On July 4, 2002, my daughter was born prematurely; premature enough to leave her with severe head bleeds and left her left side to be, to this day, difficient of muscle/motor control.  She wears a leg splint and a hand splint.

When I entered her into a local Catholic school two years ago, I was astounded at how small the class size was, but other than that, it reminded me of the Catholic schools I too had grown up with.  I also was taken aback at just how much a Catholic education costs.  But I wanted the best for her.

After the first year, I became involved in PTO meetings, I attended assemblies, and I joined the local church, as did my family of four.  We made mass every week, attended RCIA education on Sunday mornings, and prepared for my children to be baptized, as I was at their age.

Honestly, it sucked having to get up so early on Sunday mornings to listen to people explain the precepts of the church to the incoming members.  But my wife wanted to become Catholic, so I rolled with it.  I made some nice aquaintences along the way, and felt like I was setting my family on strong solid footing.

We became very close to a nun there, had her over for dinner, went to Catholic Couples outings with the priest, etc.

My wife completed her RCIA training as if she were a young padawan, eager to fight the Empire. 

Her baptism would be on the midnight Easter service, a beautiful event which I had a personal nostalgia for, and I told her how I remembered mine.  We became closer as a family.

Then one week before her baptism, she was nonchalantly informed that the reason her name was not on the list was because, though we had been a couple for ten years, and had a child, and gone through a year of RCIA--we had never actually been married, so she would not be receiving the sacrament of baptism.  We were "living in sin."  I felt guilt, anger, and sympathy for my better half, and knew somehow it had been my fault for not knowing.  It was something I thought we could work out, but it wasn't.  Oh well.

Then, about six months later, we noticed my daughter was having alot of issues at school.

We are both involved parents, and made several visits with her teacher.  She was well aware of the deficits my daughter had due to her prematurity, and so we came up with extra-curricular activities to help her improve.

Then she started coming home with a strange attitude.  Then with unexplainable marks on her arms.

The teacher had also become strangely short-tempered at times.  Our dealings with her became slowly more and more uneasy.

When our daughter told us how her teacher had hit her, and showed us how hard, we acted immediately.  We contacted her principal, who in turn questioned the teacher.  The call back was one of irritation and annoyance from the principal. 

The teacher denied that while the other kids were out at recess, she had hit the hand that my daughter recieves Physical therapy for, a hand she can barely open.  We had to remove her from the situation of course.

No calls from our "friends" at the church.  No calls of concern from our Priest, whom we knew well, hugged every week, and played with my daughter at every church event.

They totally ceased contact from us, and left my children asking why.  Why would they not be concerned with my daughter's well being?

So, I left the church.  She changed schools.  They circled the wagons, the teacher was not disciplined.  They made my daughter's move to another district as slow and uncooperative as possible.  The experience was taxing for my family.  $3900 per year for tuition.  $115 per term for PSR.  RCIA was free, but cost us alot in the end in grief and disappointment.  Our broken hearts couldn't be calculated in cost.  All for my kids asking me why so-and-so doesn't call anymore.  Why no one said to my daughter, "I'm sorry, baby."

Since then I have realized that not all Catholic Scools are bad.  Not all parishes handle such situations so badly.  Not all people come away heartbroken.

But sadly, this is what happened to us.  We have yet to figure out where we will attend now on Sunday, and we had to put my daughter in a sub-par school in our district.  We cannot afford to move.

I have realized that those stories about the Catholic church shrinking, the church I used to perpetually defend, are about people like my family--who needed something, desperately, and more than once didn't recieve it. 

More and more of the Catholic Schools I used to pass by are becoming independantly operated COGIC or Zion churches, or whatever affiliations that buy the properties.  More and more I hear how a priest or bishop refuses to give communion to someone due to a reason the church feels is significant, yet means less to real people, who are imperfect.  More and more I hear their views against some mode of behavior, some lifestyle, some real-life situation or choice.  I wish I knew what and who they were for, if not sinners, poor, the despised, the oppressed. 

I feel sad that the Catholic Church of my youth; the church of mystery and incense and Latin gibberish has become replaced with dark news stories, empty parking lots, and occasionally obscure broken promises.  I long for the day when a dedicated family like mine is consoled by those who rejected it so easily. 

As Archbishop Oscar Romero once taught, if the church is not about the people, then it ceases to be a church.