I talked to an old friend of mine this afternoon, a fundamentalist Christian. She's been out of the country for six months, and when she asked what was new, I told her that my husband and I had joined the Catholic Church.

I'm sure I surprised her. There really wasn't any way for her to have known how close we were to doing this before she left last fall. But she's well-practiced at evangelizing Catholics, so after a little hemming and hawing while she collected her thoughts, she brought out a couple of the arguments she has with the Church.

"Well, you don't believe all that about Mary, do you?"

I wasn't quite sure how to answer that, so I said, "What do you mean? I think we both agree that she gave birth to Jesus."

"Yes, but you don't believe that whole 'Mother of God' thing, do you?"

"I believe that Jesus is God, don't you?"

"Yes."

"Well...Jesus has a mother."

She changed the subject, bringing up transubstantiation. I was a little surprised myself how passionately I feel about this one. I told her that I totally believed in transubstantiantion, and that receiving the True Body and Blood was already a life-changing experience. "The Bread of Life," I exclaimed. "Really, spiritual life!"

She ended this part of the conversation by saying that she really did believe there would be a whole lot of Catholics in heaven, and citing a few Catholic people she knew whom she considered really good Christians, including my sponsor.

It made me smile. Because I remember saying things like that, too. And also becaue I'd been dreading telling this particular person, and all in all, it went quite well.