June 13, 2013
By Frank Weathers
Why I Am Catholic
Being a child of divorce, I’m not used to thinking warm and fuzzy thoughts about Father’s Day. My parents marriage collapsed around the time I was five years old. Now my dad will tell you that when he had the affair that led him to decide to divorce my mother, it was the biggest mistake of his life.
But that is hindsight and the rubble from three more wrecked marriages doing the talking. That, and a contrite and humbled heart.
One of my first memorable acts upon becoming a Catholic was to forgive my father for leaving his wife and family behind. It took me a few months to get around to it, though.
Prior to my becoming Catholic, I had boasted that I would never forgive him. And not just to myself, but to others, publicly, and loudly.
Break your promise and leave your family? I just couldn’t see how someone could do such a thing. And Pharisee that I was, planting the flag of prideful honor on the hill of righteous indignation came pretty easy to me.
But this all changed back in the Summer of 2008.
My wife and children were in California on vacation (two weeks ahead of me) visiting her family. I stayed at home, working during the weekdays at my job downtown, and swinging by the house during lunch breaks checking up on folks who were putting a new driveway in for us. At night I would listen to Cistercian chants I’d discovered, and read and pray while the house was quiet.
Not once did I turn on the television or radio. Peace!
I invited my dad to spend the weekend with me during this time. He’s very skilled in making things from scratch, see, and I figured (correctly) that he could help me make an insulated attic stairs cover box, which would keep hot air out of the upstairs during the summer, and cold air out during the winter.
You see, I needed to tell him that I was a Catholic now, and I figured getting together with him was a good way to broach the subject.
Certainly he knew that I had married a Catholic. He’d witnessed the event of our Nuptial Mass nineteen years earlier. But I had never converted to the faith either. Just like I had loudly and publicly said I’d never forgive my father for leaving us (not when he was around to hear it, you understand), I had loudly said to him on more than one occasion that I’d never become a Catholic either.
Oh, he probably already knew, as my sister had attended the Easter Vigil and either her, or my brother, might have told him during a phone call. But I wanted to tell him, and tell him in person.
I thought it would really be a big deal, but it wasn’t. During a lunch break while we were working, we were talking about being Christians, as he himself had undergone a reconversion of his own. I was reading Pope Benedict’s book Jesus of Nazareth at the time, and I shared a few things I’d learned there.
Then I just up and told him that I was now a Catholic.
I was not blogging about my conversion at that time, but I gave him the shortened version of the series of posts about how I was called to the Church. I told him all about RCIA, etc.
The mountain I thought I would climb to make this revelation turned out to be a mole hill. Or perhaps with faith the size of a mustard seed, the mountain was just leveled for me. Either way, it was a relief.
My dad went to his car and brought me a few things he wanted me to have. One of these items was an envelope full of photographs that he wanted to give me. They were duplicates of photos of me from various time periods, including when I was a wee tot and we were still together as a family.
As I was leafing through them, my heart burned within me, and I just felt compelled to tell him the simple words that mean so much, but which are rarely said. Earlier that year, he had had a mild heart attack, and there being no time like the present, before I could stop myself I said,
“Dad, I just want you to know that I forgive you for leaving us.”
Of course, by the time I got those last three words out, my voice had broken and the tears were flowing, and we embraced each other much as I figure it was like when the prodigal son was embraced by his dad. The roles seemed reversed to me, but the effect was the same.
Cathartic reconciliation.
“Son, I really needed to hear that from you. I am so sorry.”
I firmly believe that this never would have happened if I hadn’t become a Catholic. If I hadn’t been praying the Liturgy of the Hours, where the psalms worked on softening my hardened heart to prepare me for this moment. If I hadn’t been saying the Lord’s Prayer daily, saying the words “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
It became a call to action, you see. What good does it do to say the words, but not to do what they say? St. Anthony of Padua knows.
By forgiving my dad for all that could have been, but never was, this unexpected moment turned out to be the best Father’s Day present we both ever received.
Because Alexander Pope got it right when he penned the following thoughts,
Good-nature and good-sense must ever join;
To err is human, to forgive, divine.
In the same work later on, the poet also says, “fools rush in where angels fear to tread.” But in our case it was the fools who feared to tread where the angels ably led.
Be not afraid to drink the cup of reconciliation with your estranged dad.
For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
Forgive him while there is still time.
This is so beautiful.
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