I was born into a poor Irish family (and I do say this slightly with tongue in cheek)--Mom and Dad we full fledged Irish and Catholic. Unfortunatly, dysfunction in the family was as strong as the family blood-line, and by the time that I was 5, my father had all but abandoned his parental duties, leaving the task soley to my mother, who was unfit for the calling.
Somehow she managed to get us Baptized, catechized and we received the Sacraments at the age appropriate time.
I could tell many a tale abou hungry days, going weeks without utilities, and a general woe-is-me-forlorn saga which would make Frank McCourt's family look upscale. In short, we lived in oppression and poverty.
To my father's credit, he did return when I was 13 but died tragidy less than a year later. And my mother did the best she could with what she had.
I would like to now fast-forward to my late-teens and early adulthood. I attended Catholic High School because I was able to work in the rectory to pay my own tuition. I was anything but a model child, though. The years of neglect began to emerge my rebellious behaviors. My grades were always good, I always maintained a 'B' average, and was always activiely involved in school activities, but I started drinking and using drugs which carried me on a slow downward spiral until I was nearly 31 years old.
A close friend of mine had recently become a born-again Christian through testimony and witness of the Charismatic folks who attended her Lutheran Church. She invited me to go to Church with her and she introduced me to her new friends. It wasn't long before I had the 'fever'. When I say 'fever' I mean it in a good way. I started reading the Bible daily, praying and going to Church. I stopped the drinking and the drug use and got involved in a Christian related 12 step program. I was ready to be done with it, ready to turn it all over to the Lord and start facing some of the painful issues that lay buried in my past. Not only dealing with and confessing sins that I had commited, but also coming to terms with the way that I was raised.
However, as I am becoming more and more on fire for Jesus, I am hearing more and more about 'the Catholics'. And since I believed that I had been raised Catholic (though technically I was, no one modeled the faith in my home)--I thought that I knew everything about the Faith. People were asking me 'Why do Catholics worship Mary?' and 'Why do Catholics believe that the Pope is infallible'? And at first I would answer..'Well, they don't, we don't'.. but I didn't really know how to explain it any better than that. I began avoiding conversations which seemed to becoming more and more frequent about 'the Catholics' and their weird practices because I didn't know how to defend it and by that time I really didn't consider myself Catholic anymore anyway.
But slowly, I began to doubt and it wasn't long before I was falling victim to the misconceptions about the Faith.
By this time, I'd given birth to my second child. It was probably the beginning of the year 2000 and it was then that I discovered 'religion on the web'.
It was at this point that I got down on my knees and said 'Lord, I was born Catholic, you made me Catholic what do you want to tell me about the Catholic Church?'
