“Timothy, why did you choose Patrick as your confirmation name?” asked Sr. Elizabeth, the director of the CCD program at my hometown parish in southern New Jersey. Admittedly, my thirteen-year-old logic led me to believe that Patrick was a fitting name for an Irish boy with the last name of O’Neill. Not wanting to sound superficial, I said, “Well, Sister, like St. Patrick used a shamrock to explain the Holy Trinity, I too long to help others discover a love for the triune God.”
Thank God Mom made me read those saint books, I thought as Sr. Elizabeth patted my back with praise. To this day, I can’t help but grin at the sight of a three-leaf clover.
Growing up, my family was marginally Catholic—or at least I didn’t get the sense that a tremendous amount of value was placed on our Catholic Faith. I, like my older brother and sister, was shuffled through grade-school catechism leading up to the reception of the sacraments of initiation. We robotically recited grace before each meal, attended Mass every Sunday, and abstained from meat on Fridays during Lent. Outside of these ritualistic expressions of the Faith, we were not a very Catholic household.
My mother, originally a Jew, converted to Catholicism shortly after my older sister was born, before the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults was widely implemented in the United States. My mother’s faith formation consisted of a few meetings with my father’s parish priest before being received into the Church. Although her faith formation was all but thorough, my mother was strongly attracted to the Church and possessed a deep yearning to encounter Christ in the sacraments.
My father, a cradle Catholic, experienced somewhat of a crisis of faith that kept him away from the Church for nearly my entire upbringing. My father, although supportive of my catechesis, mostly left the formation duties to my mother, a newly minted Catholic.
Drifting from the Faith
Upon my confirmation, it was explained to me that I had fully matured in my Catholic Faith and it was now my decision if I desired to continue participating in it. When this decision was placed before me, my attitude was comparable to a graduate on his graduation day when, for most, the mere thought of reading another textbook or writing another report is unbearable. Presented with this “choice,” I let my Catholic Faith drift into the background. Attending Mass on Sundays became mere obligation, and all the years spent in formation for the sacraments amounted to a “been there, done that” mentality.
In adolescence, my faith waned in importance as friends and girls began to take center stage. Just as my interest in girls was transitioning from cooties to cuties, I discovered pornography. I spent the most formative years of my life learning that flesh somehow eclipsed personhood. My perception of women and sexuality was only made worse in my social circles, where seeing how far you could get with a girl was worn as a badge of honor that sortws the “men” from the boys. I slowly became more and more aware of our culture’s misguided fascination with sex—a fascination that I began to share.
Even though it was many years ago, I can still vividly recall every detail of my first Playboy magazine cover: the glossy texture, the typography, and, regrettably, the photo. I can remember more details about the body of a woman I’ve never met but can remember no mention of chastity in my upbringing. The closest brush I had with the concept of chastity was my public school’s presentation of abstinence—couched between the lessons on condoms and the birth control pill.
The Navy and “freedom”
After high school, I joined the U.S. Navy. At boot camp, I attended Mass my first Sunday away from home. Looking back, I have no idea what prompted me to do so. Maybe it was homesickness; maybe I was seeking the familiar smells and bells of the Catholic liturgy; maybe I was just sick of doing pushups. Whatever the reason, the feeling didn’t linger. I didn’t return to Mass for several years.
After graduating from boot camp, I took my newfound freedom to extremes. I subscribed to the “whatever makes you happy” philosophy. For the first time in my life, I had a steady paycheck and no parents breathing down my neck. I did what I wanted and had no time for God. My unchasteness only became worse and kept me even farther from God and his Church.
Beneath the sheen of my newfound freedom was an urge that I had felt since I was a young boy: a calling to marriage and family. That’s right, I was looking for love. But, as the cautionary song foretold, I was “looking for love in all the wrong places.” My otherwise lofty attraction to marriage and family was being steered by our culture’s poor depiction of marriage and an omission of its vocational nature. Still, I marched onward.
Tired of the conventional dating strategies, I found myself accepting an invitation to a blind date. On a cool, San Diego evening in spring, I sat nervously at a coffee shop with a friend while we waited for our dates to arrive. My friend’s chatter faded into the background as I sat silently trying to formulate the perfect greeting for my mystery date. My usual confidence was absent, and with every second I grew more nervous.
Blind date opened my eyes
When Roisin approached, my Hollywood-driven notions of blind dates gone awry were shattered. Aside from her stunning smile and warm eyes, I was instantly made aware that this girl was different. All of the sudden, my tried-and-true “put on the stud” act was rendered useless; truth be told, it was never very effective anyway. I probably broke every rule in the “How to Get a Woman” handbook.
I learned during our conversation that Roisin was Catholic. Naturally, I did what any fallen-away Catholic male would do when trying to get a Catholic girl to like him: I made myself sound as though I was the available-to-date version of the pope. Roisin agreed to see me again.
On our second date, we shared an Italian dinner over candlelight, enjoyed an evening stroll along the downtown streets, and engaged in delightful conversation. Just when I felt as though everything was going perfectly, Roisin brought up my earlier declaration of being Catholic. I shuddered.
“Well, yes,” I replied, “but I haven’t been practicing for the last few years.” I thought I was done for. Roisin asked me a series of questions aimed at sizing up my values. I answered each question to the best of my poorly formed ability. After an intense “How Catholic are you?” grilling, Roisin agreed to see me again on two conditions: that I return to my Catholic faith and that I recommit to chastity. I hesitated in agreeing to the terms of the offer. I recall thinking, “What in the world is happening?”
