Growing Up Catholic in the South

When you are a Catholic growing up in the southern United States there are certain inevitable truths that you must simply accept.  Any attempt to deny or combat these truths will most likely lead you to either question your own faith or resent that particular region of your country.

The southern United States has always traditionally been Protestant.  It’s a simple by-product of the English and Scottish immigrants who chose to relocate to the New World in the earliest parts of our nation’s history.  It was not until the influx of Irish and Italian immigrants to the northern states like New York and Massachusetts in the early 1900s that Catholicism started to take root in America.

As generations passed new Protestants were born and raised in the South while Catholics continued to reshape the demographics of the North.  In the mid 1800’s a completely new denomination of Protestants called the Southern Baptists came into being and the southern region was changed forever.  Suddenly the South’s distinct music and culture were integrated into its Sunday services.  It took off like wildfire and today the Southern Baptist Convention has over 16 million members and is the world’s largest Baptist denomination. 

In 2011 the South is still predominantly a Southern Baptist region.  As a Catholic in the South, young or old, your life is impacted on a daily basis by someone who is not Catholic.  Or, more likely, you are impacted by non-Catholics every hour of every day.

Growing up you learn relatively early in life that many of your friends and teachers do not share your Catholic beliefs.  Due to numerous inter-faith marriages there’s also a better-than-average chance that aunts, uncles, and cousins will not be Catholic either.  Sometimes there may even be grandparents whose Christian beliefs are fundamentally different than yours.  You may not fully understand the breadth of that difference until much later in life.

I was over thirty years old when my Protestant grandmother casually mentioned Catholics “worshipping Mary.”  I was, to say the least, floored to hear that all-too-common misconception coming from the lips of someone I loved deeply.  I gently corrected her on the spot, but 80 years of incorrect assumptions are hard to reshape in one afternoon.

Southern children are usually surprised, and often a little bitter, when they realize that some of their Protestant friends and family members are still at home playing with toys on Christmas morning while Mom and Dad are dragging them to Mass.  Although the concept of a “Holy Day of Obligation” is not something most Protestants would adhere to, the idea of not going to church on Christmas always made as much sense to me as not going on Easter.  In other words absolutely no sense at all.

To be fair there are some Protestants who go to church on Christmas.  But it is certainly not a requirement and I doubt most would feel any guilt or remorse over missing a Christmas Day service.

You’ve probably already figured out that I am a result of one of those aforementioned interfaith marriages.  Like most Catholics born in the South I can trace my Catholicism to somewhere outside of the region without venturing too far down the family tree.  My Catholicism comes through my paternal grandmother and follows a straight line through New York City, Canada, and stops where it originated in Ireland.

My mother’s side of the family tree is Southern Baptist from limb to limb.  I even attended a Baptist Kindergarten myself before heading off to Catholic elementary school.  Years later I rode on a church bus to a Southern Baptist Sunday school the year before I was finally baptized in the Catholic Church.  In other words, I have developed my opinions and based my decisions on my faith from my life experiences.  I am not a Cradle Catholic.  I was exposed to Catholicism and Protestantism from a young age and I am grateful for the knowledge that I gained from the experiences I had with both.

The fact that I was exposed to both points of view yet chose Catholicism implies that I believe in the teachings of the Catholic Church.  Of course I do.  If I didn’t the title of this blog would be Southern Protestantism, which is almost redundant. 

Just last month I was questioned by a Protestant friend (that I just LOVE to debate with), “How do you know you’re right?”  My response was, “How does anyone?”  I would assume that if you’re a Protestant, or a Buddhist, or a Muslim, you probably think that you’re right and everyone else is wrong.  Does that mean I don’t love and respect my friends and family members of differing faiths? Of course not.  Would it be easier on our interpersonal relationships if we all were the same denomination?  Of course. 

Now obviously I know Protestants who are good, devout, loyal, honest, decent people living their lives as they think God would want them to.  And do I know Catholics who break a majority of the commandments on a daily basis and only go to church for weddings and funerals?  You bet I do.

But growing up Catholic in the South is not necessarily a bad thing.  First and foremost the differences that you have with your friends and extended family can actually help to bring you closer to your immediate family – especially to your siblings.  No matter how fun your Protestant friends and relatives are, no matter how much you love them, they are different from you in very fundamental ways.  No one is going to understand your personal belief system as much as your parents and siblings who have shared it with you for your entire life. 

And then there are the Sacraments – those wonderful gifts that God has given us to help us to share in his eternal Grace.  The simple truth is that First Communion and Confirmation are really exciting events in the life of a young Catholic.  The kids get to be the center of attention for one night and they get to deepen their understanding of their faith in a much more mature and personal way.    And I can tell you from personal experience that meeting the bishop at Confirmation is pretty cool.

So as I kick-start this blog with a column about growing up Catholic in the South, I sincerely hope that I haven’t offended anyone.  But if I have, I’ve got some bad news for you – it’s only going to get worse.  While every entry in my blog may not always be about being Southern, you can guarantee that every entry will be about being Catholic.  And if it sometimes take on a Catholic versus Protestant tone… well I apologize for that in advance too, but that is an everyday reality for me (or anyone else who is paying close attention to the world around them).

So, off I set on my journey into Catholic blogdom with a rosary in my pocket and a Lynyrd Skynyrd song on my lips.  I can’t promise that it’s going to be fun or even interesting to you.   And how knows, maybe you will be offended from time to time.  But I can promise that it will always be honest.