Continued from last week...

Mixed marriage in the next generation...

Once we teenagers began a hectic social life Mass became a Sunday night affair. Confessions were heard up to the end of the homily. The confessional was at the front of the church, with the first pew reserved for the confession queue. Mum insisted on confession every Sunday night. We always arrived late and were marched straight up the front with all eyes on us.

After confession I had to walk back down the Church in front of everyone. I was terribly shy and I hated it but it never occurred to me not to go to confession. For I was, as we said in those days, a "devout Catholic".

At nineteen, I met His Nibs. He was from a rural family, ultra-conservative Protestants, in town doing his apprenticeship. When his mother realised our romance was serious she called him home and had a quiet chat with him. She pointed out that his father would cut him off from the family if he married a Catholic girl. He got on his high horse and told her it was his life. She graciously accepted that but warned him that she would have to stand with her husband when the split came! He consulted his sisters. Two of the three agreed with his mother. But he was not having a bar of it!

As it turned out, his father died without learning the awful truth. But I thought it was the most romantic thing I'd ever heard. His Nibs did that for me! How naïve we both were to think that was the end of the religion hassles.

The kids will be Catholic!

We didn't speak of religion again until we became engaged. I hit him right between the eyes. I still go to Church; you gave up Sunday School as a kid. I win! The kids will be Catholic. I'll take them to Mass like my mum did. Sorted! He wasn't happy but had been out-debated so we moved on to important things like the bridesmaids' dress colours.

We married. I learned years later that the private chat the priest had with him when we went to sign our prenuptial papers was little short of bullying over the kids being Catholic. It was done man-to-man and I was left out of it.

None of his uncles and aunts attended the wedding. There were vague excuses about work and travel. I learned years later it was a boycott.

We moved to Sydney on the weekend we married. The church was a huge place crowded with strangers. I went to Mass for several months, then sort of drifted. The world didn't stop turning and I didn't feel anything. No guilt, no compulsion to go. I still prayed. Well, sort of.

I did have our two children baptised. One of His Nibs' sisters gave him an earful over the phone, but nothing was ever said to me.

Nine years later I found myself thinking often of Church. My daughter was coming home from scripture classes with little holy cards and comments like "Mummy, we learned the Hail Mary today". Something began to stir. After a thoroughly terrifying TV documentary on the prophesies of Nostradamus, I high-tailed it back to Mass. We were now back from Sydney and living in my home parish.

The gospel was Doubting Thomas and I was hooked...

On my first Sunday back, the gospel was Doubting Thomas. I was hooked.

Words fail me in describing the parish I discovered there. It was the early eighties and Parish Renewal was in full swing. The priest gave brilliant homilies. There was a clever young nun playing the organ, and the place was jumping.

It was tough at first; I'd stand outside after Mass making conversation with my seven-year-old, hoping someone would talk to us. Sister always made a point of having a chat. She got me onto the bulletin typing roster, then later the readers' roster. She introduced me to some of the other women and I gradually formed some lovely friendships.

I'd never heard the word Community before this. Hospitality and adult faith were the catch-cries from the pulpit. I remember the first time I "heard" the Emmaus story – "they recognised Jesus in the breaking of the bread" – and how the priest made a fuss of the hospitality of the two who had invited the stranger to eat with them.

I found parish life unrecognisable from the silent and reverent Church of my childhood. I just loved going there and having so many people being friendly. I do remember taking Mum once; there was a cup of tea afterwards and I said to her, can't you feel the love, Mum?

Keep that 85% non-attendance figure in the back of your mind as you read on...

I also developed a new insight that would haunt me forever. For every Catholic wife sitting in a pew on Sunday morning, there's a husband at home in bed. One or both might be extremely lonely. I can guarantee I was. This new solitary experience of mine was about to cause a gulf the size of Texas in our relationship. Keep that 85% non-attendance figure in the back of your mind as you read on!

When the priest set up a series of parish retreat weekends, I went with the blessing of His Nibs, and just as well for I was going anyway. Anyone who has done Antioch or Cursillo will understand the conversion experience I had. The most important thing in my life became, who is this man called Jesus?

They gave us a crucifix to wear round our necks. I put mine on a little locket I was in the habit of wearing, and His Nibs later spoke of how he grew to hate the sound of those two trinkets tinkling together.

Over the next ten years I became the paid parish secretary, then later two diocesan jobs. I played Peter Kearney and Paul Gurr tapes in the car. I co-ordinated RCIA, did every Adult faith development course in town, and spent a fortune on books. John Powell SJ, Thomas Green SJ, then Dick Westley and beyond. And Andrew Greeley's non-fiction work "The Essential Mysteries" completely re-wrote my primary school religious education overnight, as he used new language to explain things I'd known forever in my gut.

