As good a place to start as any.....

This is a letter to the editor I wrote and submitted (unsuccessfully, unfortunately) about my return to the Church. It misses a lot of detail as I was trying to keep it short, but I'll fill in the rest in later days...

In a time when the Catholic Church is getting a reputation in the press for being intolerant and unwelcoming, I felt it important to share the story of my return to the Church and the wonderful group of people who helped to pull me back in.

My return started in October of 2004 when I told my then-girlfriend, now wife, that I would go to mass with her at her Church….once, “then I’m not promising anything after that!”

I was raised Catholic but like many others, I fell away from the Church before beginning a strange journey through Agnosticism, Atheism, Buddhism, etc…

Then I met Kimberly and would have to wait to see her on Sundays until after she had gone to Church. She never pressured me, but I felt a quiet call and went to mass with her….once. And it was okay, so I went again, then again, and again, and again. I felt as if I had come home again and it was feeling very right! Still, I wondered if it was just comfort with the ritual and not a deep belief that made me feel so at home.

So when our parish, St. Kathryn’s in Hudson, NH, (one of the first to pioneer a Coming Home program) offered ‘Coming Home to Catholicism’ that winter, Kimberly and I thought it would be interesting, so we signed up.

What we found was a group of people running a program that took a look at the issues that had taken us away from the Church and explained the meaning behind a lot of the beliefs of the Church. That seven week program provided me with a better understanding than I had achieved in four years of religion classes at Catholic high school.

Most encouraging to any of us, was the fact that the program was not administered by a Priest, or a Brother, or a Nun, but ‘normal’ people of faith who all had their own issues with the Catholic Church at some point, but had returned to what was really important: their faith!

The program wrapped up just before Easter, making the Holiday more special that year. Making that year even more special was that Kimberly and I were engaged, then married before the new year came. Now we volunteer with the ‘Coming Home’ team at St. Kathryn’s and enjoy sharing the story of our rediscovered faith with those who can use our help. For anyone with the desire to come back to the Catholic Church, it’s important to know that there are people reaching out to provide a safe, comfortable chance to return.

Since this time, Kimberly and I have been married and had two beautiful daughters. (one of whom is sitting with me now, doggedly trying to hit these letters on the keyboard) and I can't imagine being a husband or a father without the enrichment and the faith I've gotten from going to Mass as well as the other things I do to attempt to bring myself closer to God. As someone who spent a lot of time as a loner, I'm pretty sure there is no way I would survive, let alone feel as blessed as I do in these essentially sacrificial roles of husband and father, without His grace.

God bless!
P.D.O.