hear and understand the liturgy. I sat in the back by myself trying to look inconspicuous while flipping back and forth through the missalette and watching the other parishioners for cues that signaled a change of posture. I felt like a tourist on vacation in a foreign land.
I went to the Internet for instructions on reading the missal and worked hard to memorize the responses. Before long, I felt like a pro. Kneeling during the consecration became a time of reflection, prayer, and communion with God, and my childhood longing for what I now knew as the Eucharist reasserted itself profoundly.
I told my friends and family that I planned to become Catholic a week before starting the RCIA program in August 2002. It was the last thing any of them expected, but no one was more surprised than I.
A prophecy fulfilled
The next eight and a half months were a whirlwind of education, preparation, prayer, and wedding plans. I learned that my first marriage was invalid in the eyes of the Church, which not only gave me the freedom to marry a man I had grown to love deeply but also gave me hope that my parents have a place in God’s kingdom as well.
On April 19, 2003, I stood proudly on the steps of the altar with my fellow candidates and catechumens while the priest anointed each of us with the holy chrism and pronounced us members of the Catholic Church. The Bible-shaped charm box with the note from my friend—“You will be Catholic someday”—was in my pocket.
Life as a Catholic hasn’t always been easy. I still struggle at times with some doctrines, especially as they pertain to my loved ones. I’ve fallen on my face more times than I want to admit, and every day is a struggle to do better. But the truth of the Real Presence of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, the constant teachings of God’s love for us, and the hope and joy this love inspires keep me right where I’m supposed to be: at home in the Catholic Church.