The Probable Reason I'm Not a Cradle Catholic

My 'Catholic genealogy' is all on my father's father's side. The other lines, since the Deformation, being Church of England (Anglican), Swedish Lutheran, and Huguenot (Reformed/Calvinist). However, it was broken by that same grandfather and it had nothing to do with divorce or just 'falling away'. It was a deliberate act brought on by cruelty.

His parents had come from Germany during the Prussian expansions in the 1850s. The protestant Prussians would start persecuting the Church as soon as they annexed a Catholic territory. My great grandparents settled in a town called Independence Iowa. They were the only Germans in an Irish town. Plus, my grandfather added insult to injury by having the audacity to be born on St Patrick's Day, 1863.

Being good Catholics, his parents sent him to the Catholic school. The anti-German sentiment amongst the Irish was so great that not only was he bullied by the Irish children, he was basically treated as a pariah by the Irish nuns who were the teachers. If an Irish child vomited, he was made to clean it up because he was 'just a German'. 

When he was in second grade, he begged his parents to send him to the protestant/public school. They refused, of course. His response was to throw his school books into the creek. They bought him a new set. He burned those. That ended his formal education. He would NOT attend the parochial school, and his parents would NOT send him to the prot school.

As soon as he was old enough that his parents couldn't force him to go to Mass he never darkened the door of a Catholic Church again. He married a Swedish Lutheran, all their children were raised non-denominational prots, and the first of his grandchildren to return to the Faith was my cousin, Jim (†obit, February 2020, R✠I✠P) in 1938, followed by me in 1980.

As an afterthought, my grandfather's lack of formal education didn't hold him back much. He became a successful businessman later in life.