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 In 1998, I completely severed my association with Jehovah's Witnesses. However, it wasn't until 2004 that I heard the details from my mother, two years before her death at age 91, of how the Watch Tower organization’s teachings significantly altered her Polish Catholic father's life-course causing him to end up an excommunicated Catholic in Poland although he never became a Watch Tower follower.
What my grandfather began to learn sometime around the year 1912 from a Chicago, Illinois, Polish Watch Tower representative, later influenced my mother to turn away from some major teachings of the Catholic Church, although she continued to claim Catholicism as her religion. Consequently, both my brother and I were baptized into the Catholic Church when we were infants.
Grandfather and the Bible Student Land-lady
When my grandfather was a young adult, he frequently traveled by ship to America to visit relatives. My future grandmother also traveled to America for the same reason. I have no idea where or when they met, but after they married in Poland and became parents to a son, they went to America, to Chicago, to live. My grandfather's mother accompanied them, but missing her home in Poland, she returned a few years later.
Grandfather worked for the Chicago beer industry until 1914 when he decided to take his family back to Poland. He missed his mother and decided that as an only child he should be taking care of her, especially since the war in Europe had started. He also hoped his health would be better in Poland than it was in America. And there was another reason.
Towards the end of December in 1914, my maternal grandparents were traveling back to Poland on a ship on the high seas with their three children and another on the way during the time the Germans were sinking ships. On January 1, 1915, my mother was born in Poland. This was certainly not a good time to travel to Europe, but Grandfather was determined to be with his mother before the year was out. Why?
Grandfather could speak and read and write Polish, English, Russian and some German. When he and his wife lived in Chicago, the lady who he rented an apartment from was Polish and also a Bible Student. The Chicago Bible Student organization was large and was actually incorporated. It was the only other Watch Tower Corporation in America besides the Pennsylvania Watch Tower Corporation. Anyway, the owner of the apartment house talked to Grandfather about God's "Plan of the Ages." She told him about the coming war in 1914 between "Capital and Labor" showing him in the Bible many scriptures to support this Bible Student belief as well as many others.
Already during the year, there were dramatic clashes between workers and industry throughout major northern cities in America; and societal upheaval was touching all walks of life. As a consequence, even though my grandfather had a number of reasons to return to his homeland, the fulfillment of Bible prophecy that soon God was going to intervene in human history, was the primary one.
In war-torn Europe, Grandfather continued to read the Bible and no longer attended the Catholic Church, but my grandmother remained an active Catholic, even having a small alter in the bedroom with lit candles, a large cross and a statute of the Virgin Mary upon it. There was no Bible Student group where they lived and Grandfather claimed no religion for himself. He lived through WWI not seeing God intervene in human affairs, and if he was disappointed he did not say so.
In the Polish town that they returned to, my grandfather was appointed sheriff. Because he was the only one who could read and write four languages, he wrote and also translated letters for his neighbors and was well respected. Frequently, he argued about religion. He stepped on many folks’ religious sensibilities by quoting from the Bible he continually read. This was the reason he was excommunicated by the Church—for reading the Bible! However, the local priest continued to come to Grandfather's house to discuss religion and share a few glasses of whiskey.
This went on for years. When she was a youngster, my mother heard them talking about hell-fire after she went to bed. They agreed there was no such thing as a burning hell for the wicked, that there was no life after death. The priest said the Church used the hell-fire doctrine as a means to herd people like a shepherd herds pigs. Neither of the men believed in an immortal soul.
My mother took this information to heart, but remained a Catholic, although in name only. She did not believe in these important Catholic doctrines, therefore, she never taught them to her two children. In this way, the teachings of the Bible Students of “no burning hell” and “no immortality of the soul,” religiously influenced my Catholic childhood. (In 1931, the name, Bible Students, was changed to Jehovah’s Witnesses.)
In 1930, my mother came to America and in 1935 she married a Polish-American fellow in Flushing, New York. My father also influenced my attitude towards religion and the Catholic Church, which made me ripe for picking by the very same religion which caused my mother's father to lose faith in the teachings of the Catholic Church. I'll save that story for the next Musings of Barbara Anderson.
>>Part 2
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