Evangelical - Catholic dialogue themes in Caught in the Winds

Although only a subplot in Caught in the Winds, the presence of Catholic spirituality is always nearby in the life of protagonist Morrie Schiller. It starts with dreams and feelings of longing to return to the church where he spent his earliest childhood. It continues as an irritating nag to be swatted like an irritating gnat. Morrie saw himself as a Baptist. What does all this mean?

Morrie was born into a Catholic home in St. Paul, Minnesota. His mother came from a devote Irish Catholic family. During his earliest childhood she had faithfully brought him and his little sister Mary to Mass every Sunday. Morrie's father also was raised Catholic, but things seem to go wrong for him after having failed to survive the strict nuns who were his teachers who "used to beat me with a ruler until my knuckles bled".

When Morrie was eight, the year of before his confirmation, his father "got saved" at a Billy Graham Crusade. One of his first acts as a born-again Christian was to remove his family from the his local Catholic parish and bring them into a local Baptist congregation. Since this is a first person narration by Morrie himself, we only have his recollections and short flashbacks. He was to young to know why his mother seemingly followed her husband and became an active member in the Baptist church. The father, on the other hand, built his Baptist persona more out of his anti-Catholicism than a confession of faith.

Having participated in a Baptist congregation most of his life and seeing himself as a Catholic, he thus doesn't understand the feelings that go back to his early pre-Baptist existence, one that his mother had initiated, one that he can hardly remember. Yet the longings come. He finds it confusing and irrational He would like to rid himself of them and go on with his life...

In Caught in the Winds, these dreams and longings never take center stage. Morrie's thoughts and faint memories of his Catholic past are more of a haunting presence intended to illuminate his existential desire to transcend his sectarian situation.

Towards the end of the book, Morrie's father learns of some of his son's adventures which include photographs of him receiving the Eucharist from a bishop at a Catholic mass.

Anyone attending a moderate Evangelical college doesn't have to look far to find professors and students who have gone over--or are thinking of going over--from their conservative Evangelical upbringing to the Anglican faith or even Catholicism. They often speak of a "homesickness" or the attraction to the "mystery" they find in the liturgy or the Eucharist. There is a reaction what they experienced as "rationalistic" or even "secular" in Protestant worship, especially in Fundamentalist community.

Caught in the Winds seeks to shed light on this phenomenon. The reason this novel might contribute to a Catholic-Evangelical dialog is that the author remains neutral. While Morrie describes his experience of feeling torn, he is not yet at a stage where he has come to any conclusions. Thus any reader, who might identify with Morrie, is free to decide for him/herself. Catholics and Evangelicals can together discuss Morrie's experience and try to see the other person's perspective, which is the essence of dialogue.