Catholicism helped convert find her way to love

Intermountain Catholic

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IC Graphic/Jenn Sparks

SALT LAKE CITY - Being or becoming a Catholic is always a personal experience that each person lives in different ways.

Taylor Madson will receive the Sacraments of Initiation at the Easter Vigil: she will be baptized, confirmed and recieve the Eucharist. Then, in June, she will be getting married.

"My future husband is Catholic, but I never grew up with a religion," said Madson, whose family believes in God but they never practiced any religion.

"I think they were baptized Mormon, but they never practiced, they never took us to church or anything," said Madson, adding that she was taught morals and values but not a religion.

She started attending Mass at Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church with her fiancé, and she simply fell in love with the Church.

"I just felt that something was missing," Madson said. "I think it's good to have a good foundation and religion builds that foundation. Once I started going to Church with my fiancé I started to see how religion helps you be a better person. I started going to church with him on Sundays and I liked it so I decided that I wanted to get married in the Church."

Madson and her fiancé have attended religious retreats for couples that are going to get married.

"When we did the Catholic retreat for couples, a lot of the questions they asked you were related to the importance and the role that religion has in your life," said Madson, who also realizes the importance of being married in the Church, not just by the civil law. "I think that it's very important to have a marriage in the Church, to do the commitment in front of God."

She and her soon-to-be husband, Roberto Gonzalez, met in middle school. Aside from the fact that, at that time, Madson was not practicing any religion and Gonzalez was, the couple also had to deal with the fact that she is from Utah and he is from Mexico.

"Being from different cultures and backgrounds hasn't been difficult," said Madson; instead, the different perspectives have enriched them.

"I learned Spanish because his family does not speak English," she said. "It is kind of doing a bicultural marriage because we both have different cultures but, at the same time, we both take things of our own cultures that we like and we are combining them."