S
Starrsmother
Guest
Due to length–this is Part 1 of my 2 part post–please bear with me:
I have five grown kids–none Catholic. It’s my own fault and I accept my responsibility totally and whatever punishment God ultimately dreams up for me, It is what it is— I don’t get a do-over though. I fell away from the church for over 30 years. Oddly, I did have all my kids baptized in the church, and my oldest girl was even Confirmed. My first 2 kids made their first Communion–the last 3 didn’t get that far. My husband was a protestant who converted when we married, He’s not a particularly religious person but is a good man and a fine husband and father, but religion was always up to me. When I fell away, he happily did too. I grew up in the late 60’s, was raised Catholic–went to parochial school and the whole bit. I reached a time in my life when I began to question everything I’d been taught. As I questioned I finally fell away, like many of my generation, and I decided that I should let my children decide what they believed when they were old enough to decide, rather than cram something down their necks which is what I firmly believed had been done to me. It sounded good at the time. What I didn’t consider was that with no instruction about God or religion, I was still deciding for them–just as if I had “crammed something down their necks”. You can’t decide to turn toward or away from something you know nothing about one way or the other Thus, my kids grew up to be basically nice, good kids, with values and work ethics–but no religion. My oldest daughter has become a practicing Christian as an adult but not a Catholic. The other kids consider themselves “spiritual” (whatever that is) but don’t attend any church.Two plus years ago, after deep investigation, reading. search and prayer, I returned to my Catholic faith, convinced at long last that it is the one true faith that I will practice faithfully until I die. My husband followed me back. We’ve been together for over 40 years and that’s just how he is. He’s not what I’d call a true Catholic, but he thinks he is and so I just don’t bother to correct him–at least for the moment–as I have bigger fish to fry at the moment because of the kids. All my kids have always known that I was raised Catholic and are also well aware that I am now a fervently practicing Catholic again–though I think several of them think I’ve lost my mind by doing so. They feel that everything was just fine and that I raised them just fine the way it was–without the whole religion thing. They sort of look at it like folks do when they hear that someone “gets religion” in prison. They think that “Mom must be getting old” and has suddenly been “bitten by the religion bug” which is a little weird to them but feel that it’s my “thing” so whatever. They have never said this to me–but I suspect that’s what they think.
My middle son (who is 37 years old now and one of the baptized-but-that’s-it kids) and my husband and I are living together and will most likely be doing so for quite awhile in the future. My son has an 8 year old little boy that he has custody of. He and the mother were never married and have long since separated. She married, lives in another state and sees my grandson on court appointed visits only when he flies to see her. Obviously, since we live together, I have taken over a quasi-maternal role with my grandson on a day to day basis–though I’m always careful not to overstep my son’s role as the daddy. My son is definitely agnostic–infact, what it boils down to is that while he’s a good person, religion just has no place in his life at all. He considers himself an intellectual and thinks of religion in general as a lot of superstitious hogwash. HOWEVER (and here’s my problem), I would like to involve my grandson in the Catholic church, have him baptized and let him take classes. I am willing to take on the responsibility of raising him with knowledge of the Catholic faith, take him to RCIA and mass with us and so on–basically do for my grandson what I did not do but should have for my kids, including his own father… So here’s the reason for my post (and you probably were beginning to wonder when I’d get around to that, huh?):
I have five grown kids–none Catholic. It’s my own fault and I accept my responsibility totally and whatever punishment God ultimately dreams up for me, It is what it is— I don’t get a do-over though. I fell away from the church for over 30 years. Oddly, I did have all my kids baptized in the church, and my oldest girl was even Confirmed. My first 2 kids made their first Communion–the last 3 didn’t get that far. My husband was a protestant who converted when we married, He’s not a particularly religious person but is a good man and a fine husband and father, but religion was always up to me. When I fell away, he happily did too. I grew up in the late 60’s, was raised Catholic–went to parochial school and the whole bit. I reached a time in my life when I began to question everything I’d been taught. As I questioned I finally fell away, like many of my generation, and I decided that I should let my children decide what they believed when they were old enough to decide, rather than cram something down their necks which is what I firmly believed had been done to me. It sounded good at the time. What I didn’t consider was that with no instruction about God or religion, I was still deciding for them–just as if I had “crammed something down their necks”. You can’t decide to turn toward or away from something you know nothing about one way or the other Thus, my kids grew up to be basically nice, good kids, with values and work ethics–but no religion. My oldest daughter has become a practicing Christian as an adult but not a Catholic. The other kids consider themselves “spiritual” (whatever that is) but don’t attend any church.Two plus years ago, after deep investigation, reading. search and prayer, I returned to my Catholic faith, convinced at long last that it is the one true faith that I will practice faithfully until I die. My husband followed me back. We’ve been together for over 40 years and that’s just how he is. He’s not what I’d call a true Catholic, but he thinks he is and so I just don’t bother to correct him–at least for the moment–as I have bigger fish to fry at the moment because of the kids. All my kids have always known that I was raised Catholic and are also well aware that I am now a fervently practicing Catholic again–though I think several of them think I’ve lost my mind by doing so. They feel that everything was just fine and that I raised them just fine the way it was–without the whole religion thing. They sort of look at it like folks do when they hear that someone “gets religion” in prison. They think that “Mom must be getting old” and has suddenly been “bitten by the religion bug” which is a little weird to them but feel that it’s my “thing” so whatever. They have never said this to me–but I suspect that’s what they think.
My middle son (who is 37 years old now and one of the baptized-but-that’s-it kids) and my husband and I are living together and will most likely be doing so for quite awhile in the future. My son has an 8 year old little boy that he has custody of. He and the mother were never married and have long since separated. She married, lives in another state and sees my grandson on court appointed visits only when he flies to see her. Obviously, since we live together, I have taken over a quasi-maternal role with my grandson on a day to day basis–though I’m always careful not to overstep my son’s role as the daddy. My son is definitely agnostic–infact, what it boils down to is that while he’s a good person, religion just has no place in his life at all. He considers himself an intellectual and thinks of religion in general as a lot of superstitious hogwash. HOWEVER (and here’s my problem), I would like to involve my grandson in the Catholic church, have him baptized and let him take classes. I am willing to take on the responsibility of raising him with knowledge of the Catholic faith, take him to RCIA and mass with us and so on–basically do for my grandson what I did not do but should have for my kids, including his own father… So here’s the reason for my post (and you probably were beginning to wonder when I’d get around to that, huh?):