All mixed in with this was a loneliness beyond imagining. Easter was the worst. Assorted spouses would be received into the Church at the Vigil Mass. I'd cry to God — why? Some of these had Catholic partners who hardly bothered. I had enthusiasm in full measure. I was going to weekday Mass and loving it.

Now my heart was on fire...

I'd never been to Church on Good Friday as a kid. It wasn't compulsory like Sunday Mass!. But now my heart was on fire. I'd hug my dear friends outside Mass after the vigil, with the Exultet ringing in my ears. Then I'd go home to find His Nibs engrossed in a movie. He'd ask without looking up "how did it go?" and I learned not to answer, for his eyes would just glaze over. How do you explain to someone something as mysterious, as powerful, as wonderful as the Easter Triduum? I call this my re-entry problem, such were the different worlds I found myself in. His Nibs is a good, loving, man of integrity. I don't want to understate his stature. Yet he didn't get it. He never has.

I would whip myself over that. It was obviously my fault. I mustn't be living what I proclaimed.

Meanwhile the spirit of Community in our parish just grew and grew. Families would regularly go off for coffee together after Mass; but not me. I went straight home. I felt it keenly. Every week I'd walk in through the carpark behind some couple arriving for Mass, and hate being by myself.

His Nibs was finding it tough, too. Every year on the feast of Peter and Paul the PP would ask us to invite people into the RCIA program. I'd try. I'm ashamed to admit to the number of arguments we had over it. He was by then mixing a bit socially, but the Protestantism ran so deep I felt he couldn't even label it. He'd deny his upbringing had anything to do with it. He just reckoned he wasn't interested. But I remember he came to a parish anniversary barbecue and thoroughly enjoyed himself but when we then went into the Church to celebrate Mass, he sat outside in the car in the dark for a whole hour while all his parish friends and I were in doing our thing! I was so humiliated, so upset, so frustrated.

It wasn't all bad. I "conned" him into doing a Marriage Encounter weekend when he made the mistake of asking me what I wanted for my birthday. He grudgingly went along and gave it all he had. For a few weeks life was wonderful. But we couldn't overcome that yawning religious gulf. He later agreed that we'd be the Antioch couple for two years and he acquitted himself marvellously, but the day our term was over — nada. He left it all behind.

Some of my parish friends were understandably annoyed at me for being so sooky about this mixed marriage stuff. There were worst disasters in peoples' lives. But when your faith is a treasure beyond belief, when you've discovered the deepest meaning of life and mystery and you have experienced what Christ's love incarnate is like, to not want your spouse to know that same joy seemed untenable to me. So every year at the Mass for the feast of St Peter and Paul, I'd ask, maybe this year, God? Then get sooky and have a weep.

"Mummy, if all the stuff about Jesus is true, how come Daddy doesn't go to Mass?"

I remember exactly where I was when my girl asked me, "Mummy, if all the stuff about Jesus is true, how come Daddy doesn't go to Mass?". It's up there with knowing where you were when Armstrong walked on the moon! I'd been expecting it, but it didn't make it any easier to deal with.

This was a child trying to figure why her two Significant Others saw life so differently. I wasn't about to debunk her dad in her eyes. So I made light of it. Perhaps that makes me a person of little faith, but more likely it was the same inability to discuss my faith that had crippled me back in high school, with the "publics".

Like my childhood I was still living with a foot in two different worlds, and not fully belonging in either. My religious world was unrecognisable from my childhood one, though. Now I saw the role of the laity so differently. That we are part of the royal priesthood called to Mission, only made things worse. Being Church took a whole lot more energy. This new active Catholic laity was a quantum leap from my mother's day.

Most of our friends were Catholic. Whenever the shop talk started, I'd get edgy as His Nibs' eyes began to glaze over yet again. Even my own family saw me differently. They joked and teased me, especially the year I refused to accept one of the hams that had "fallen off the back of a truck" just before Christmas. Then years later, some tools disappeared from my brother's workplace and he was arrested, tried and acquitted of receiving stolen goods. My parents and a couple of siblings went to all his court appearances as moral support, but they kept the whole story from me till it was all over.

Of course, I needed to do some growing emotionally. As the years rolled by, I began to see some light in all this. I came to realise that His Nibs was the eyes and ears of the world, a way of monitoring how we Catholics were going. If the parish gossip machine was in full bore, or if there was a power struggle on in the parish – I could see the judgment in his eyes. At Mass we had a basket where you could take a can of food for the Vinnies food parcels. A girlfriend with a non-Catholic husband told the story of telling her son one Sunday to put the red salmon back in the pantry, and get the tin of baked beans instead, and then she noticed her husband's raised eyebrow! See how it works? Perhaps our non-Churched spouses are a greater gift than we realise!

