Memaw,
**We had written: **
Jerry: It is difficult to start to share one’s conviction about becoming Roman Catholic with family members and certain friends. I gave my half-brother, a very devout and active Neo-Evangelical sectary (Calvary Chapel being his preferred sect at present), who from Protestantism drifted into the sects when the family’s Presbyterian parish began to go adrift liberally, the first indication of where I am headed, into Roman Catholicism. He surely will tell other family members, so that saves me doing so! It is hard to know what to expect…
**Memaw: **Don’t feel to bad, as sometimes [we] ‘born’ Catholics who try to practice our faith according to the teachings of the Church, have to go thru similar things with family members. I have been called everything from “Holier than thou”, to “She thinks she knows more than the Pope” to "She thinks we’re all going to hell in a hand basket, “she’s way TOO Catholic,” etc, etc. I have 9 siblings and when I moved back to our home town 40years ago they laughed at me for putting my kids in a Catholic school. “She thinks her kids are better than ours” or "She wants to make priests out of them. (I had all boys.) Well, over the years, some of them have come back into full union with the Church, have had their kids Baptized, marriages blessed, etc., and still practice their faith. Some we are still working on and praying for, but at least I have lots of help now. Hard to believe we were all raised by the same very devout, wonderful Mother. Hang in there and TRUST GOD!!!
Well, Memaw, I trust God more than I do either myself or my relatives! How can it be otherwise for someone who truly is a Christian? It did not take long, in fact, for my half-brother (we having the same mother but different fathers) to send back a rather defensive e-mail. He said that he felt that the use of liturgy (whether R.C., Orthodox, or other) is, in his eyes, lacking in sincerity! What a non-sequiter! (and I made that clear to him). I think that I know what Bro’ David (whom I call, with brotherly mischief lovingly mangling his name, Bro’ “Debded”) means: that emotion has to be very sentimental, up-front, on display, primary, to be real. Well, as St. John the Evangelist said, “God is Greater than our Heart” (1 St. John 3:20, Douay-Rheims-Challoner Version). God and the Liturgy through which we usually worship Him, always is there for us, whether we feel elevated spiritually or “flat out” with fatigue, confusion, or whatever.
The endless preaching of the sectaries, and of all too many of those many Protestants who happen to be non-liturgical in worship, seldom even is relieved by the rare prayer here and there (which itself so often is didactically preaching to God Himself, as if He did not know the truth already!) and, more often, by “praise songs” or hymns, often trite and emotional. The whole show reeks of the lecture hall, not of the church. As I told my brother, however good or mediocre the preaching is, we should be in church first and moremost to pray, a need which historic liturgies (with their constant biblical resonance and lofty wealth and lovely eloquence of expression accumulated across the ages) serve far better than our own fumbling, earthbound words. Dear Debded never has experienced true liturgical worship, and his prefered sect(s), lacking any real sacramentality soever, have no claim at all even to pretend to be the Church or part of it. Debded’s lack of exposure to liturgical, sacramental Christianity makes him insensible to that fact, and, in his case, I guess, excusably so, God being so merciful. Now we shall see what follows Debded’s initial reaction…
Jerry Parker
I have only told my sister over the phone, and that’s been IT. What a beautiful explanation of your journey!