My Girlfriend’s Dad

That Sunny So Cal Summer I Learned to Defend My Faith

IT BEGAN AS an ordinary teenage summer in Southern California. A girlfriend, a swimming pool, and long warm days.

And then there was her dad.

I grew up in a solid, devout Catholic family, attended Catholic school and, aside from a few passing conversations here and there, never really needed to defend my Faith in any serious way. Most kids do not, and my experience was no different. But that particular summer placed me in a situation I never expected.

My girlfriend’s friendly, Bible-quoting Evangelical father turned out to be the first person to really challenge my Catholic beliefs with real intensity. What made the experience unusual and memorable for me was that it all happened in the most pleasant setting imaginable, as you will see. Looking back now, I can see how that unexpected sweet summer crucible quietly yet profoundly shaped the rest of my life.

I look back on the summer of 1977, between my junior and senior years of high school, as a particularly memorable summer. Southern Orange County, where I grew up, in the late seventies offered an ideal backdrop for a teenager with a driver’s license, a little jingle in his pocket from a part-time job, and an occasionally borrowed station wagon. The beach was a mere fifteen minutes away. Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm were also fairly near at hand. Long warm days and plenty of free time made almost anything feel within reach.

I would not meet Nancy, the love of my life and future wife, until that December, though of course I could never have imagined that summer how profoundly and beautifully my meeting her would shape the rest of my life.

But that summer, I was hanging out with Christie. She was pretty, blonde, and fun to be around. We lived in the same neighborhood, close enough for me to walk to her house, but hers had something mine did not. A large built-in swimming pool. With a diving board!

As the oldest of my parent’s then seven children, I was used to a household where our family food budget stretched pretty far, but nothing fancy. Christie’s family, with only two children, lived with much more ease. Her mom cooked generously and well, and often. So, between hanging out with Christie, swimming in their pool, and the constant supply of great food, as you might imagine, I spent a great deal of time at their home.

It was also the perfect situation for her father.

Christie’s dad was friendly, sincere, and always cheerful. He meant well. He also happened to believe quite firmly that the Catholic Church was not authentically Christian. Early on he told me so very directly. In his view Catholics followed a “false gospel” and I, he insisted, was not “saved.” I needed to be born again, he told me, emphatically, more than once. He seemed to like me, which kept our conversations calm, even if tense, but he made his negative opinions about the Catholic Church quite plain.

Whenever I visited their house, which was often, her dad arranged for what he called “quality time.” With me. Oh joy. That usually meant sitting in the living room with his well-used King James Bible open on his lap while he explained why he believed I needed to leave the Catholic Church and become a born again Christian.

Sometimes Christie and her mother sat with us. Sometimes it was just the two of us.

And when I’d return home and tell my own dad what Christie’s dad had said, he was unflappable, as steady as a rock. He’d listen to me retail the latest challenge, nod thoughtfully, or grin, or even chuckle at times, depending on how outlandish the anti-Catholic argument was, and say something like, “No problem. The answer to that is found” as he reached for a book and handed it to me, “right here.”

He’d never tell me where in the book the answer was located, though. That was intentional. He wanted me to do the work myself. But pointing me in the right direction was all I needed.

That summer Christie’s dad also handed me several mass-produced Protestant tracts that were popular in evangelical circles. Among them were Chick tracts such as This Was Your Life and Who Me? These were early precursors to the sharper anti-Catholic comics that would appear in the late nineteen eighties, such as The Death Cookie attack on the Eucharist. Their polemical tone and scattershot style of Bible quoting prepared the ground for what would later become the more direct attacks on Catholic teaching.

Christie invited me, clearly with her father’s encouragement, to a couple of Youth for Christ rallies organized by local Baptist churches. One was in a roller rink crowded with what seemed to be a thousand teenagers. Another took place in a large Baptist church auditorium.

There were pizzas, hot dogs, sodas, and lots of noise. Most of the kids seemed to be enjoying themselves. I felt uneasy. The proselytism was obvious. I had the sense that the organizers knew a Catholic boy was in the room because I received a noticeable amount of extra attention and cheerful pressure to “get saved.”

Christie remained fun to spend time with, but as the summer went on my focus began shifting. Her dad pushed me hard on Catholic beliefs. He knew Scripture way better than I did. He had his arguments and answers ready. I knew what I believed, but I did not yet understand why I believed it. I found out quickly that I had no idea how to defend my Catholic beliefs. That realization forced me to look more deeply.

This is when my parents’ large library changed everything.

My mom and dad had filled many shelves with solid Catholic books, including classic apologetics works from the early twentieth century. The three-volume Radio Replies in particular became indispensable.

