In her own words, Rachel shares the story of her faith journey and relationship with the Catholic Church.

Transcript:

I grew up very Catholic. My family, I call them super Catholics, it’s their life. My dad works for the church. I remember my dad praying with us every evening, he is a very good catechist.

Through high school I was like, I had to follow all the rules. I had to be perfect person, a good person. My perspective was very black and white. I knew the right way and everyone else didn’t that wasn’t Catholic, but then when I went to college things started to change. The people that were in my life weren’t Catholic and I remember feeling uncomfortable because I didn’t know how to relate to non-catholics.

I remember asking my roommate one time, “I noticed that I was only hanging out with friends that were Catholics but you are comfortable with everyone?”

And she said, “I just have so much love to give, it’s about loving other people, it’s not about whether their Catholic or not.”

You start to question everything… And questioning has not been part of my upbringing, Catholic faith. Questioning was allowed, as long as, you came to back to conclusion that was given to you in the first place. Now I was realizing my conclusions weren’t always going back to what I had been given from my youth, that was really scary for me. During that time I lost my faith. I didn’t even know if I believe in God anymore.

Now, my identification is more Catholic-ish, it’s part of my culture, it’s how I was raised and I’m thankful for a lot of it. Especially, Catholic Social teachings, there’s such a wealth of beauty about how we can better love one another.

A huge part of myself spirituality, is social justice and more liberal leanings and the things that I find troubling with, like being ordained. I think women deserve to follow the call that God has placed in their life, as much as, anyone else.

I’m not interested in a church that divides people. That is what Jesus talked about, so much, is unifying people, instead of changing people, so they can come to the church and let people them be transformed by their experienced.