Being Catholic.

Are you:

-A cradle Catholic born into the faith and a regular participant in Sunday Worship yet unable to defend your faith?

-A lukewarm, pew Catholic going through the motions?

-An inactive Catholic, believing but barely attending Mass except for Easter and Christmas, weddings and funerals?

-A Fallen Away Catholic, angry at the Church for a slight, real or otherwise?

-A Catholic who has left the Church to enter into another religious affiliation because Mass was boring?

-A new Catholic, wondering if you fully understand what you have professed?

-Thinking about becoming Catholic but not sure if you can accept or live with what the Church teaches?

-An intentional Catholic, openly living and sharing the joy, doctrine and dogma of the Church that has endured for centuries.

There are over a billion Catholics in the world. How many Catholics actually live and love their faith may be in question but those who are intentionally Catholic are united every day in the struggle to live and understand the teachings and traditions instilled in this universal identity since Jesus Christ first appeared on the scene. Some have died for the faith and others walk away when called to defend it. Some identify with the crucified Christ and others with the resurrected Christ. Some deem obedience the crucial element needed to be true, while others consider love to be essential in the teachings of the Catholic faith. Many spend their whole lives devoted to the Church answering when called to serve, supporting the Church in all her needs, savoring the joys that can be found therein.

Whoever you are, Ms. Scoyola invites you to enter into her experience of thirty plus years in the service of the Church. She returned to the faith after an absence of twenty years, guilty but repentant and found reconciliation and redemption. In her years of serving in several parishes of the Archdiocese of Galveston Houston in Texas, she directed the formation of hundred