The First Time Someone Criticized Me for Being Catholic
A Fourth-Grade Memory I Never Forgot
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I STILL REMEMBER exactly where I was and what I was doing the first time someone hassled me for being Catholic. Alright, perhaps “hassle” is too strong of a word to describe what she did, but the memory remains vivid nearly 60 years later.
“She” was Donna—a pretty girl in my fourth-grade class on whom I’d had a secret crush since the first day of school. Graceful and doe-eyed, with long dark hair and a beautiful smile, Donna was friendly, self-confident, and magnetic in a way none of the other girls in our class were. (The character Winnie in the TV series “The Wonder Years” reminds me of her.)
Little by little, in spite of my gawky shyness, I tried to get her attention. At recess, in the hallways, during lunch, whenever I saw an opportunity, I found ways to let her know that I liked her. Eventually, she seemed to like me too.
A couple of times after school, I walked her home and carried her books. Pure heaven. We lived on the same street several doors down from each other, though for reasons I never discovered, I only seemed to see her at school.
One day, our class went on a field trip to a famous museum about an hour away. Quite an adventure for me! The teacher instructed us beforehand that we’d be using the “buddy system.” That meant choosing someone to sit with on the bus and stay with for the rest of the day, including the ride home.
I needed no further prompting. Stepping immediately over to Donna, I asked if she’d be my buddy for the trip. Her shy smile said she would.
Like the animals boarding Noah’s Ark two-by-two, we climbed onto the big yellow school bus in pairs, excited for the adventure. Donna and I sat next to each other, gabbing all the way. To me, it was a magic bus.
The outing was great fun, but by far the high point for me was the magical 20 minutes when we sat together in the total darkness of the museum planetarium show, holding hands. It all happened so fast. It was thrilling. Seventh heaven.
Life was good! What could possibly go wrong?
Later, on the bus ride home, she asked demurely, “What church do you go to?”
“Uh, we go to Saint Miscellaneous Parish,” I said. “What about you?”
Her smile curdled.
“You’re . . . Catholic?” she asked.
I blinked. “Yes. Why? Aren’t you?” I said. I had no idea what the crestfallen look on her face might mean.
“No!”
I paused, perplexed.
“Catholics are idolaters,” she whispered.
A shadow passed over our conversation.
“We are not!” I retorted, indignant at the very suggestion.
After an awkward moment, not knowing what else to say, I asked sheepishly, “What’s an idolater?”
I had no clue. I’d never even heard the word before.
She explained it meant an “idol worshipper,” but that wasn’t much help, as I didn’t know what an idol was. All I knew was that I didn’t want her thinking I was one of them, whatever they were.
“What do you mean?” I asked earnestly. “What is that?”
It was bad enough that she suddenly seemed bothered by something about me and even worse that I had no idea what it was.
She elaborated in her fourth-grade way. “Idolaters worship statues. The Bible says we shouldn’t carve any ‘graven images’ (another term that was new to me) and we shouldn’t ‘bow down to them or serve them’ because they’re idols, false gods.” She wasn’t mean or angry, just direct; still her sweet self, but now completely serious.
My head was spinning. What is she talking about? I thought to myself, blindsided, baffled, and a little stung by this sudden and unexpected bump in our budding friendship. It turned out to be more than a bump, though. More like going over a cliff.
“You’re Catholic,” she said again, though this time not as a question but almost as a verdict. “Catholics,” she said, apparently repeating what she had been taught in her church, “bow down to graven images, statues, idols and that’s idolatry. Worshipping them instead of God. That’s what I mean.”
My mind was racing. I had never worshipped a statue. I had never seen my parents or anyone else worship a statue and, for that matter, I had never even heard of something as dumb as worshipping statues. It sounded so absurd.
I had no idea how our conversation could get back to where it once belonged.
“Really,” I pleaded. “We don’t worship statues!” I hoped she would take my word for it. She didn’t seem to.
Our banter fizzled out. For the rest of the bus ride, her cute smile never came back. We certainly didn’t hold hands again, as much as I would have liked to. The golden aura of that day had evaporated. Poof.
An awkward silence hung between us the rest of the way home.
Afterward, at school, it wasn’t the same. Donna was polite and would talk to me, but only superficially. She no longer seemed interested in hanging out with me like before.
It felt weird. Her opinion of me changed when she found out I was Catholic. Not for something I had said or done, but simply because of my religious identity. The more I thought about it, the weirder it felt. My crush on her remained as strong as ever, but now it was unrequited.
There was nothing I could have done about being Catholic. As a kid, I couldn’t have changed that even if I had wanted to, and of course I didn’t want to. I wasn’t even tempted to think along those lines.
Growing up in a devout Catholic family, with parents who brought us to Mass every Sunday, sacrificed to send us to Catholic schools when they could, and actively taught us the Faith, made Catholicism inseparable from my sense of identity.
I could not then, nor have I ever since then, imagine not being Catholic. But that was the first time I can remember someone ever reacting negatively toward me for being Catholic.
And besides, as a fourth-grader, I had no idea how to discuss a theological topic like that, so I let it go. And that was it.
Years later, when I began to study my Catholic Faith more deeply, I discovered the biblical answers to the accusation that Catholics worship statues, things I wish I had known that wonderful, long-ago sunny day we went on a field trip . . .
But this is a good memory, because what happened on that bus turned out to be a good thing.
Without either of us even realizing it, that sweet girl gave me a gift that day. She introduced me to a reality I hadn’t even known existed before.
She was the first person (though certainly not the last) to criticize me for being Catholic and, in so doing, played a small but important role in helping set me on the path my life would eventually take: a career spent teaching, explaining, and, when necessary, defending my Catholic Faith.
Copyright © 2026 Patrick Madrid. All rights reserved. All text, images, and other original content are the property of the author.
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So good. Like all of Patrick’s stuff
You passed a real test! Some would have succumbed to the temptation to choose her instead of the true faith, and that would have been real (or maybe just fourth grade) idolatry!