93-year old becomes Catholic

What a great story!

Clements’ explanation?

“All my Catholic friends had been getting after me. They said, `Delbert, you’ve got to make up your mind,'” he said at his confirmation reception.

Baptized Methodist as a child, Clements started attending Mass with his close horse-racing friends and decided to just keep going.

“There was no Methodist church around any race track but there always was a Catholic church around,” said Clements, who shuttled between the Midwest, the Northeast and Florida before retiring to Broward County.

He thought he might have to be baptized again. The staff at the Hamilton House, where he lives, had a seashell-shaped basin and water ready. But it turned out the Methodist baptism would suffice.

Sixteen friends and well-wishers watched the ceremony, many of them horse people in town for Florida’s winter racing season. Jockey Javier Castellano, who is riding at Gulfstream Park, and his wife, Abby, were Clements’ sponsors in the ceremony.

A retired priest from Louisville, Ky., Gray first met Clements at the Chicago tracks 62 years ago.

Gray often said Mass for the grooms, jockeys and workers at track stables. He first would show them the Catholic missalette, which explained that those not confirmed could worship but shouldn’t take the Eucharist.

Clements followed that rule for 54 years — except for once, he told his friends, when he ended up in the wrong line at church during Ash Wednesday and ended up with a communion wafer instead of an ash cross on his forehead. “I just took it,” he said.

Hat tip Open Book.

Please feel free to leave a comment under the posting, or sign my Spiritbook (guestbook). You can chat with me on the tag board to the right!