Still Catholic after all these years

We’re still not sure what we are doing with this blog.

It is no longer a blog about Vietnam, but a blog about our new family.

And something new about us, something that started in Vietnam, perhaps, is that we go to church. We’re not sure how it happened. Not so long ago, it seems, Peggy was making proposals for a Buddahist naming ceremony as a way to welcome a baby to our family.

Last Saturday we gathered about twenty family members and friends at Holy Family Catholic Church and Rev. Jerry Boland baptized Luc Au Su and Maisie Minh Tam. Then we ate a nice lunch at Saint Ignatius, with pizzacottos from Pompei (and cannollis for dessert). The weather was beautiful, the church was beautiful after many years of careful renovation and refurbishment, and, according to all the guests, it is hard to remember that Ignatius is just a high school, because it looks so good inside and out.

In fact, and surprisingly, perhaps, we’ve been going to church at Holy Family regularly since our return from Vietnam. In Vietnam, you might remember, we attended Easter mass at the Catholic Cathedral, where we also watched a staging of the crucifixion on Good Friday.

Peggy and I do not consider ourselves to be very religious or very strong in our beliefs as Catholics. Some of our beliefs go against traditional teachings of the church.

But we have found ourselves comforted in the church itself and among the parishioners, who have been generous and welcoming. It is also the place we have come to associate with Declan, our infant son who died just two days old, because we held his memorial gathering of our friends and family at Holy Family. We have visited the church each of the last two years on his birthday. And now, visiting there each week is, in a sense, like visiting him with our two new family members.

In his remarks at the baptism, Father Boland noted that Holy Family, which is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year, had been founded as a church for immigrants—a place where immigrants from many different countries gathered with something in common. In a strange land, the church brought people together. He talked about a helpful conversation with another priest with a Vietnamese background, in preparation for baptizing Luc and Maisie. The Vietnamese, Father Boland noted, have tremendous feeling and respect for their ancestors and believe strongly in a connection between the living and family members who have died.

Organizing the event was a little bit hard, especially trying to find a date that worked for everyone and that fit with the schedule at the church. In the end we couldn’t make it work for everybody. After our event we drove out to LaGrange Park where Peggy’s sister Kathy was holding a birthday party for her youngest son, Sean, and where all of Peggy’s family, her brother John, and her other sister Eileen, were able to be together for a few hours. John, his wife Sara, and their kids Kate and Griffin were able to make both events in the same Saturday afternoon trip from Champaign.

Earlier, at Holy Family, her Aunt Fran and Uncle Bud, and her cousins Jimmy Devenney, with is wife Cathy, and Peggy Abboud, with her daughter Ellie, had joined us.

On my side my brother Bob and his wife Sylvia traveled from Boston for the weekend to be god parents, with Eileen for Luc. My mother Joyce also made the trip, and she has been visiting with us for a week now. My daughters Mairead and Hanna brought their friends Sham, who works with me at Ignatius, and Alex.

Finally, but not least, our friends Kelly and Jeff were godparents for Maisie. Through these hard years they have been the friends we have relied upon most.

It was a beautiful day for us, and all our guests—and Father Boland--made it feel special for us.

On Sunday, my mom joined Peggy, Luc, Maisie, and me again at Holy Family. At the end of mass, Father Boland introduced all of us, but especially Maisie and Luc, to the parish. “Most of us have already met these beautiful babies, who have made a long journey to be with us,” he told the congregation. “But now we can welcome them as new members of our Catholic church.”

Two days before, on Friday, we had talked with the church deacon, a retired Ignatius teacher Rudy Kotleba, who explained the baptism ceremony and sacrament to us in our preparation meeting. Baptism is a ceremony that introduces us to the ups and downs of family life, he told us. He asked us why Catholics pray to their saints—because we believe in intercessions—and what Catholics can expect because of their communion—remarkable consistency from church to church and place to place, because of the connections between Catholics everywhere through the church.

About a year ago, as Peggy and I continued to struggle to start our own family, her sister Kathy gave her a Saint Gerard medal, which, she believes, had helped some of her friends who were struggling to start families. “If you wear it every day,” she told Peggy, “it will work for you, too.”

Peggy and I still don’t know where our beliefs really begin and end, when it comes to religion. Clearly we are in some transition. But a year ago we were beginning a long wait for a baby from China, after five previous years of waiting and two tragedies in our attempts to start a family.

Today we are home with two babies that we love very much, and we have family and friends who have been a great help and support in getting us to this new family and new home. And in strange ways the strands of this story have been weaving a pattern that reveals itself a little bit at a time—but each bit is interesting in its own way.

As Eileen said at one point, “Peggy, you’re really going to church?”