7 Quick Takes- My Great Protestant Christian Childhood

My four grandparents were Quaker with Unitarian siblings, lapsed Catholic, Anglican, and Presbyterian at the time of their deaths. My parents weren't really brought up with a consistent religious upbringing, but my mother was Presbyterian enough as a teen to turn down a dance with Beau Bridges (yes, one of those Bridges) at Hollywood Pres. How my parents got from there to here with all five children married in the Catholic Church with twenty-four or so grandchildren baptized in the Church is an interesting story. As happy as I am to be Catholic and to share the faith with my siblings and their spouses, there are some wonderful things about my Protestant childhood as I experienced it. 

1. Psalty

2. Public School- back in the old days, schools had music, art and physical education. In seventh grade, I got to be in early-bird swing choir and concert choir every day. Then, we converted and I went to Catholic school for eighth grade. I got to sing at Mass. I went to the big public high school for ninth grade and was last chair, second violin. Choir was early-bird and I had to take the bus, so I couldn't sing. Then, I transferred to the Catholic high school an hour bus ride away where the majority of my classmates were in kindergarten together....and no choir or orchestra. There was only after-school sports, but I had a bus to catch. This isn't to say that public school was all butterflies and rainbows...

3. Davey and Goliath

4. VBS- luckily with 'CatChat' we now have a fun, Catholic alternative to both non-Catholic VBS and the ultra-serious traditional activities. Sorry, most 6 year olds aren't interested in a week of Eucharistic adoration during the summer.

5. being a hippie- I doubt that we would have gotten into a prayer circle in a public park to pray for John Lennon, but we did back then. I doubt that we anti-abortion pro-lifers would be welcome at a protest of the arms race, but we did that back then. I don't eat carob anymore or make my children call if their host offers soda, but that was then. My mother doesn't wear eucalyptus oil as a perfume anymore. I don't now if that would be quite proper at her VOCAL meetings.

6.no fear of hell & no scrupulosity- Perhaps I didn't encounter this in Protestant churches because of my young age. I do know some people who suffer from scrupulosity and 'Catholic guilt.' I just can't understand this. Yes, we are working out our salvation with fear and trembling, but Jesus died and rose for us and He left us His Church and His sacraments! It is a sad thing when a young person fears hell because of not yet being confirmed. It is also a sad thing that, upon learning that my children are already confirmed, this person wonders if they might go to hell because they don't wear the brown scapular. 

7. occasionally not being in church on a Sunday morning- in my childhood, we were always in a church Sunday morning and said a quick family prayer at night before bed. But occasionally, we might sleep in. My children won't experience the 'lazy Sunday' that even devout Catholics can indulge in (Saturday vigil!). In fact, my big girls might go to the 6:30 AM after being at our mission for the Saturday vigil and before going to the 'big' mission in the late morning.

That being said, I am very, very, very happy to be Catholic (and my kids have that Psalty record!)

go to conversiondiary.com for more quick takes

Bonus not-so-great thing about my Protestant upbringing: We went to a Quaker meeting between longer stints with the Episcopalians. The Quakers met at the YWCA in town. I remember being in a kids' class to break up the silence of the adult meeting. I clearly remember, at eight years or so of age, being in a room with pro-abortion posters and a big bowl of small neon-colored discs wrapped in plastic. I didn't see anything like that again until my freshman year of college when the '700 Club' (there were 7000 students at my university, and supposedly 10% of the population is homosexual) was trying to force me to accept their anti-AIDS condoms. Anyway, I feel a little bad that I didn't have a consistent moral compass in the churches I was a part of in my early childhood- luckily,  we were pretty solid family-wise.