My mother was disowned by her Catholic parents

[tadoflamb]

We spent the weekend at my Aunt and Uncles 65th wedding anniversary party. It was really important to my mom that we came out East for the event as I had never met most of my cousins and their kids. The reason for this is because my mom was disowned by her Catholic parents when she married my southern Methodist father when she was just 18. As I found out this weekend, my grandfather didn't know my mother had gotten married until he read about it in the newspaper. My cousins also told me that it was my grandmother's most fervent wish that someday my mother might return to the Church. Like myself, my grandmother was a convert.

For those of you who don't know, my mother was welcomed back into the Church on the Ash Wednesday of the year after I was confirmed. Besides my wife, my mother is the only other person I know who I have helped influence their return home.

This just makes me reflect on how much pain my mother must have felt as a young woman and mother. It's no wonder we never got to know her side of the family.

My Aunt and Uncles wedding album was on display. My favorite photo was of them kneeling before the altar, with one of the bridesmaid's kneeling at the altar rail and my mother in one of the front pews, a young teenager, her white gloved hands prayerfully pressed together and of course, her head properly covered with a dainty white hat. (she tells me she really liked that hat, it had a cherry on top)

I'm just glad that I could be part of her healing. She's not a morning person, but she was out the door early enough to make it 7:30 am mass. I think it's weird that something that is so precious to me, caused my mother so much suffering. I know if I were a parent, I would want my child to marry a Catholic, but there's a lot of mixed marriages on my wife's side of the family and everyone seems to get along fine.

Like my MIL, I wonder if it was my Grandmother's prayers from Heaven which led to my conversion which led to my mother's return to the Church. This is such a great mystery to me. What is going on on the other side of that veil?

 

[Colin]

The God of surprises works through others in ways we don't always appreciate at the time .

My great-grandmother was an immigrant to England from Ireland .

She was a Catholic , but when she married she lived a fair distance from the church , and did not attend church .

My mother used to tell me of how one of the priests often visited them imploring them to come to church . His pleas fell on deaf ears .

My mother was baptised , attended a Catholic school , made her first Holy Communion , but like the rest of the wider family did not attend church .

When she left school my mother took up work in the local cotton mills as a weaver . In the 1930's Depression she was out of work and found a job as a maid in one of the town's hotels . She had to sleep in the hotel and shared a room with a young lady from Scotland .

They had to be up very early each morning , except on Sundays when they were allowed a lie-in . However the Scottish room-mate of my mother's didn't have a lie-in . She got up on Sunday mornings to walk along to the Sacred Heart church for the 7 am Mass .

This got my mother thinking and eventually she decided to accompany this Scottish lady to Mass . It was the start of her life as a committed Catholic , and from then onwards hers was a life very dedicated to the Church . And what my mother had started to do influenced many in her family , and in time most of them had become practicising Catholics .

At the same Sacred Heart church in 1941 my mum married my dad when he was home on army leave during WW2 . My dad had always been a practising Catholic since his infant baptism .Then when WW2 was over , and my dad came out of the army , they set up home , and soon I was to come on the scene , being baptised when I was three weeks' old in the Sacred Heart church .

I often think of that Scottish lass . I don't know her name or anything about her other than what I have said here . I doubt she was ever in town long enough to know of the effects of her faithfulness to the Church on my mother and my mum's family .

I wonder whether I would be posting on a Catholic forum telling of my Catholicism if that Scottish lady had not shared a room with my mum in that hotel in town in the midst of the 1930's Depression .

In 1991 , on the day of their Golden Wedding , during a Mass of thanksgiving , my mum and dad knelt on the very spot in the Sacred Heart church where 50 years previously they were married .

Thank God for that Scottish lass !!!

Thank God for my mum and dad !!!

 

[tadoflamb]

The God of surprises works through others in ways we don't always appreciate at the time .

Nice story, Colin. Thanks for sharing.

My mother was baptised , attended a Catholic school , made her first Holy Communion , but like the rest of the wider family did not attend church .

I was a little surprised that my wife and I and my mom and her husband were the only ones who made it to mass yesterday. I thought there would be a slough of us attending. It was interesting talking to everyone and trying to get a better understanding of where they're at with their Catholic faith. It would have been great to have gone to mass with them, but I guess not everyone gets as excited about going to mass at a beautiful new church as I do. I'm a little weird that way.

 

[Fantine]

Today I know Catholic families who have transgender children, gay children, children who have married people of other faiths, other races, and other nationalities. I think of all of them with love and admiration, knowing or imagining how difficult it is for them (and their children).

That's why I'm a "liberal" Catholic, or a TLT Catholic. These parents show me (and all of us) an example of how God loves when they continue to love their children. What higher compliment could I pay them?

I also look at people I know who are in relationships some would call "disordered" and often find that a lot of grace and unconditional love takes place in those relationships, and that God is working in the midst of all that canonical "disorder" and making those relationships incubators of holiness.

And not only incubators of holiness for the couple but for the rest of us as well because in the shadow of unconditional love we are all graced.

I sometimes think of the Magnificat, and of these parents as Mary. Just as she accepted her pregnancy and her child and an uncertain future, so did they, and with lots of prayers they are getting through some tough situations.

I am thankful to God personally, that I am only separated from my children by distance and not by a hardened heart or an intractable conscience.

 

[tadoflamb]

Today I know Catholic families who have transgender children, gay children, children who have married people of other faiths, other races, and other nationalities. I think of all of them with love and admiration, knowing or imagining how difficult it is for them (and their children).

That's why I'm a "liberal" Catholic, or a TLT Catholic. These parents show me (and all of us) an example of how God loves when they continue to love their children. What higher compliment could I pay them?

I also look at people I know who are in relationships some would call "disordered" and often find that a lot of grace and unconditional love takes place in those relationships, and that God is working in the midst of all that canonical "disorder" and making those relationships incubators of holiness.

And not only incubators of holiness for the couple but for the rest of us as well because in the shadow of unconditional love we are all graced.

I sometimes think of the Magnificat, and of these parents as Mary. Just as she accepted her pregnancy and her child and an uncertain future, so did they, and with lots of prayers they are getting through some tough situations.

I am thankful to God personally, that I am only separated from my children by distance and not by a hardened heart or an intractable conscience.

That was a good post, Fantine.

Sometimes I wonder if the Catholics of the past have made things more difficult for us Catholics today. If they knew how we have to run around patching up the damage they've done if they'd still would have done it.

I have a number of 'disordered' relationships in my extended family not the least of which are my parents combined seven marriages. Like you said, through grace and unconditional love, these relationships become incubators of holiness. (I loved that) I've found that it's much better to adopt a spirit of mercy instead of a spirit of condemnation. It's difficult at times, but it yields great dividends. Pointing our fingers of righteousness seems to have the opposite affect.