I am Catholic, and I will help my children be Catholic, too

National Catholic Reporter, Nov 8, 1996 by Kris Berggren

I'm a "cradle Catholic" in my mid-30s, married and the mother of three children. I attended Catholic schools and a Jesuit university. I met my husband, also Catholic, through the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. We are active in our parish and committed to raising our children as Catholics. I work for Catholic Charities. I recall a conversation a few years ago with a poetry instructor, who I assume to be a "fallen-away" Catholic.

After I had revealed some of these connections with the religion I was born to, she said to me incredulously, "You really are Catholic, aren't you?" Well, yes, I thought to myself, but why is that so hard to believe?

I cannot give my children the cultural Catholicism I absorbed through years of Catholic education. My memories include the powerful community of hundreds of schoolmates reciting universal prayers in unison at monthly all-school Masses. I loved the devotions, prayers and rites of passage such as first Fridays; first sacraments; rosaries; May altars; "special intentions"; guardian angels; the Act of Contrition.

Though it's been years since my last confession, I vividly recall entering the dark confessional on a Saturday afternoon - the aroma of wood infused with Murphy's Oil soap and incense commingled with the priest's aftershave, the slide of the partition and the mumbled absolution. I think I still have my laminated scapular somewhere in a trunk of memorabilia.

Just old enough to have experienced such symbols and sensations of Catholicism and just young enough to have received an enlightened, post-vatican II indoctrination, I am not naive to the oppression and injustices committed in the name of the institution of the Roman Catholic church. I personally treasure my foundation of faith, which gave me a foothold in a community in the larger culture with which to identify: I was proud to be Catholic.

I was even more proud to be Catholic during the recent inaugural conference of Call to Action/Minnesota. A capacity crowd of 500 - the largest ever for a regional CTA conference heard keynote speakers Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, and Sr. Amata Miller, IHM, chief financial officer of Marygrove College in Detroit.

These speakers called us to what Rohr termed a "new consciousness" if we are to solve our world's systemic problems. Because these problems - of poverty and its symptoms, of racism, economic injustice and other institutional evils - are so large, this consciousness must be "more imaginative" and "beyond the comfort zone of most of us," said Rohr. Creativity and prayer must be our allies in our quest for the courage to confront these evils. There is no room for "oppositional thinking" or the division of the world into "us and them" - no matter who the "us" and "them are.

But most important, Rohr said, "Everything we do must be with a passion for the next generation." We must "build a bridge to the bigger history of our faith" for our children and young adults, those who have no experience of the positive, communal aspects of our pre-Vatican II church.

We are commanded, said Miller, to "spread the influence of the new value system of nonviolence, mutuality, simplicity and hope." These ideals "must be made attractive," she said. Our role as parents and teachers of children must change if we are to forge a new Catholic consciousness influencing the way our faith is lived in the world, and how our children perceive their role as Catholics. As a fellow conference-goer put it, adults must be not "dispenser of information," but "midwives of meaning."

I studied my weekend companions in the huge gymnasium of the community college where the conference took place. I met nuns, lay people, a few priests, even a bishop - Raymond Lucker of the New Ulm, Minn., diocese, who received a standing ovation for his recent unwavering and visible support of Call to Action. The hundreds of gray and white heads in the room belonged to people who have loved and worked in the church for years. The lines on their faces etched by a generation of laughter and tears are sacrament - the outward sign of inward grace born of years of faith, action, service, servanthood.

But the external trappings of the private, exclusive belief system of my childhood faith, though valuable in their contribution to my identification with a strong faith community are, I now realize, a poor substitute for the real roots of our religion: the life of Jesus, whose only commandment, Rohr and Miller reminded us, is to love each other radically, to love the least of our brothers and sisters.

So, I will stake my three children's religious future, and perhaps their civic future as well, on the claim that we must integrate our private faith and public lives. I will hold up the principles of Catholic social teaching, arguably the church's "best-kept secret." I will respect my children's questions and insights about God, creation, love, death and suffering. I will share the holy stories of the gospels, the saints and modern day prophets and wisdom-seekers like Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King Jr., Rohr, Lucker and Miller. I will help my children to find their voices to stand up for what is just and true. I will teach them to love themselves so they may love others. I will pray with them in gratitude, praise, petition and thanksgiving to an abundant and forgiving God. I will take them to worship where we sing, hold hands, laugh and sometimes even dance.