A number of years ago, my
husband I taught RCIA. I was a pretty new Catholic myself then. If I knew then
what I know now, RCIA would have been a whole lot different, and I probably
would have been “fired” pretty quickly.
One young woman who came into
the Church under our watch has been in my line of vision ever since then. She
didn’t make it to every RCIA class, and she missed the important stuff about
chastity and artificial contraception. Shortly after being received into the
Church she informed me quite happily that she was living with her (also
Catholic) boyfriend and was pregnant.
Well, eventually they did get
married in the Church, and now she has two children, both of whom have been
baptized. I brought up the contraception with her at one point (privately, of
course) because of a public statement she made on Face Book, and she told me
then that she wasn’t going to Mass because she didn’t agree with Church
teaching in several areas.
Recently, this young woman’s father
died, and she is devastated. I feel sad for her, not only because she has lost
her father, but because she lacks the “tools” to deal with her grief – the
faith that the Church teaches. She
thinks her non-Catholic father went straight to Heaven, so will she pray for
the repose of his soul?! I doubt it. Her FB status today said, “When just a month has
seemed like a lifetime, what is the rest of my life going to feel like??”
I
want so badly to talk to her about eternity. She seems so completely tethered
to the temporal sphere! Nothing she has said about her father’s death indicates
any kind of Catholic understanding of death, judgment, Heaven, or Hell, let alone purgatory. There seems
to be little or no comprehension about what “eternity” means, no comprehension
of what it means to fight the good fight here on earth so that we can get to
Heaven, no awareness of the salvific value of suffering.
Alas,
she is unlikely to want to discuss these issues with me!
And,
another alas – she is not the only one of our “converts” to stray from the
fold.
Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.