Still Catholic? Why?

Over two weeks ago, my beautiful daughter died, leaving a husband and three young sons. She also left this – which I send on to you:

Why the Woods Family Are Still Catholic By Laura Woods

It was the first funeral since my father died, a cousin removed from me by generation and distance, and I felt a great obligation to attend bringing along a delegation representing his branch of the family tree. However, as I pleaded and bargained for a Mass’ worth of settled down, I wondered why in the world I brought anyone under the age of 18 with me. The funeral began, moved through familiar routines, challenging words, comforting rituals, and arrived at the moment when my eight-year-old shared communion with the 80-year-old devastated widower, and I had an answer for the next Sunday’s whine of “Do I have to go?”

Yes, because if you didn’t go, you’d be missing.

I will admit it is often my whining voice asking the question; well, asks it first, anyway.

While there may be a number of conflicts with Church any given Sunday, my fear that my children might believe I condone the choice to exclude women from priesthood was enough for me to research whether we needed to find a new spiritual home. It seemed better to bear the disappointment – or worse – of our extended family than to deprive them of the voices of women in their religious experience. Much better, it seemed, to avoid an education of: “Believe what I say, not what we do.” But worship space after space would be a nice place to visit, but not home.

Our family learned a great lesson from the Boy Scouts of America. My oldest son begged for years to join, but, being at that time another institution with a policy of discrimination in direct conflict with the world I want my children to be a part of, I refused him permission. But that felt like I was teaching him a lesson in righteous superiority when what I wanted to give hm was the example of standing up for your beliefs. What gain was there in refusing my son of the gifts of the Scouts, and denying the Scouts the gifts of my son? So, I agreed to let him join but on the condition that he think about what a policy of exclusion means and a commitment to take actions to change it.

Our family carries that lesson with us into our Catholic Church. Our mere presence at that funeral made a difference. Our presence, enhanced with words and actions against exclusion and injustice, makes what we believe what we do.

When my oldest son was baptized, the priest explained that what I was agreeing to was to give this child, while not precisely tangible, a sensory experience of faith and, with that, tools available for his use during those times when his faith breaks down. Those tools continue to sustain all of us.

Laura Woods was a writer, musician, administrator at a local non-profit social service, and attended St. Vincent de Paul Church in the Germantown area of Philadelphia. This reflection was originally published in EqualwRites, newsletter of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Women’s Ordination Conference.