“I never thought I’d become a Catholic. It was never really proposed to me,” says Morgan Holliger of her childhood and adolescence in the United States not long ago. He was interested in vaguely spiritual things, but Catholicism, about which he knew almost nothing, seemed to him “bogged down in some kind of institutional corruption.”
“I was raised in what I guess we could call an agnostic family.”Morgan explains in AwakenCatholic.org. “Basically, they were not religious, but they were not closed to spiritual questions. I was a curious girl, who at the age of eight wanted to become a vegetarian, who had questions… and my parents welcomed that. She also had a strong sense of seeking justice.”
It wasn’t until his senior year of high school, with 18 years, that she became interested in Christianity, and specifically Catholicism.
Before, he was vaguely attracted to Buddhism – he thought it was “cooler”, more “cool” – or anything that didn’t ask for “something as concrete as going to church”. Nevertheless, he sensed that he needed something “greater than me”, with which to meet. And he liked to visit old and beautiful churches, for their beauty, which he later discovered that they used to be Catholic.
A Catholic Boyfriend and “Old Style” Religion
She had a boyfriend at the time who had been raised Catholic. That called his attention to “old-style” religion, that is, in church, “organized” religion. Intrigued by the Church, her first liturgical experience, driven by curiosity, was the 2011 Midnight Mass. Thus he discovered a beautiful liturgy and a temple with great beauty.
“Look this old thing, where you can participate with all these people, focused on this experience of beauty,” Morgan told herself. It was, she says, a “real encounter” with the liturgy and beauty of the Church and she was overwhelmed and surprised.
He called the parish near where he lived. “I want to become a CatholicI have no idea what it means, but I want to do it,” he told them.
The very idea of Church implied recognizing its authority, and that was a change. “It was very foreign to me to conceive that I was not the arbiter of truth, that the Church had authority. When I decided to be Catholic I thought: I could be a cafeteria catholic, choose what I believe and what I don’tbut Christ established a Church and gave it authority, the Church is its voice, and that makes sense,” he says.
Knowing the Theology of the Body
His companion in the formation course to enter the Church, Mary Alice, told him about the Theology of the Body. “There were many people in my life who loved me, parents, friends, but here the peculiar thing is that Mary Alice’s care for me was related to her love for Christ, and that impacted me. And the people she introduced me to always had something special, which attracted me. If someone had told me last year to go to a talk about chastity past year, I would have said “no way”. But I went to make Mary Alice happy.”
At first, she thought: “I’m not very interested, this will be very rare.” But he was caught by what they explained to him. They were both very simple and profound things about love and truth that she had never really thought about before.
The opposition to contraception at first it amazed him. “Do people really believe this? It’s kind of medieval, isn’t it? it was said. But the way they explained it, he was attractive. “It took me about 3 years to fully accept it while I thought about it and processed everything,” he recalls.
The Theology of the Body made him see that the catholic message on sexuality are not arbitrary and old-fashioned norms, but have a deep meaning based on the meaning of the human person, “that it is created out of love, that it has a body with a meaning, that we are made to give ourselves to the other. The Theology of the Body helped me understand all that and I am grateful to it.”
Since then, he is impressed to see that human love is transcendent, that is oriented to God, that points to God and helps to understand him. And it helps him see the whole world as a gift.”
Later he wanted to go deeper and studied “Person, Marriage and Family at the John Paul II Institute in Washington”. included study the thought of John Paul II, his vision of the Catholic tradition and the influence of other theologians of the 20th century.
Thus, he considers Saint John Paul II his main teacher. “I felt guided and called by him, in a real and personal way, to find out more about who Christ is, what the Church is, and how that makes me more fully human”.
Video with funny clips from Morgan and her friend Megan’s podcast about affectivity, sexuality and marriage from the Theology of the Body.
A podcast: Naked without shame
Just a year after her full conversion, with her friend Megan Burwell, she launched the podcast “Naked Without Shame“(Naked without shame, alluding to God’s plan for spousal love) to spread the Theology of the Body and Catholic teaching on affectivity and love.
Later, in Washington, met the Communion and Liberation movement, founded by the priest Luigi Giussani, whose spirituality seemed very close and complementary to that of John Paul II. So he took the step of joining the movement.
After many years spreading the goodness of spousal love according to the Catholic proposal, his next step was get marry with Tom Vince in November 2021 in Washington.
Morgan Holliger’s testimony in Awaken Catholic:
Morgan Holliger’s short testimonial on CHNetwork’s SignPosts: