How I became Catholic - Part 4

That year I was asking a lot of questions. Conor couldn’t even answer them all, but he tried his best, or else he would find resources for me.

One Christmas Conor bought me a copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church – pretty much the answer book for everything! I loved it…if I wondered what the Catholic Church said about something, I would just look it up in the index and there it would be. If I still didn’t understand I would tag the page and ask Conor later. I pretty much read it from front to back.

Around that time, I still wasn’t sure if I could become Catholic – I think I really wanted to, but was too worried about what it all meant, if it would affect my family at all, my friends, etc. Conor and I were quite serious at the time (neither of us had ever really dated anyone before, and both of us had similar views of only dating a person if there was the possibility of marriage). I knew that Conor’s Dad was Catholic and his mom was Protestant, but I didn’t know exactly how he felt about that, so one night I asked him “if I never become Catholic, will this relationship still proceed?” and he said yes…it’s funny because when I asked that, I thought that if he said yes, then I could just leave Catholicism alone and stay with things the way they were, but it was at that point I think I really felt free to take a very personal look into Catholicism.

In the fall of 2003 a very good friend of ours started attending RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation – the course you take before you become Catholic) at the local Catholic Parish. We would always meet up at Tim Hortons afterwards (when didn’t we meet up at Tim Hortons? We were going there nearly every evening!) and he would ask Conor questions about what he was learning, and I would look at some of the handouts he was getting. I was honestly kind of jealous – I was struggling at that time about what to do. I was still going to South Abbotsford Church, and I loved it there, but I started wanting things to be different. I started feeling awkward about taking communion, because now that I knew what I was missing, I really didn’t feel right about it. I actually stopped taking communion at all when I was attending church, unless I happened to be on the worship team that day.

Our friend decided to become Catholic, and asked Conor to be his sponsor. I attended the Easter Vigil where our friend was baptized, confirmed and received his first communion. At the beginning of the mass I felt very jealous, I was very happy for my friend, but I was feeling very keenly that I wished it was me up there instead. We all went out afterwards, and as Conor and I were driving to meet up with everyone, I asked him what he thought of me doing that (becoming Catholic) next Easter. He very nicely – not too enthusiastically – said he thought it would be good…and I could see that he was happy!

I told him I would start going to RCIA in the fall, and then see what happened from there – they generally wanted you to make a decision by Christmas, so I could back out if I decided it wasn’t for me.