L
Louis-MarieGrignon
Guest
Hello all,
First of all, I’ve only just joined this forum in the last hour, and this is my first post here at Catholic Answers, so I suppose I ought to start by providing a little background.
I guess a good place to start is my religious status. I am not currently a baptized Catholic, or baptized anything for that matter. I was raised non-religiously in a fairly broken home. Both of my parents were/are heroin addicts. My mother left when I was still a toddler and hasn’t been part of my life since. My father did the best he could, but had fairly regular relapses into heroin addiction throughout my childhood, as well as bouts of alcoholism.
To get me through rough patches with my dad, I had an aunt and uncle who would let me come stay with them for weeks and sometimes months at a time. By the time I got to high school I was sometimes spending whole semesters there, and by my sophomore year I was spending more and more time away from family in general.
My dad was raised Catholic, but fell away from the Church very early, after a somewhat brutal experience in Catholic school followed by picking up drugs in his teenage years. Although he would occaisionally quote Jesus out of the blue, he never showed any sign of religiosity or spirituality. He decided not to have me baptized, didn’t teach me anything about Christianity or religion in general, and never took me to church. The only positive thing I ever remember him saying about Catholicism was his praise for the gothic cathedrals of Europe, which he considered masterpieces of craftsmanship (he worked as a carpenter when he was sober enough to work at all).
Now my aunt and uncle were both atheists, and I never heard anything positive about God or religion from them either. Mostly if religion came up as a topic, it was to mock it.
When I was 18, I joined the military and began my adult life. That was 10 years ago. Since then I’ve gotten out of the military, went to college, had a series of jobs, got married, had a daughter, and recently came back into the military. I was having difficulty supporting my family in my civilian employment, and while this military life can be hard, I know my family is taken care of.
(Continued in following post)
First of all, I’ve only just joined this forum in the last hour, and this is my first post here at Catholic Answers, so I suppose I ought to start by providing a little background.
I guess a good place to start is my religious status. I am not currently a baptized Catholic, or baptized anything for that matter. I was raised non-religiously in a fairly broken home. Both of my parents were/are heroin addicts. My mother left when I was still a toddler and hasn’t been part of my life since. My father did the best he could, but had fairly regular relapses into heroin addiction throughout my childhood, as well as bouts of alcoholism.
To get me through rough patches with my dad, I had an aunt and uncle who would let me come stay with them for weeks and sometimes months at a time. By the time I got to high school I was sometimes spending whole semesters there, and by my sophomore year I was spending more and more time away from family in general.
My dad was raised Catholic, but fell away from the Church very early, after a somewhat brutal experience in Catholic school followed by picking up drugs in his teenage years. Although he would occaisionally quote Jesus out of the blue, he never showed any sign of religiosity or spirituality. He decided not to have me baptized, didn’t teach me anything about Christianity or religion in general, and never took me to church. The only positive thing I ever remember him saying about Catholicism was his praise for the gothic cathedrals of Europe, which he considered masterpieces of craftsmanship (he worked as a carpenter when he was sober enough to work at all).
Now my aunt and uncle were both atheists, and I never heard anything positive about God or religion from them either. Mostly if religion came up as a topic, it was to mock it.
When I was 18, I joined the military and began my adult life. That was 10 years ago. Since then I’ve gotten out of the military, went to college, had a series of jobs, got married, had a daughter, and recently came back into the military. I was having difficulty supporting my family in my civilian employment, and while this military life can be hard, I know my family is taken care of.
(Continued in following post)