In hindsight I see how gracious His Nibs was. He never commented that my paypacket was less than I would have earned from a secular employer. And he put up with my many absences because of one committee or another.

I never got over the pain and loneliness...

In later years I backed away from the political and organisational side of Church life, and that made things more comfortable, for a little while. I never got over the pain and loneliness, where I couldn't speak of any particular Churchy thing that mattered to me with the person I was supposed to be most intimate with. And there was always that sense of failure. I remember one day a priest asked him, "But do you see Wendy as more loving now" and I waiting with bated breath for his answer.

That our lives have followed this path is a source of great Mystery to me. I cannot understand why God would simultaneously endow me with such a gift of enthusiasm for the Church yet leave my spouse out in the cold, so to speak.

By the time our kids had left home, the differences had defeated us. For my part, I compared His Nibs with the inspiring men I knew through Church, the dedicated Vinnies blokes; or even just the ordinary blokes sitting with their wives at Mass. I felt betrayed and unloved.

I left home. His Nibs was shattered and I was a bit of a mess myself. After twelve months apart and much soul-searching, we pulled it back together and have managed another ten years. I think we'll make it to old bones now. I have had to surrender to the Mystery of it all. I still work for the Church but go to Sunday Mass in a parish where I avoid forming personal bonds. I love Community in action — I could watch from the sidelines for hours.

New ways of being close have grown around His Nibs and I. We bought a yacht. I call it our Chapel. I now talk of wind and tide and sails and sheet-ropes instead of readings and sacraments and cardinals and Vatican documents. I see His Nibs out at sea, peaceful and in communion with God, unspoken of course. Woe betide anyone who tries to tell me he he's not going to earn eternal life because he doesn't call Christ by name.

I also now have a precious spiritual friend with whom I can talk of great homilies and the true nature of the historical Jesus. I have girlfriends I meet with monthly, and we talk faith issues to our heart's desire. And of course there is Catholica.

It was an epiphany for me when a friend pointed out that there are lots of Catholic marriages where one partner doesn't share the enthusiasm and depth of faith of the other. So this isn't really just a Mixed Marriage issue. But the notion of Community does need some careful sensitivity, for we are a Church where our religion is a way of life. The Family Groups movement is a marvellous thing, allowing non-Churched spouses the chance to be part of the community without the Churchy talk. His Nibs wouldn't join; I think I'd probably nagged him a tad too much by then.

It's a mistake to believe the ecclesial community is where we do our best Churchy stuff...

It's a mistake to believe the ecclesial community is where we do our best Churchy stuff. Maybe for some of us, involvement in the faith community is the worst option. We need to re-fit the Cross we carry and try to lessen the loneliness. I still believe for every Catholic woman sitting at Mass with the kids, there's a lonely husband at home. We can't change that for Sunday Eucharist is the source and summit of our lives, but maybe we could re-think where the energies we draw from the Gospel Mandate should be directed.

My story's pretty extreme. I suppose a lot of folks in mixed marriages do just fine. But if I had my time over again, if I had known as a twenty-year-old the massive changes to Catholic culture I'd be faced with, I would never have married His Nibs. I wouldn't do it to us, or to our kids, either. Having said that, the only religious icon in my house is a crucifix which I defiantly purchased. It has the risen Christ on it. I won't have a crucifix with a dead Christ. The resurrection is everything to me; the ultimate meaning of Mystery no matter how painful the journey has been.

I do wonder what impact this cultural change I've lived through is having on the 85% of Catholics who have walked away. Have we made it too hard to be a practising Catholic, with a foot in two worlds? We're called to care for the widows and orphans, and spiritually there are more of them than we realise. Being deeply involved in a faith community is a great help on our spiritual journey, but it is a double-edged sword for some. It can truly strain relationships when there is a silent partner.

We have to live the incarnation!

What we celebrate at Eucharist should be primarily grounded in our lives as Christians in the real world, where the language is not at all Churchy but the incarnation is still real. We have to live the incarnation. That's the faith I live now. When our kids and grandkids come home for family weekends, if it appears my Mass attendance is disruptive, I stay at home. We are breaking bread together with great love, and in this family the die was cast years ago.

I take my grand-daughter to Mass when I can. If I don't, no-one will. But that's another story. For we all know the sadness of seeing our kids pull away from churchgoing, mixed marriage or not. My daughter and all her Catholic school friends are non-Mass goers. To be honest, I don't know how many are in mixed marriages because the term has lapsed. The spirit of the Lord of Life is still with us though. Can we find the hand of God in their story?

We need to ask ourselves: is there only defeat, or are there blessings, too, in this generation of non-Churched but fully gospelled young adults?

NAVIGATION: Part I | Part III

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