Finding a Church

My brief encounter with the Baptists didn't make a Baptist, but it did show me that attending church was possible.  Now, to find a church that fit my taste.

My next door neighbors were Catholic.  Actually, the mother was.  The father converted to Catholicism I suspect because he knew it was more trouble than it was worth not to.  Their children were kinda sorta Catholic.  The older daughter was mostly interested in pissing off her mother, and church being her mother's thing, she broke all the rules as a point of honor.  The younger daughter went along with it, especially since the swag was so nice.  She was Catholic in the way that most white Americans are, a family habit, like eating turkey on Thanksgiving.  When she married, her mother made sure it was to a good Catholic boy with a big church wedding in a Southern belle-esque dress made by Mom.  I think after that, the Catholic dragon-mother could draw a quavering breath and die having accomplished her essential life's work of organizing the perfect Catholic wedding.

The mother spoke sweetly and lovingly of her faith.  Pictures of Jesus and Mary, with their tender hearts exposed, had pride of place in the spotless mobile home.  I was invited to attend church one fine day, and while there, asked the priest what was necessary to join the church.

He gave me a look of utter consternation.  In orthodox Judaism, a rabbi has a duty to make three vigorous attempts to dissuade anyone who seeks conversion.  I think this priest had the same mandate, because he informed me of the many obstacles to membership, and concluded with, "Do your parents know about this?"

I was too embarrassed to tell my parents about this fiasco.  There was no way they were going to attend that many meetings with the priest, bring me to catechism, and sign off on the arduous process of me becoming a Catholic, a faith that my mother considered as alien as Mars and my father considered a silly superstition of his youth.  So I signed off on the idea of being Catholic, though I liked the stateliness of it, the claims to ecclesiastical authority, the authenticity of the first church, the one the others came from.