Grandpa (Jack) grew up Roman Catholic, being a good Italian. His father, Giovanni, left the old country, ostensibly, as Gramps told me, to avoid the pressure to become a priest. We have no indication of how faithful Giovanni was to that denomination or even to God, but the fact that his son Jack was at one time an altar boy would indicate a least some religiosity on Giovanni’s part.

Elizabeth, Jack’s mother, was considered a full-blooded Irish woman, but what does that really mean? Ireland’s history is one of population flux, with people immigrating there from various parts of Great Britain and then migrating elsewhere in the world. Elizabeth’s maiden name, Warnick, comes from a Scottish background, and her people at some point moved to Ireland. So she was most recently Irish, but had Scottish roots. This might suggest that her background was Protestant rather than Catholic (as we will see below).

Why did the Warnick family move to Canada, when the steamship journey across the North Atlantic would have been costly and dangerous? This was many years before the Titanic ran afoul of an iceberg in 1912. While we have no documented evidence of when exactly the family took passage to America, we know Elizabeth was born August 31, 1864, near London, Ontario, Canada; thus, the family emigrated from Ireland earlier. Possibly they were part of the millions forced by the ravages of the Irish potato famine of the 1840s to leave for a better life in North America.

When the Warnick family migrated to Canada (mid-1800s), Ireland was predominantly Protestant under British rule, with Catholicism being repressed. This was well before Ireland’s movement for self-rule in the late 1800s and early 1900s, which ultimately led to the division of Ireland into two distinct governances: the Republic of Ireland (mainly in the south and west, the more rural area of the island) and Northern Ireland in the northeast (formally part of the United Kingdom). The conflicts between Protestants and Catholics in Ireland, which are still well-known today, have their roots in the 1800s and may have contributed to the Warnick family seeking a better life elsewhere.

The Warnicks’ Scottish background suggests the family brought with them to Ireland Protestant roots in Presbyterianism, which prevailed due to the influence of its founder, John Knox. If the Warnicks had been Catholic, they would not have fled from a predominantly Protestant country for one even more repressive of Catholics. The probability that the Warnicks were Protestant/Presbyterian is supported by the fact that Jack Jr., the grandson of Elizabeth Warnick (who happened to be my father), was raised Presbyterian. Elizabeth, then, being Protestant, married Giovanni, a Catholic. Right there spells an independent spirit on the part of both. The result was my grandfather, Jack, Sr.

When I came on the scene in the 1950s, I remember the whole family, including Grandma and Grandpa Jack, dressing up in our Sunday best to go to the Catholic church. Grandpa showed his refined self in a smart-looking, trim suit, round-rimmed spectacles, and thinning red hair brushed straight back, showing his sun-weathered head and face. He was a rugged-looking man, barrel-chested, with long arms, and I think he enjoyed the one day of dress-up that kept him cultured. The rest of the time, he wore his usual work clothes: loose-fitting khaki dungarees and either a tank-top T, heavy plaid shirt, or light-colored khaki shirt with sleeves rolled up past his elbows—he was always dressed for work in the outdoors.

His allegiance to Catholicism was somewhat tenuous, probably more cultural than personal. He told the story of serving as an altar boy when he was young, assisting the priest with conducting the mass—a task that was customary for young Catholic boys in his day, around the turn of the nineteenth into the twentieth century. It was quite an honor, complete with wearing black-and-white vestments, the kind you see in the Vienna Boys Choir and the like. One day at mass, young Jack was assigned to hold the censer (a small, shiny metal birdhouse-looking thing that contained burning incense on the end of a chain). He was supposed to keep it swinging a bit to diffuse the smoke. But the service dragged on, and young Jack began to swoon from the fumes, and in a moment of lightheadedness, the chain slipped through his fingers. The resounding ruckus invoked the harsh response of the priest, who summarily clocked young Jack over the head with a missal (like a hymnbook). Jack fumed, and he made up his mind that was the last time he would ever go to church.

He did go to the church again, but having a Presbyterian mother, marrying a Lutheran girl (Gustava, who became my grandmother), and raising a Presbyterian boy (my dad, Jack Jr.), may suggest that his altar boy experience was pivotal to his leaving behind his paternal Catholic connection. Interestingly, he attended a Catholic church in his older age, and my father gave him a Catholic funeral and burial, so there is more to the story.

Isn’t it interesting that events in our childhood can so strongly influence decisions we make later in life? In Gramps’s case, his altar boy experience probably tapped into his father’s ambivalence. But in the end, his decisions were his and his only. Was he a man of faith, a genuine believer? Certainly he believed in the existence of God, but like many, his faith may have remained a surface belief in God. Of course, religious affiliation says little about the state of a person’s heart. I do know that Grandpa held a good reputation, from what I can surmise. Did he ever put his personal faith and trust in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of his sin, as the Bible says we need to do to be saved and assured of an eternity in heaven with God? Only God knows for sure. However, he knew well the hymn “How Great Thou Art.” I know that because he hummed along perfectly when I played it on a piano in their front room as Grandma, sitting on the bench beside me, sang along in her squeaking, scratchy voice. The last two verses, which I am sure he knew, go like this:

And when I think that God, His Son not sparing,
Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in;
That on the Cross, my burdens gladly bearing,
He bled and died to take away my sin.

When Christ shall come, with shout of acclamation,
And take me home, what joy shall fill my heart.
Then I shall bow, in humble adoration,
And there proclaim: “My God, how great Thou art!”