Religious life

 I suspect my introduction to religion growing up was much like everyone else growing up in the midwest. Only we didn’t live in the midwest. But our parents were from that background, and both had spent a healthy part of their early lives going to church and Sunday School as part of Protestant faiths.

My Mom was from Texas and the Church of Christ. Seemed pretty generic to me, but it was probably something less evangelical than the Baptists. I don’t remember any firey sermons growing up if we ever went to one of those churches off base.

My Dad grew up Lutheran. So we became Lutheran, probably because Mom was not tied to “The Church of Christ” in any strong sense. But I don’t ever remember going to to a Lutheran Church growing up, mainly because we lived on base almost the entire time, or overseas, where we attended very non-denominational Protestant Chapel services on base, wherever we lived. So Lutheran was just a term for our mythic Norwegian roots.

The bases had three flavors of religious services that I knew about: Protestant, Catholic or Jewish. There may have been more, but they were so obscure, I never saw in overt sign of them. Protestant and Catholic services shared the same Chapel area, so they followed each other in time. The Catholics would get in early and late, the Protestants in the middle, with Sunday school during the Catholic Services. The Catholic kids went to Catechism on Monday or Tuesday afternoons… which was mind blowing to me… what madness was that??

In HS, we lived in Litchfield Park, AZ, a planned community west of Phoenix and south of Luke AFB. It had a community Protestant Church that we attended, and I went to Confirmation classes in Junior and Senior HS. I eventually was confirmed, probably my Junior year. Not sure if any of the other kids were.

In college, the Air Force Academy Chapel is/was amazing! Just a spectacular piece of architecture, and during basic training, was a literal God-send for taking 30 minutes out of your crazy day to just decompress in the silence, listening to the aluminum walls expand and pop in the afternoon heat.

When I started dating Laura, we would take a few turns going to each other’s Churches, and after we were married, it switched primarily to the Catholic Church. I enjoyed it. The Catholic faith seemed to have a structure to it that was very similar to my exposure to Lutheranism.

When we got married, we had to meet with Fr. Bergman, the Priest at Zelienople’s St. Gregory Catholic Church, were we were to be married.  He was quite a hoot. He was adamant that I promised to raise our kids Catholic. I had no problem with that, because the Catholic faith felt so close to the Lutheran and generic Protestant beliefs I had grown up with, only magnified. I expected any kids we did have would attend and be raised in OUR church, the one our family participated in together.

So we raised our kids in the local catholic Church, and when we moved to Zelienople, we eventually migrated to St. Ferdinand in Cranberry, because Laura determined their youth programs were robust, and more inviting and inclusive. Great decision as it turned out, and  was very beneficial to our family as I started deploying after 9/11.

I’m not sure what the exact catalyst was, but one day I decided that I since I was raising my kids Catholic, going to Church all the time anyway, I should bite the bullet and convert. So I dropped into the Rectory and asked about the process. Next thing I know, I’m enrolled in an Catechism class for adults: kind of like boot camp for Easter! I really enjoyed it, and had a good class full of varied backgrounds and ages. I think we went from September to Easter, culminating into being accepted into the Church at the Easter Vigil Mass. It was a great experience. I also believe Jill made her first Communion the same night I was Confirmed.

And that’s how the Bryan Branbys went from Lutheran Protestants to a Catholic family!