How Helene rediscovered Catholicism

There was a time when Helene Conroy found it hard to feel comfortable when seated face-to-face with a priest.

Being estranged from the Roman Catholic Church for more than 20 years due to unresolved anger only made things worse.

But Rev. Frank Gilchrist and the Coming Home ministry he helped to found for inactive Catholics changed all of that.

Opening up

"Father Gilchrist is very blessed. He is an excellent listener and has a special gift for making people feel at ease. The man has heard it all before, so you feel you can be yourself and really open up," said Mrs. Conroy, now a parishioner of St. John/St. Ann's Church in Albany. "I firmly believe that bringing Catholics home is what he has been called to do. Father Gilchrist really is like the Good Shepherd. He's completely non-judgmental. He just wants to help you find your way home."

Mrs. Conroy is now active in parish life and also offers her services as a Coming Home volunteer, assisting as needed at meetings and workshops.

"I understand how hard it can be to take that first step of attending a Coming Home gathering," she explained, adding that she literally "dragged her heels" into the first one ever held in the Diocese in the early 1990s.

Going away

"I had been away from the Church a real long period of time -- at least 20 years -- probably longer because my break started pre-Vatican II," Mrs. Conroy recalled. "The reasons I left were what you might call cumulative. They happened over a long period of time. Let's just say life had handed me circumstances I wasn't happy with. There had been a divorce and several losses due to death.

"There were several tough years in a row. Too many losses. I was very angry at the Church and I was angry at God, not so much in the sense of `Why me, Lord?' as 'You should be doing a better job!' I was just plain angry! That anger at God, coupled with an inability to buy into some changes that were taking place in the Church, caused me to pull away."

During the decades she distanced herself from the Church, she didn't practice any other faith, although she admits "I did poke my head in lots of doors looking at other religions. I'd feel discouraged because I didn't fit in. I'd had a very strong Catholic upbringing, including attending Catholic schools from kindergarten through the sixth grade, and my faith was deeply ingrained in me as a result. Even though I stopped going to the Catholic Church, I never stopped being a Catholic."

Coming back

Although she occasionally toyed with the idea of returning to the Church, Mrs. Conroy continued to stay away. There were too many questions she needed answers to before she could make her peace.

"I was raised as a Catholic in the days when you were not encouraged to think or ask questions," she said. "You memorized your catechism lessons and more or less spit them out. In those days, you felt it didn't matter if you really understood it all or believed it or not, as long as you got all the words in the right sequence."

Eventually, she began "peeking in" at St. John/St. Ann's parish where the Rev. James Belogi then served as pastor and where she was involved in a soup kitchen program. (He is now pastor at St. Madeleine Sophie parish in Schenectady, where Helene said she occasionally attends Masses to receive "a dose of Belogi.")

"Father Belogi has an incredible spirituality about him, and he was saying all the things I wanted and needed to hear," recalled Mrs. Conroy. "That was really the start of my home-coming."

Taking the risk

What helped her to complete the journey was seeing an ad in a newspaper for the first-ever Coming Home program, which was co-facilitated by Father Gilchrist and Kathy Menard. (The latter now directs the Renew 2000 program for the Albany Diocese.)

"I remember noticing that the meeting would be all the way over in Schenectady at St. Madeleine Sophie, which, for an Albany native and city person like myself, is the equivalent of going to the other end of the world," she remembers. "That, in my eyes, was a plus because the distance would provide the anonymity I felt I needed. I could just be a stranger in a group which at that time was very important to me."

In retrospect, she marvels that she ever went inside the doors of the meeting room.

"I had so many questions in my head," she said. "I kept praying as I was driving. And when I pulled into the parking lot, I was still telling myself this would be a waste of my time. To say I was reluctant to go inside would be an understatement! I can't explain it, but I was somehow drawn into that building. Physically, I was dragging my feet, and yet I could not keep myself away."

Inside, she discovered there were about 40 others present, "which was perfect since it meant I could fade into the crowd as planned."

Welcome home

What she did not plan on was the incredibly warm welcome she and the others would receive from Dr. Menard, Father Gilchrist and Rev. Patrick Butler (then pastor of St. Madeleine Sophie; now pastor of Christ the King in Westmere).

"Coming Home is a process; the program actually takes several weeks," she explained. "But once they started talking, I knew I had come to the right place and that I would see this through to the end.

"It seemed everyone in that room was angry for one reason or another: divorce, death, birth control. There was no shortage of reasons. What impressed me so much was how Father Gilchrist, Father Butler and Kathy listened, and the manner in which they responded to the people."

One of the things that touched Helene most profoundly as the Coming Home process progressed was the dawning of "the realization that God had never gone away; I did."

Final return

Perhaps the greatest healing experience followed the conclusion of the Coming Home series, when Bishop Howard J. Hubbard celebrated a Mass for all of the inactive Catholics who had returned to the fold.

"It was the most powerful moment of my life, and I still get tears in my eyes when I think about it," Mrs. Conroy said. "There were about 25 or 30 of us in attendance, and the Bishop came down from the altar and stood in front of us and asked us as a group if we could forgive him or the priest or whomever had done whatever it was that had taken us away from the Church. It was a moment in time I will never forget; it was so spiritual, so healing.

"There was a lot going on inside that church that no one could see, but you could feel it. The Holy Spirit was in full force that day!" [[In-content Ad]]