Chicago Tribune writer and editor Charles M. Madigan could have been describing my own experience when he said in his June 7, 2005 editorial, a€œIn my childhood, we had a cast-iron political philosophy that fit our Roman Catholic upbringing the way a nut fits a machine-threaded bolt. It had a political Holy Trinity: Jesus, Franklin D. Roosevelt and United Mine Workers' President John L. Lewis. Doing the right thing for other people, whether they were poor, sick, mentally challenged, addicted, troubled, was part of the code.a€�

Like Madigan, I grew up in a blue-collar, Irish Catholic household, where I was taught that union principles and the corporal works of mercy were what kept us safe and our communities strong. My parents taught me the value of collective effort. They believed we have an obligation to help others in the community who need us, not because giving makes us good people, but because the health and well being of each community member determines the health of the community, overall.

Growing up in my family was intense. Dinner was not about celebrating the pleasures of the palate or cultivating harmonious family relationships. My mother wasn't much of a cook, so food was beside the point. We were after world peace, and we werena€™t leaving the table until wea€™d figured out a way to get it. Spaghetti would dry on the plates as we sat for one, two, even three hours debating how we would solve the worlda€™s problems. I remember strenuous debates over whether unions and nuclear power plants were beneficial, necessary but evil, or just plain evil. One evening, we debated for hours whether one could compare Johnson's War on Poverty to FDR's New Deal, or if the former was simply a natural extension of the latter.

I loved it. Away from the dinner table, we kids had to "watch our mouths," but at table, rank had no privilege and free exchange ruled.

We also talked about religion and what our faith required of us. Ours was a Catholic home, but my parents -- especially my mother -- put special emphasis on our being "Vatican II" Catholics. She taught us that onea€™s own conscience trumps papal authority, hands down, and she made sure we understood that if therea€™s a heaven, all Goda€™s children are going to get there, no exceptions.

She also raised us to believe that faith without works is dead. She said that if we wanted to hear Goda€™s voice, wea€™d have to get quiet and listen with our heart, but if we wanted to see Goda€™s face, wea€™d have to look for it in the eyes of others -- especially the eyes of those in need.

I fell away from the Catholic church after my mother died in 1971, briefly became a "Jesus Freak" in the mid-70a€™s, then told God that I needed to take a little break from all things religious. I still believed in God, of course. I just needed a little time-out.

In the 80a€™s, while pursuing my B.A. and then my M.A. in English, I explored eastern religious philosophy, practiced Transcendental Meditation, read all I could on Native American spirituality, and discovered echoes of my spiritual imagination in the pages of Walt Whitmana€™s Leaves of Grass. I started attending Mass again. Unfortunately, for reasons I still dona€™t completely understand, I found that the Eucharistic prayers made me weep. I was not at all sad when I cried -- but I was embarrassed, so once again I stopped going to Mass.

I spent the 90a€™s struggling to survive the complications of a difficult marriage, my husbanda€™s illness, and our eventual divorce. I struggled with depression and bills, and attempted to find meaning and solace in union work and teaching educationally disadvantaged students in NIU's CHANCE program. It was a lonely, exhausting time. Sometimes, when I felt overwhelmed, I would go at night and sit in the local church, where I would pray prayers without words, and listen with my heart for the sound of Goda€™s voice. I began to keep a spiritual diary. It helped.

In 2001, I returned to the Catholic Church and tried to devote myself to it. I read Dorothy Daya€™s "The Long Loneliness," learned about Oscar Romero, Leonardo and Clodovis Boff, and Gustavo Gutierrez, and thought I had finally found reason enough to stay in the Catholic Church. However, my conscience and my politics wouldna€™t allow me to do so. I am pro-choice. I am in favor of gay marriage. I believe clergy should be allowed to marry, and that women should be ordained. Like many Catholics, I am against capital punishment and the war in Iraq, but unlike them, I also believe that church governance must come from the ground up. In short, I discovered that I didna€™t belong to the Catholic Church, after all.

From my journal -- a portion of an e-mail I sent to a friend just after I left the Catholic Church:

a€œMy Catholicism is a part of who I am. It is my childhood, my mother, my father, my way of seeing the world, my way of seeing myself and my way of responding to those I love. It's even my secret belief that a rosary that's been blessed feels different--that once blessed, it allows me to hold it and the hand of God at the same time--and it is responsible for me believing that I am my brother's keeper. The church has given me so much, and it has disappointed me in equal measure.

I don't anticipate going back to the Catholic church, not unless we get another guy like John XXIII, anyway, and I don't see that happening in my lifetime, but I will always love what my mother told me the church was about -- justice and love and compassion and tolerance and ecumenism and the courage of intelligence and conscience in the face of conventional wisdom. And I will always miss singing the Gloria. And I will always wonder why I cried whenever the Agnus Dei -- the Lamb of God -- was recited.a€