The previous issue of Graceviews contained an article in which I described aspects of my twelve years of Christian education in the Catholic school system. I wasn’t sure how much interest there would be in such a personal story, and I was surprised that a number of you commented on it and told me you enjoyed it. One person, who I would have thought unlikely to send me an email but did, said that he could relate to it, having been sent to Catholic schools as a child. Another deplored the fact that our public schools no longer have anything to do with Christianity. I rarely get feedback, but that article clearly struck a chord with some of you, and more than once I was asked how I got “here” from “there”. Well, I’ll tell you…
I think my allegiance to Catholicism first began to waver when I was at York University in the mid-sixties. Bob and I were together at the time, committed to one another – but that didn’t stop either of us from making new friends separate from our relationship. At York I met a young man who was to have a profound influence on my religious thinking. He hailed from Boston and had come up to the recently established York U. to get his B.A. before heading back home to Harvard Episcopal Theological School for his Master of Divinity. His eventual goal was pastoral ministry. Some of his courses and spare time coincided with mine, and we spent considerable time in the university’s coffee shop discussing religion, when we probably should have been studying, completing assignments, or, on occasion, attending class. On one occasion, sitting in The Buttery in earnest discussion, we “proved”, through the faulty logic of our still developing, barely-out-of-adolescence brains, that there is no God. I blush to think of our youthful foolishness…My Episcopal friend did, indeed, graduate from Harvard and achieve his goal. Today he is a retired parish priest living in Massachusetts.
My Humanities and Social Science courses introduced me to some of the world’s great theologians and philosophers, and with all of this, the people God sent into my life and my reading, my insular Catholic world view was changing. The idea was growing that a Christian is a Christian, and however we choose to interpret the message of Jesus and to manifest it in Christianity’s rituals doesn’t matter one whit to God. I was learning that devotion to Jesus and a Christian life were not specific to Catholicism, and this new idea was like an epiphany to me.
Of course, I didn’t share any of this at home with my devoutly Catholic parents. Indeed, I hardly appreciated it myself until in later years I began to develop (I hope) some wisdom and insight, enough to contemplate the past, learn a few things, and consolidate my thinking. Bob and I were married in St. Benedict Catholic Church, where marriage is considered a sacrament, and for the next five or so years we lived our lives in blissful ignorance, not attending any church and totally ignoring the issue of religion. Bob’s background is Presbyterian, attending Oakwood Presbyterian as a child. Of our four parents, the only one to talk to us before our marriage about the religious difference was Bob’s father. My parents simply assumed that since I was Catholic, I would stay that way, and our children would be raised Catholic. I’m sure it never occurred to them that it could be otherwise.
Well, I’m afraid they were in for something of a shock. In due course, Bob and I began to think about starting a family. To this end, we knew we had to bring religion back into our lives, and talked about how we would handle it. Bob did some reading about Catholicism and concluded that he couldn’t accept some of the traditions and rituals. We were determined that our children were not going to be raised in a divided household. Church and Sunday School would be important to our lives as a family, and accordingly we shopped around, attending the churches of several different denominations looking for a place where we both felt at home. That place turned out to be Hillview, which we joined in 1974. Two years later our first son, James Lawrence Twynam, was born and our lives were changed forever.
Now a large hurdle loomed – Jamie’s baptism and how to tell my parents that it was going to be in a Presbyterian church. I knew they, especially my father, would be distressed when we told them the news. I adored my father and couldn’t bear to think of his displeasure and disappointment, but the truth had to come out. Coward that I was, I told my mom first and left her to have that difficult conversation with my dad. The date was set, and we invited our families to attend and come back to our place for lunch afterwards.
One evening, shortly before the baptism, there was an unexpected knock on our door. I opened it to find my distraught father standing on the doorstep. My mother had finally informed him that Jamie was soon to be baptized at Hillview Presbyterian Church. My parents were not the interfering type, but in this case my father felt he had no choice but to talk to us and try to change our minds. We spoke for quite a while, and he asked if we would be willing to speak to the parish priest, Father Gerard Breen, whom I knew well and knew to be a kind, compassionate man. He had not only married us, but coincidentally had baptized me at another parish thirty years earlier.
I was defensive and resistant, and upset that my dad had interfered in this way. Bob was more conciliatory and willing to go have a chat with Father Breen. My father made an appointment with the priest, and Bob and I went to see him.
We spent two hours with Father Breen at the rectory that night, discussing the matter and explaining our decision. It was an emotional, heart-rending time, very traumatic for me. In the end Father Breen came to accept that we had thought it through carefully and sincerely believed we were doing what was best for our family. In his compassion and understanding, he said that he would let my father know this, and would advise him to attend our son’s baptism.
This advice notwithstanding, neither of my parents were present when Jamie was baptized. I believe my mom would have been there if she had not felt compelled to support my dad. My siblings, however, were there, along with Bob’s parents. The next year, when our second son John came along and it was his turn to be baptized, I didn’t even tell my parents that it was happening, and there was no family celebration. The matter was never mentioned again, and my relationship with my father did not change. My father died in January 1980 when Jamie was three and a half and John was two, and to this day one of my biggest regrets is that I had caused my father such pain and that we never resolved the issue between us.
What, you may ask, does this story about Jamie’s baptism have to do with my “conversion”, so to speak, to the reformed tradition? Only this – it helped to solidify my conviction that I had done the right thing for our family. My father was a good Christian man, thoughtful, well educated, who served God, his church, and his family with dedication and love. I think it sad that somehow, his view of Christianity had managed to persuade him that he could not, in conscience, attend and thereby condone the baptism of his first grandchild solely because it was to take place in a church not his own. I did sort of get it, at the time – I too had been taught all my life that the only road to heaven was through Catholicism – but I emphatically no longer believe that, and I hoped that his love for family would override his prejudice. I was wrong.
This seemingly inconsequential episode had a bigger impact on my life and religious thinking than I realized at the time. I thought about it often as the years passed, and I came to appreciate and have some compassion for the dilemma my dad was in. I believe it was one of the forces that contributed to my ending up where I am today, an active member, chorister, and elder in the Presbyterian church.
Not the only force, however. Some other forces have been my attraction to the Presbyterian form of church government, which seems to be unique; the Reformed church policies, which include a married clergy, a female clergy, and an inclusive communion, none of which were part of the church of my childhood; the emphasis on music in our church services; and the joy of singing in the choir for these many years.
The major force, however, belongs to you, my fellow congregants and friends, the example you have set about how to lead a Christian life, and all the reverent, devout, dedicated, loving people I have met along the way, so many of whom are friends that I cherish today, and so many who have now gone to be with God. God bless you all.