Every time Christie’s dad raised a new objection, I went home, pulled an apologetics book or two from the shelf, and hunt for explanations. They were always there. Clear. Reasoned. Historically grounded. Supported by Scripture. This energized and encouraged me.

As I’d read and assimilate the biblical and historical evidence contained in these books, information that was new to me but really convincingly refuted the arguments Christie’s dad was giving, something inside me strengthened.

After awhile, his arguments, once seemingly so plausible, even formidable, no longer felt the least bit convincing, much less overwhelming as at first they seemed to be. They were arguments that the Catholic Church had already decisively answered countless times, long before I had ever heard them. And the Catholic answers I was learning that summer made far more sense to me than the caricatures and straw-man arguments I was being presented.

I realized that Christie’s dad wasn’t ever really attacking what the Catholic Church actually teaches. He was attacking what he believed it teaches. As I learned that summer, those are two very different things. And that insight changed everything. It also steadied me and, without my realizing it, helped prepare me for my future work.

As the summer went on, his efforts to pull me out of the Catholic Church had the opposite effect. Instead of weakening my faith, he pushed me more deeply into it. Instead of shaking my confidence, he forced me to learn. Read. Think. Grow.

Christie and I continued spending time together that summer. We swam in her pool, went out for pizza, roller skated, and went to the movies. But inside, a shift was underway. I was no longer simply enduring her dad’s objections. I was meeting them with substance and growing because of it.

Not long after the last of the tracts and rallies, things between Christie and me began to fade. Perhaps she or her father realized I was not leaving the Catholic Church. Or perhaps my growing confidence made my presence less comfortable for him. My visits to their home gradually tapered off. I am not entirely sure why.

I do know this. Everything her dad tried to accomplish that summer worked in reverse. He wanted to pull me away from the Catholic Church. Instead he pushed me more firmly into it. He wanted me to abandon Catholic teaching. Instead he sent me straight into the books that helped me understand it.

He wanted me to be “saved” in the way he understood salvation. Instead his efforts became the first training ground for the apologetics work I would later spend decades doing.

It took years to see it clearly, but I can see it now. That memorable Southern California summer was not wasted. Not at all! It was much-needed preparation. Quiet. Unplanned. Providential. A teenage boy with a girlfriend, a swimming pool, a handful of Bible tracts, and an earnest though misguided Protestant father became the unlikely setting where God laid the first steps of a lifelong path I never expected to walk.

Looking back now, I realize how little I understood at the time. I was a teenager focused on summer fun with a nice girl, a swimming pool, roller rinks, pizza runs, and the excitement of being out on my own. The deeper significance of what was happening never crossed my mind. But in the nearly 50 years since, as I have reflected fondly on those visits to Christie’s house and under her dad’s friendly, steady pressure, I am genuinely grateful that God permitted me to learn my Catholic Faith under fire that way. It never felt like preparation when it was unfolding, but that’s exactly what it was.

That experience, when combined with other moments in my life, helped shape the direction I would eventually follow. It was formative in ways I could not have recognized then. It trained me to study, to think, to research, and to test ideas rather than surrender to them. It prepared me for the work I would go on to do for decades, teaching, explaining, and when necessary defending the truths of the Catholic Faith.

Again and again that summer I discovered an important truth. Even when arguments against the Catholic Church sound persuasive at first, there are clear, convincing, and solid answers grounded in Scripture and history.

More than once I returned to Christie’s house with a page of handwritten notes in hand, drawn from what I had learned in the apologetics books in our family library. And I saw something that surprised me. Her dad had no reply. He was confident in his claims when he first delivered them, but he had never encountered a well-reasoned Catholic response. In fact, it seemed he had not imagined such an answer could even exist!

As the weeks passed and I gained more understanding and confidence, he became noticeably less interested in discussing the Catholic Church with me. Eventually he stopped bringing it up at all. It was clear he had given up on me. But what he never knew is that his efforts had strengthened me rather than weakened me. They anchored me in my faith more firmly than I had ever thought possible.

It was an exceedingly pleasant summertime trial by fire. And it was good for me.

Her dad may no longer be alive, but I have often thought of him and wondered what his reaction might have been if our paths had ever crossed later in life and I had been able to tell him what those conversations had truly produced. Far from pulling me out of the Catholic Church, he instead, unwittingly, helped forge the solid biblical and historical foundation upon which I would spend a lifetime explaining and defending it. Amazing.

And for that, I remain sincerely grateful to God, to my dad, and yes, maybe even especially to Christie’s dad.

Copyright © 2025 Patrick Madrid. All rights reserved. All text, images, and other original content are the property of the author.

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