A new adult.

When Mr. Pete and I were young 20-somethings, living on our own after our marriage, we did not know much about our Catholic faith and we certainly didn’t live it. It was not until my sister left the church and started questioning Catholicism that we started to take a deep long look into what the Catholic Church taught and why. The result was an enthusiastic return to Catholicism.

This was something I deeply wanted to spare my children from. I wanted them to understand from the beginning what the church taught, and why it taught what it did. I wanted them to experience mass, holy hours, adoration, praise and worship, confession, the sacraments, all of it, so that their Catholic faith would permeate their very beings and be as natural to them as breathing air.

It seems with my oldest, we have failed. As I sat and listened to the homage from other parents to their children at graduation last week, I kept hearing things like,
“You have grown in faith and made it your own.”
“I am so happy for the way you are living your faith.”
“I love how you always make sure you go to mass and take your siblings to confession without being asked.”
“I know I could always count on you to help around the house. You were my right hand and I have depended on you.”

As these parents went on I squirmed in my seat, knowing that I could not say those things about Calvin. Because the truth is I don’t see that he has grown in his faith. In fact he still has the same big problem with the fourth commandment now that he did when he was eight.

He doesn’t help with the other kids, he antagonizes them. He has made me so angry, hurt, and scared at times this past year that when I went to write my own tribute to him as a graduating senior, I had to throw away the first draft because it was sounding more and more like a rant!

What is most painful for me is that he has continuously lied about attending mass. And instead of bringing his girlfriend of 18 months closer to the Catholic church he has allowed himself to be lured away from it. And what’s worse, at least to me, is he is going on vacation with his girlfriend and her family for ten days against my wishes. I know that he will not be attending mass while he is away.

It’s not that he hasn’t had access to the information, but rather that after a certain point in high school he just refused to listen any more. He has chosen not to be well catechized as an adult.

I have some ideas on where we went wrong with this kid and what not to do with the other kids. But the truth is that this is an instance of free will if I ever saw one, and unfortunately, despite our attempts to spare Calvin from the mistakes of our early adulthood, he is bound to repeat them.

I do have a glimmer of hope. As we sat in church waiting for the graduation to start, Calvin’s girl asked me why people genuflected. I explained. Then I talked about the Eucharist. Then I started explaining and talking about all of the saints who were portrayed in statuary and pictures throughout the church. And she listened… with interest even. Maybe she’ll be interested enough to find a nice church during vacation.

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