In an article published by the National Catholic Register, TCA’s Dr. Grazie Pozo Christie discusses her husband’s conversion from Judaism to Catholicism, and mourning the middle eastern conflict in her article entitled, “Catholic and Forever the Son of a Jewish Mother.” She writes
“Here at my home, we are, like all the world, aghast at the horrific acts that the Hamas terrorists perpetrated upon Israeli civilians — and proudly broadcast. The videos show the malevolence that man is capable of, making one almost ashamed to be a member of our species.
As a Catholic, I find the situation to be especially painful because, like so many Catholics, I regard Jews with the affection expressed by Pope St. John Paul II in his memorable visit to a Rome synagogue in 1986, in which he said:
“You are our dearly beloved brothers, and in a certain way, it could be said that you are our elder brothers.”
But in our family we go a little farther. My husband’s mother is Jewish, and although he is now a devout Catholic, he will always be, in some unalterable sense, a Jew.
As a child, he was ignorant of the riches of his grandparents’ faith; he was raised in an entirely secular home. His Judaism was a flavor and a spirit — of strong family bonds, love of life, food-as-affection, inveterate matchmaking, and the wonderfully wry Jewish sense of humor that persists in the hardest of circumstances. Of the Torah, or of the Hebrew language, he knew next to nothing, but at his grandfather’s funeral, he tells me, the cantor’s “B’aruch atah, Adonai…” (Blessed are you, Lord…) struck a deep chord within him.
After 10 years of marriage and Sunday church attendance, he converted to Catholicism. When his understandably disturbed mother asked him why, he answered: “I needed faith, and you and Dad didn’t give me one.”
