Megan Ranalli, 22, plans to marry Brad Merrick in June at the Church of the Assumption in Atkins. The Arkansas Tech University senior will receive her degree in fisheries and wildlife biology in May. After that she and her new husband will begin their new life with jobs out of state. While she dreams of traveling the world, the one thing she said she wouldn’t leave behind is her Catholic faith.
“It’s not only important to me to stay Catholic, it’s important to me to be active in it,” Ranalli said.
The same priest who guided her fiancé through the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults last spring will also marry the couple at the church where he is pastor. Father Ernest Hardesty also shepherds the Catholic Campus Ministry program at St. Leo the Great University Parish in Russellville, where Ranalli has been a member since her freshman year.
Aside from weekly Mass, Ranalli has taken part in many CCM activities including the group’s annual spring break mission trip to Wynhoven Healthcare Center in Marrero, La., a Catholic nursing home in a suburb of New Orleans. She has gone the past three years. Currently Ranalli is collecting toys for cancer patients at Arkansas Children’s Hospital in Little Rock.
Before college Ranalli said she regularly participated in parish activities in Tontitown, where she grew up. She said her high school youth group did many service projects through St. Joseph Church.
Being an active Catholic came from the example set by her parents, Norbert and Judy Ranalli. The youngest of three children, Ranalli said her family “never just went to church.” Her mom was their church’s director of religious education and her dad frequently donates grapes from the family’s farm for the annual parish grape festival.
Ranalli said she is hurt by friends who say they are Catholic, but don’t practice. “If you don’t do those simple acts of going to church, then how can you say you’re Catholic?”
What matters most about being Catholic to her is “it’s all about what you do, about how you show your faith to other people and (how) you help everyone,” she said. “It’s not just about ’I go to church and I give a donation.’”
Ranalli and her fiancé began dating in January 2004. He will graduate in December with an emergency administrative management degree.
She said Merrick grew up Baptist in Van Buren. Now that he is Catholic, sharing the Eucharist with him is just one more thing they can “build a relationship with.”
Ranalli said if she were at the end of her life, she would want people to say “that I helped; that I tried; that I put forth the effort to help others. I don’t want by no means to say I’m an exceptional person, but I want them to say that I didn’t turn people away.”
“I think that says something about your character if you don’t care to even try to help somebody. That says … that you just don’t care.”
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