With the awkward Catholic quiz behind me, I dropped Roisin off at home. Being the “respectable” young man that I was, I knew that you don’t kiss on the first date, but this was the second. As I prepared to make my move, Roisin opened her car door and said, “I’ll be right back.” Thinking she wanted to brush her teeth, I smiled and waited patiently.
Roisin returned to the car carrying a booklet. She plopped back down in her seat and said to me, “I like you, and I really want to get to know you more, but you should know that I’m not the ‘physical type.’” She continued, “I’m not into dating for the sake of dating. You see, the purpose of dating is to find your spouse.”
“So much for the good night smooch,” I thought. But immediately following my selfish instinct, I was taken by Roisin’s presentation. “This is so different,” I thought as I slouched lower into my seat. Suddenly, I felt immensely drawn to what Roisin was saying. She handed me a slightly worn copy of Jason Evert’s booklet Pure Love. For the next hour, we read each and every page. I clung to each word as though I was learning a new language, and I was. In Roisin, I came to see not only beauty but an immense joy, joy that propelled her to speak the truth despite fear of rejection. A joy that helped me open my mind and heart to a new way of loving.
No issues with the Faith
While I felt my heart was changing in regard to chastity,I wasn’t sure what to make of Roisin’s challenge to return to my Catholic Faith. This challenge caused me to reflect on why I left the Faith to begin with. The truth was, I had no real reason. No objections to Mary, no qualms about transubstantiation, no issue with confession or the papacy. What was it then—apathy, wanting to escape the “oppressive legalism” of the Church? Or was it simply a faith that had gone unnourished?
While at sea in the Navy, I had sought the guidance of the Catholic chaplain, Fr. John. I explained that while I had no doctrinal issues with Catholicism, I felt uneducated in my faith, unprepared to justify the reversion that I felt I was being called to. After some helpful discussion, Fr. John gave me a copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church and encouraged me to immerse myself in my faith. I dove into a period of study and reflection to supplement the “Jesus loves you” catechism of my youth.
Today, I am a little surprised by the passages of the Catechism that I felt compelled to highlight, teachings that today seem so rudimentary. It’s only with the advantage of hindsight that I realize it was poor faith formation that kept me from fully committing myself to my Faith. To make matters worse, my promiscuous lifestyle was so incongruent with my Faith that it became far easier to abandon my Faith all together than to embrace it. And doing so kept me in a state of denial and moral discord where right was wrong and wrong was right.
After a few weeks of dating Roisin, the same friend who introduced us asked me—as if we were back in high school—how “far” I had gone with my new girlfriend. I shocked myself with my response. I replied that our relationship was different than my previous ones and, in some way, better. I told him that we had decided to be chaste.
“Better?” he said, looking at me as though I was crazy. It was then that I realized I was falling in love with Roisin—not with her body but with her personhood.
Clarity through chastity
Through Roisin, I realized, as Blessed John Paul II said, that “only the value of the person can sustain a stable relationship. The other values of sexuality are wasted away by time and are exposed to the danger of disillusion. But this is not the case for the ‘value of the person,’ which is stable and, in some way, infinite” (Love and Responsibility). Having a chaste dating relationship with Roisin was, at times, a challenge, but there was no mistaking the richness that came from putting aside my selfish desires and discovering the transcendent dignity of Roisin’s personhood.
With the clarity of judgment that chastity provides, I was able to see relationship in a whole new light. I began to understand my attraction to marriage and family as a vocation that God had been calling me to—one that he was calling me to share with Roisin. I realized in St. Paul’s charge to husbands to love their wives as Christ loves the Church the magnitude of what I was being called to in marriage.
In Blessed John Paul II’s apostolic exhortation Familiaris Consortio, he said, “Spouses are therefore the permanent reminder to the Church of what happened on the Cross; they are for one another and for the children witnesses to the salvation in which the sacrament makes them sharers” (FC 13). After eleven years of marriage, Roisin and I sometimes struggle to love one another as Christ loves his Church, but by his grace we are able to see in one another a glimpse of Christ’s sacrificial love. The sacrament of marriage allows Roisin and me to experience a foretaste of heaven, the eternal wedding feast where the bride, the Church, will be eternally joined with Christ, the bridegroom.
The wedding feast
The Catechism explains the significance of Jesus’ public ministry beginning at a wedding feast: “The Church attaches great importance to Jesus’ presence at the wedding at Cana. She sees in it the confirmation of the goodness of marriage and the proclamation that thenceforth marriage will be an efficacious sign of Christ’s presence” (CCC 1613).
Not only did Roisin guide me to chastity; she encouraged me to return to the call of my baptism—to be a son of God and a member of the Body of Christ. My return to the sacraments was, and still is, life changing. Second to receiving the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, the sacrament of marriage has been a tremendous source of spiritual nourishment for me.
Marriage is not a one-time event in which husband and wife graduate to a higher level of relationship; it is intended to be an ongoing sign of Christ’s love for his Church. In bringing me back to the Catholic Faith, calling me to chaste love, and modeling for me the love of God, Roisin led me to what I call my conversion at Cana. For that I am eternally grateful.