Rick McGinnis writes:
I can offer at least a glimmer of hope. One of the new friends I met at university was Christopher Snow, a student at the Divinity School at the University of Toronto’s Trinity College. In due time he became an Anglican minister, and along with his brother Bob remained my friend for years afterward.
I would meet up with Bob and Chris for drinks, dinner or concerts over my long, lapsed years, during which I slowly recovered from the disappointment of college, and started reading the books I wished I’d had the discipline or sobriety to study then. It was a self-guided education that, bit by bit, led me back to the Church, quite against my best efforts.
The last time I saw Chris I told him about my relapse in Catholicism, my marriage (in Latin!), and the little Catholic school my children were attending. “The thing is, Rick,” Chris told me with a grin, “that nobody who really knows you thought you were ever not a Catholic.”
He knew me better than I knew myself, which I suppose wasn’t really a surprise, since it was his business.
Fr. J. Christopher Snow died this summer after a battle with leukemia. I went to his funeral in his parish church in Milton, Ont., where his energy and faith were praised by his parishioners and fellow priests. I will miss him and his friendship, and maybe even whatever other revelations about myself he might have shared.
And it’s with Chris in mind that I’d like to try to assuage the fears of parents like myself who worry about how university will buffet and bruise the values they’ve worked to instill in their children.
