Baptism Redux

Catholicism roams around my heart and brain, and maybe, because of those little Necco like wafers, in my body and blood. Blood that was passed down to me and to my children and now to my grandchildren from my father’s side, good Irish Catholics. My mother, God bless her, was not born Catholic, but converted, and this, along with her marriage to my dad, was good enough. Her faith is different from my Dad’s. If my dad was a mystic of sorts, my mom is a pragmatist. Dad was sensitive and so could be very defensive of the church, and I learned to protect him and his faith. When the pedophile priest stories started hitting the news, my dad’s first reaction was shock and incredulity, and as he finally realized these ‘stories’ were true, he was sad. He really wanted to believe that priests were able to attain, and maintain, a holiness that mere regular people could not.

When my first daughter was born, both Steve and I were Catholics, Steve having become Catholic (converting from Episcopalian) before we were married, so that we could have a marriage that was a sacrament. We baptized Kathleen in the same church that I attended as a child, the same church that we were married in. By the time she was almost 5, and I was pregnant with our second daughter, I was beginning to have my doubts about the Catholic faith. I was beginning to be influenced by my sister, a Baptist. She left the church when young and unmarried and pregnant. She and her fiance went to the local priest to marry them; he said “No” and suggested they give their baby up to a nice couple with money. Appalled, they fled to South Dakota, got married, kept their baby, and have renounced the Catholic church ever since.

So, when Erin was born, I put off getting her baptized. I realized by then that babies really aren’t born bad, there was no original sin, and I was leaning towards the belief that if we were to be baptized, it was as Jesus was, as an adult. When Erin was 6 months old, we moved from St. Paul, where we still considered St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic church our church home (in MInneapolis) to Owatonna, where I started attendinga Baptist church with my sister. I figured, Jesus was Jesus, no matter. The basic belief was the same. We believed in God, and in the Trinity, the mystery of God as three, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Much of it was still a mystery to me, but without mystery, no belief would be needed, right? This was the mystery of faith.

My dad however, was worried, my mom would tell me, for him, that he was worried that we hadn’t baptized Erin. I loved my parents, respected my parents, but wondered how could I honor them and be true to myself? I decided to talk to the priest at their church, tell him about my reservations, ask him, “Is this okay to baptize her if I don’t believe in original sin?” He seemed a bit put off, and said, “Oh, we don’t even really say that anymore.” He was however, concerned by my choice of godparents, my Baptist sister and her husband, but he acquiesced. Erin was baptized, at nearly a year, with a handful of newborns. But baptized she was, and my dad was relieved.

Two years later, Megan was born, and by now I was a full-fledged Bible reading and quoting Baptist. There would be no infant baptism, and I myself was contemplating adult baptism, although I’d been baptized, of course, as an infant. I had attended a lake baptism with my new church, and was jibed by the summer, the water, the testimonies and the rawness of the emotion and love for Jesus. It didn’t hurt that I was a lonely stay at home mom, and these small town Baptists were mostly loving and could put on a great picnic once the baptizing was done. I hung out with my sister and her friends and I guess I thought this was as good as life could get. Doubts and inconsistencies between logic and religion were locked under the key of mystery.

Eventually Megan, my youngest, my un-baptized; too, chose ‘adult’ baptism, when she was about eight. She recalls thinking that her life would change, that she would no longer be depressed. (She had been diagnosed with depression at seven, we were to find out, nearly ten years later, that this depression that nothing would alleviate, was due to hypothyroid disease.) After realizing there was no ‘magic’ to baptism, she would ‘fall away’ and her succinct musings on religion helped me to unlock the box of mystery that I thought I had firmly secured.

As she put it, as she put her hope in God, her depression remained, her parents got divorced and life more or less went to hell. If there was a God, it was a God she wanted no part of. Can’t say I blamed her. Still not one to give up on God and faith, I continued to go to my Baptist church, mostly along with my oldest daughter Kathleen, even when she was a pregnant teen, even when she was a young mom.

This however, is what happened when we wanted to have her children dedicated, something that Baptists do instead of Baptism; Kathleen was told she couldn’t dedicate her children because the church was not convinced that the children’s dad was really a Christian. No offense, really, we were told; it just wasn’t something the youth leader who was married and childless could in good conscious approve. Where, (I’m sure this good Christian woman wondered) was God, while she prayed for babies and had none, and this young single woman had two? These are the kinds of thoughts you hid away as blasphemous and kept locked away, fodder for bitterness in years to come.

Eventually, this, and the scandal that broke when our youth pastor raped young women in the church, left me too angry to attend this church anymore. Rumor was, that the church council, (that in their godly wisdom barred women), had neglected to do a background check on this young youth pastor. The circle of victims grew, and the head pastor tried to do damage control, but for me, it was insidious and sick, and if this was God, well, I was going with Megan’s logic. Not only were the actions vicious and calculated; the belief systems that allowed this to happen were also flawed. I wrote the head pastor a long letter, and he never responded.

So, where was God? I found a glimmer of love and acceptance in a small Episcopalian church in the middle of town. I’d spent nearly all of my life going to church every single Sunday and not to go felt like the most lonesome feeling in the whole world. In this church, I found a Harvard educated ‘father’ who was recently divorced and a handful of older parishioners who welcomed me like a prodigal daughter, even when I voiced the thought, that, “Maybe I’m not even a Christian.” Their answer, “That’s alright dear.”