Wednesday, July 14, 2010

A Southern Baptist meets St. Anthony.

Jennifer at Conversion Diary is one of my favourite Catholic bloggers.  Her post today about her mother-in-law Yaya is one in a string of hilarious posts about this woman.  Here is the beginning, but you need to go there to read the whole thing:

My mother-in-law,Yaya, is Baptist. Well, currently she attends Joel Osteen's church, but the official denomination that she would claim to be a part of (and in which she raised my husband) is the Southern Baptist church.

Friends sometimes ask if there's been any tension between us and Yaya since my husband and I converted to Catholicism in 2007, but there really hasn't been. Occasionally my husband will try to start a good-natured debate with her about doctrinal differences, but she's never interested: "I love Jesus and y'all love Jesus and Jesus loves us and that's all I really need to know," she once said....

Like in every other area of life, the details of Christian doctrine are of little importance to her -- in fact, I'm not sure if she notices them at all. She is so intensely focused on the big picture that she doesn't have time to mess around with the small things. (For example, when she unloads the dishwasher when she's visiting our house, she takes the silverware basket and just dumps the whole thing into the drawer. "I'm not gonna sit there and sort knives and forks when I've got grandchildren I could be hugging and kissing!" she says.)...

Nevertheless, as a gesture of respect I rarely bring up the areas of Christian doctrine where Baptists and Catholics differ. In general, I figure there's no need to wade into controversial territory and risk causing tension between us.

But then Yaya lost some important paperwork. And I decided to tell her about St. Anthony.

Go and read about Yaya's experience with St. Anthony.

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