Janet Schmittgen: Former Polish National Catholic

Janet was raised in Pennsylvania. Her father was Polish National Catholic and her mother Lutheran. From a young age she was devoted to the church but she also had many question about the faith. When she was a teenager she began to rebel and bought into some of the lies of the “me generation”. In college, church was not a part of her life.  One of the seeds of her conversion was planted when she saw Pope St. John Paul II when he visited Philadelphia in 1979. When she met and married Tom, who at the time was a nominal Catholic, they were married in the Catholic Church, even though they were both far from God. After moving to California and working in a pharmacy in a Catholic hospital more seeds were planted in her heart by the witness of faithful Catholics. Upon moving to Washington, Janet was received into full-communion with the Catholic Church. Janet’s and Tom’s faith in Jesus Christ and his Church was strengthened and deepened though the process of raising their sons in the Catholic faith.