Brush with Haiti by Kathleen A. Tobin Read Free Book Online Page A

attendance.
    I later got married outside the Church, by a judge, to a Jewish man. My parents loved him and even offered their backyard for the wedding. They were that non-judgmental. And they said nothing about my lack of Mass attendance after the wedding or about not raising my kids Catholic. But I began to miss the ritual and the sermons, the singing and the sacraments. I had left them behind only to avoid offending my husband and his family. I wished it weren't so, but often participating in anything Christian is construed as anti-Semitic. Rather than argue, I stayed away.
    When my marriage ended, one of the first things I did was go to Sunday Mass at St. Thomas More, my childhood church. I felt afraid and lonely, and sought the security it had brought when I was young. I sat a few pews behind where my family used to sit. My mother and father arrived just after I did, reached their row, genuflected, and knelt down for a pre-Mass prayer. From that moment until the end of mass, I wept.
    I understood that receiving Communion was out of the question. In grade school we were taught that people could not receive Communion with sin on their souls, removable only by the sacrament of Confession. Missing Mass was one of those sins, and I had missed for nearly two decades, except for an occasional holiday, wedding, or funeral. Considering my marriage to a Jew, I must have been judged guilty of fornication and a whole slew of other things. At the end of Mass, my parents saw me as they turned around to leave. I thought my mother would faint. She just looked to the floor and grinned. And that was that.
    It was the social justice aspect ofCatholicism that struck a chord in me. I had a big dose ofit growing up in the 1960s. My studies in Latin American history put much of the Vatican II transformation into perspective, and I became enamored with Latin American Catholicism, particularly the grassroots kind. Speaking with leaders of the Haiti project, I was encouraged to become actively involved in the Commission for Peace and Social Justice at St. Thomas More and made plans to be present at the next meeting. During my long absence I had learned much about Thomas More, the man, and his teachings on social justice, bringing an added dimension to my new participation. This fresh relationship with the Church made things meaningful again and my newfound passion must have been apparent to the others at that first meeting.
    It was early evening and getting dark as I entered the church office. The doorway to the meeting room was just a short way down the hall, and light poured onto shelves of books and a portrait of the Reverend Robert B. Weis. Father Weis founded the parish, and served as pastor for all the years I was growing up. I felt like I had come home again and if the Holy Spirit had ever been alive within me, it was then. I entered the room in the center of which was a long, heavy, wooden conference table, and introduced myself to the women who were there. I told them I would be reporting on the Heartland Center's project in Haiti. It was one of those moments when one realizes that so many things experienced earlier in life had led to this point. I thanked God for being patient through my winding journey.
    "Are you a member of the parish?" one of the women asked, peering over her glasses.
    "Um..." She caught me off guard and I was not sure how to answer.
    "I haven't seen you here before," another noted. I suddenly felt I was somewhere I shouldn't be. All of the depth and breadth of my understanding of the universal church and God and humanity and goodness and justice could not outweigh the gate-keeping nature of those women.
    I made my presentation somewhere after a discussion of an upcoming blood drive. I was careful not to go too far in attempting to explain the need for economic and social restructuring in underdeveloped places like Haiti. Authentic social justice can indeed call for radical changes, but this was a time to keep things