I’m a cradle Catholic, so I was born into my faith, but I wasn’t born into a completely Catholic family.  My mom is Catholic and so are her parents, but everyone else in my family is not Catholic. Some are Christian and others either don’t believe in God or just don’t like institutionalized religion.  These differences just make me love my family more. Sometimes, by people at my church, by my other catholic friends, or by my catholic peers, I feel looked down upon because of my family history. Like, somehow I’m responsible for my family’s decisions. But I’m not.

First, I’m an only child, something I don’t have control of, and being Catholic, people seem to be fixated on why I don’t have more siblings. Why wouldn’t your mom want a large family? My mom just didn’t. Having a large family comes from the idea of openness to life, but having a small family does not mean you are less open. There are a lot of factors beyond openness which determine what the size of a family is. I don’t think God looks down upon any family for the amount of children they have. But sometimes people try to make me believe I haven’t had the whole Catholic experience by not being a part of a large family, which is crazy because what is the whole Catholic experience? Having my knees ache after kneeling for what feels like ages, being accused of thinking Mary is God, smelling like incense? Because trust me, I live that life.

Second, my parents aren’t married. This of course, yes, yes, is a sin. I get why people dislike this, but I don’t believe in making me feel bad for the way I was raised. Again, I’m not responsible. I was reading a moral theology book and came to a section on sex before marriage. I felt all the arguments on why you shouldn’t have sex before marriage were valid, but then it developed into if you have a baby outside of marriage what’s going to happen. It started to talk about how it would damage the child and give them a horrible life. It started to blame single parents for hurting their children and said in a perfect world everyone would have married parents. Yes, in a perfect world I believe that would be true, but this isn’t a perfect world. I can dream and wish that every child would be part of a perfect family, but that’s not the case. I don’t think I’ve had a bad life. I think honestly I’ve had a pretty good life, a life a lot better than some of my friends who have married parents. I don’t think we should go accusing people of ruining children when their doing the best they can with what they got.

Finally, I didn’t grow up in a family that taught me every prayer that ever existed. Yes, I know the basics like Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory Be, but if it went beyond these and the prayers at mass, I didn’t really know other prayers unless I was taught them in grade school. My friends at youth group whenever I would say I didn’t know a prayer they’d say, “Really? You don’t? I’m pretty sure anyone growing up Catholic would know this,” and then they’d proceeded to ask people if they knew the prayer which of course they did. It’s like a slap in the face, almost like, “Wow, you’re not really Catholic, are you?”  This one is something the drives me crazy because actually it’s believed prayers, especially the ones said at mass, were not meant to be memorized because memorization can lead to a lack of feeling when saying them. Memorization causes saying the prayer to be just a routine, like brushing your teeth, but praying is meant to be with feeling.

I think when we are raised in the same atmosphere for most of our lives, we forget others are not. We forget that people didn’t have the same family experience as us or what we have seen to be the norm in our life. We forget we may believe something in isolation, but when we go and apply it to the world around us, we see it may need to be altered. People require compassion, beliefs don’t. Applying our beliefs on the family require us to still be compassionate to those who have experienced what are not our beliefs.  My family situation does not make me any less Catholic than anyone else.

My family taught me that life isn’t perfect and we sometimes have to roll with the punches and deal with what we got, and that’s okay. They also taught me I don’t have to only experience God through memorized prayers. God is really experienced with people. I’ve encountered God in many ways through my family, even with my family that isn’t Catholic. God is beyond these things that I’ve felt I have been judged on. I hope when I get to heaven and I ask questions, God will look at me and say, “So you didn’t have a perfect family, who did?” and then we both laugh. Side Note: I image God having a great sense of humor, so most of the time when I imagine him talking to me, he’s telling me a joke.

Being Catholic goes beyond my family history. It’s been a journey to get to the point where I’m not offended when people speak poorly of non-married parents in front of me without knowing my story. I always have to remember not everyone has encountered life the way I did, from a very non-stereotypical Catholic family setting. There’s more to family than how many siblings I have or if my parents are married or even if I can recite every prayer. Family is a place where you’re loved for being you regardless of anything. I think my family does that very well because they know we are different. I wouldn’t want my family to be any other way.

 – Lake

“Don’t have enemies. – Have only friends: friends… on the right – if they have done or wished to do you good – and… on the left – if they have harmed or attempted to harm you.” St. Josemaria Escriva, The Way (838)