I used to watch the Waltons TV show as a child.  I remember how Olivia always wanted her husband John to come to church with the family on Sundays.  Sometimes he would, and mostly he wouldn’t.  He felt closer to God on his land and in their mountains.  

As a child being brought up in the Catholic faith, there was an uneasy feeling that John Walton would surely go to Purgatory.

Today, not so long ago, I started watching this show again.  John Walton is my favorite character.  He is quiet, thoughtful, loving, blows a gasket every once in a while, however he always does what is right and with love.  I think he was on to something…

This of course is fantasy.  A TV show.  Just the same it got me to thinking about my own faith.

I didn’t leave the Catholics, they left me.  When I was young, I went astray for a few years.  I would go to church when I needed, not because I wanted.  I would be searching for a miracle to pull my partying, sorry self to Him.  God heard me and sent me a son.  I got married to BJ four months after he was born.  The battle for our son’s baptism and our marriage was just that, a fight.  The first priest I went to, told me to just keep living the way I was living!  I had a brother who became Baptist and went to his church.  He would have had me, if they baptized babies.  However they leave that up to adults.  In the meantime what if you die before that.  Nope.

I have worked hard, all my life.  I worked from the age of 14 on.  The job of stay at home mom is the hardest job I ever had.  We raised our children Catholic.  We homeschooled them.  We loved and supported them and they know we are the parents that are 100% there for them, through it all.  

Everything shifted in the past year.  We have a very special needs 11 year old daughter Kate, with Down Syndrome and Autism.  Our older children have all gone on with their lives, which is wonderful.  It is just BJ, me and Kate now.  What happened is that Sundays became a very heavy burden for me.  Going to Mass without my husband and child was just not right.  We had to go in shifts because Kate is non-verbal and loud growls and shouts are unwelcome in the solemn Mass.

It isn’t right.  I am 100% pro-life.  Yet Kate is not welcome in the Mass.  Never to receive any sacraments except Baptism and Anointing of the Sick.  This child of God has a shelf.  She could be taken off that shelf only at certain times to show pro-life, but not on Sunday.

So I am in limbo and my thoughts have changed.  If Jesus is truly in the Eucharist, how can we keep Him from Kate?  I now stopped believing He is in the Catholic Church.  I think He was, but He isn’t now.  All the manmade doctrines have slammed the door on Him.  The most vulnerable are forgotten.  We are forgotten.

I pray and read my Bible.  I watch and listen to spiritual things.  I try and spend Sunday, making it about Sunday dinner with anyone that shows up or just us three.  I was very lonely, I’m not anymore.  God is on my land, in the sunrise, rain showers, snow or summertime.  He is in my house.  I talk and praise Him all day, everyday.  I can’t hate the Catholic Church.  I just understand that they left the most vulnerable for what they say is quiet worship.  

I’m afraid to tell them, 1 in 44 children are on the Autism Spectrum.  How many families are just like mine, not going to Mass because it would be too disruptive?  How many have gone to find churches that not only welcome these special needs children and adults, but treat them like family and surround that family in love?  

I went to an Autism Conference in Pittsburgh a year ago.  As I sat at a table of eight women for dinner, five of the ladies WERE Catholics.  Each one left and found a Christian Church that welcomed them.  

As soon as I tell this story, all my friends and relatives that aren’t Catholics, start the anti-Catholic hate.  I’m searching for peace and just God.  If someone’s church is about hating another’s, I want nothing to do with it.  That is diabolical.  God wants us on the same page of worship and commandments.  

So in my John Walton world I live.  My purgatory is right here and right now.  In God’s Mercy, He won’t keep my little family from Him.  That, I know. For anyone suffering this same dilemma, I pray every night for relief of all special needs families pushed to the side and left feeling alone. God bless you.