Comments on yesterday's show (1/12)

Lino's "engagement": Even Lino acknowledged that if there was an engagement via text message, it was probably off after the talk with the girlfriend about Catholic/Lutheran beliefs about communion. Which brings up the bigger issue of interfaith and interdenominational relationships... they aren't easy if there's no compromise. Case in point: I'm Catholic, my wife is Southern Baptist. We have two children: a 2½-year-old daughter and an 8-month-old son. Both were baptized in the Catholic Church, but they also participated in baby dedication ceremonies at my wife's church, and for various reasons the family as a whole is much more involved in my wife's church than my parish. I can already see problems brewing once my daughter turns four and it's time to enroll her in CCD classes at my parish... my wife is going to be very resistant to the idea, and that's not going to make me happy.

My personal scenario above is much more complicated than what I wrote, but the point in writing it is that, if they were seriously thinking about marriage, Lino and his girlfriend would do themselves a favor by talking about the issue of their separate faiths and how they would raise any children they might have. Pre-Cana instruction is helpful, but family circumstances and me and my wife's individual beliefs have changed in ways we never could have predicted during our instruction. None of this should be a discouragement, though... there are plenty of examples of highly successful mixed marriages out there, and I have faith that my own marriage will be one of them. I don't see why Lino couldn't have the same thing.

Coming back to the faith: A great question posed by Lino, and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the callers give their personal stories. My own story is similar: I was a cradle Catholic who fell away from the faith after my confirmation. Then by my mid-20s I just had one thing after another going wrong in my life, and in desperation I began to reconnect with my faith. I started going to Mass at the Catholic Center at the university I attended years before (which I never set foot in while I was actually a student there), and before I knew it I was a lector nearly every weekend. The center's chaplain was a wonderful Franciscan priest who made Mass something I wanted to go to and not something I felt obliged to attend. My faith grew leaps and bounds during my time there, and I ended up staying involved there until I got married in 2005 (officiated by that same Franciscan priest, who recently retired after 38 years as the center's chaplain).

Tammy in Leesburg, VA: She preceeded and followed her coming-back-to-the-faith story with a really low-brow and unprovoked insult against Gus Lloyd. Even Lino's not that bad. Hey Tammy, kiss my...