My Religious History (Part 1)

My mother and her family were Irish Catholic. We had three nuns and almost a priest (this is a point of pride in an Irish catholic family - to have a priest. Michael died while in seminary...but enough about that).

My father's family were mixed-religions. Grandma was Presbyterian, and Phil (Grandfather) was a strict Methodist's PK who disowned him when he divorced his first wife. So when my father was a boy they sent him to church. He was told to walk to the Presbyterian church 5 blocks away on Sunday mornings. Since they didn't go and wouldn't know, he walked to the Episcopalian Church around the corner instead. Such a rebel! Meanwhile my mother was in Catholic school in the next town.

They were married at St. Aloysius. I don't know if they attended church before I came along but, I was christened in that same church. They divorced when I was four. But its hard to be catholic and divorced. The priest was unsympathetic to a young mother with 2 children. Church was not just unwelcoming but in some ways hostile, I imagine. Mom sent me to CCD on Tuesday nights until I was 8. But not church.

We went at Christmas, Easter and when a catholic relative visited (especially the nuns). Even then we didn't go to our "regular" Catholic Church. We went to the local catholic university's chapel which was very impressive and holy looking. We went to the Unitarian Universalist's for a few weeks when I was in middle school. But it didn't feel like church. My sister went to the local Quaker Meeting's Youth Group in Middle and high school with a friend. That's the group she mostly identifies with now, although she doesn't attend.

I went to college in the south. For a northerner it can be a shock to arrive in the Bible Belt. Religion had always been a private matter, rarely discussed and never displayed. Sidewalk preachers, hallway prayer meetings and such felt very inauthentic to me. I found the Newman Center (for Catholic students) and attended when I felt I needed forgiving.

And then I met my hubby.