[music] Marcus Grodi: Good evening, and welcome to this
special episode of 'The Journey Home.' I'm Marcus Grodi, your host for this program. It's a special episode because we're doing
a Roundtable tonight. We haven't done
a Roundtable in a while. And in the past, the reason that
we did Roundtables was to bring
together former guests who had similar backgrounds, or maybe at some time completely different
backgrounds, to compare their stories, but maybe more importantly, to compare how the Holy Spirit works in their life. Whenever I do
a 'Journey Home' program, I'm always thinking
about you, the listeners, especially those of you
who have family members or such that left the faith. I'm thinking about
how the witnesses of our guests, hopefully, are an
encouragement to you. I end every
program with that. Well, our two guests tonight, whose programs aired recently, were former atheists, Sister Theresa Aletheia Noble, and we're also joined
by Leah Libresco Sargeant. So, let me welcome you
both, first of all, before I gab any further. Welcome back
to the program. It's wonderful to
have you both here. As I was saying
to the audience, we've had your
stories recently, but it's neat to be able
to bring you here. I will tell
the audience that, because your stories
were recently broadcast, they can go online
to EWTN.com or to chnetwork.org to see
your recent program to get the whole skinny,
all right. But what; now that
I've got you here, we're going to
talk about atheism. But just in case
somebody's out there that didn't see
those programs, what I'd like to do
is first, invite you both to give
a little snippet, but I'm going to stop
your.., stop your journeys. What I'd like you
to do, Sister, first, is to tell us your story before you came back
to the Church, before the; you describe
where you were and how you understood life,
if you would, then I'll ask the same
thing of you, Leah. Sr Theresa: Well,
so I was raised Catholic. I was a cradle Catholic, but when I was 14, I decided that I didn't
believe in God. It was kind of a combination
of different things. It was my natural
skepticism and doubts about the truth of the faith, the problem of suffering, and then, combined
with just bad examples of Christians that
turned me off to the faith and made me think
that maybe I could be a good, a better person without this. So, that was kind of where
I was in the beginning and where I was
kind of starting from. And as you described
in your story, this was not just
a casual thing, you were into it 150%. Yeah, I made this decision. I decided not
to become confirmed, and that was the road
that I was on for, you know,
over a dozen years. And I guess another thing
that I remember about your story was, it wasn't that
your family was nominal in their faith,
anything but. They were very, very
active in their faith, strong in catechetics. You weren't lacking
in any of that. No, and I wasn't
lacking in, you know, I knew
the truth of the faith, and I had been raised in
a very faithful environment, but it just didn't, in the end, with all of those different things that were
pulling on me, I just didn't believe
that it was true. <i>All right,</i> so we'll pause
there, Sister. Leah. Leah: I grew up
in an atheist house in a relatively
non-religious neighborhood. So, I didn't know
anyone personally who I knew as religious. But for me, that kind of wasn't a void
waiting to be filled. I wanted to be
a good person, I was deeply interested
in philosophy. I didn't think religion
had the answers, but I was into stoicism
and Immanuel Kant, and I was a very
morally-oriented atheist who cared a lot about
knowing what was true and how to put it
into action. <i>Okay.</i> If you
look back in those... in those times
of your life, in your atheist; people define, and sometimes
misuse the words 'atheist' and 'agnostic.' Maybe clarify
to the audience the difference
and help us understand, were you more an atheist
than an agnostic, or is there
a difference? Either of you. I think, for me, the decision was between
choosing something or not choosing something. And to me, the better choice
was to choose something, because how can you
kind of guide your life by a lack of choice? So, that's why I considered
myself an atheist. Yeah. <i>Where an agnostic
would have been,</i> I just don't know,
I'm not going there. 'I'm just not sure.' And how do you guide
your life on that? So, yeah. Yeah, I think
an agnostic has an active problem that does need
to be resolved, one way or the other. And I wouldn't have
described myself that way, because I felt that,
you know, my level of
non-belief in God was sufficient
to just act on, in the same way that I
haven't deeply investigated whether there's life
on Mars, but I don't expect
there is, I don't believe
there is, and I don't build
my life around that. And that was kind of
the level of my atheism. <i>All right.</i> I remember
when you and I talked, you had,
you had felt that, as a result
of your choice, that you had arrived at
a higher plane, if you will. Would you both
have affirmed that that's where you
understood yourselves in your atheism? I just say
a more accurate portrait of the world, is what I would
have said, right? It's just like when
you're at the optometrist, they're like
'Better or worse'? And I thought atheism is seeing the world
more clearly. Yeah, and same with me. I think we both
kind of considered what we were doing as; we were able to see
things more objectively. Yeah. But you called
yourself an Evangelist. Oh yeah, but not
for atheism alone, right, because simply, you know, trying to persuade
my religious friends to not be religious was not
sufficient, right? I went to the
Reason Rally in DC, which is a big
atheist gathering with a sign
that said like, 'I'm an atheist
and a virtue ethicist.' And on the other
side said, like, 'What's your
fill-in-the-blank?' Because, you know, atheism
just doesn't, by itself, say what your philosophy
is or what you believe. I had no interest
in simply recruiting other
people to atheism. I wanted to recruit them
to a philosophical outlook that still ordered
your life, which atheism doesn't
by itself. Did you feel the same way,
you think, back then? Yeah, I think the difference
between Leah and me is that I didn't see, I didn't ascribe to a specific
philosophical world view. I kind of was
constructing my own. But I did see
it similarly. Atheism can't, in itself, can't guide you
in making moral decisions. You have to find something to guide you
in how to live life. I remember,
I remember, I know I have mentioned this
on the program before, but in the movie
'Castaway,' when the main
character, Tom Hanks, is stranded on an island
in the middle of nowhere. He's out there, I think,
for three years. But, at some point, one of the pilot's
bodies floats up. And so, he buries it. And he's got it there, and there's a moment when he kind of
stands over the grave. And as you're
watching the movie, you're wondering if he's
going to say something, and he kind of goes... and walks away. So, I mean, to me, it was a visual
sign of... If you don't believe
in anything, what do you do? Yeah. You know, when I get you to think back during
your lives as atheists, was it just
a void up there? Like, if you had been
in that situation, would it have just
been a nothing? Do you know
what I'm saying? I think I certainly
thought of funerals as being primarily
for living people to kind of
grieve together, you know, to tell stories
about the person, including ones
maybe you didn't know until this moment. But I thought of it
as, you know, oriented all towards
the living, and that when you're dead,
you're dead. And a lot of what I heard
as kind of pitches for the afterlife
were unpersuasive and, to me,
undesirable, right? You know, there was
some kids' book that was kind of,
you know... 'Oh, and in Heaven, you get everything
you wanted. You know, you want
to be an actress and now you'll get
to star in everything.' Well, that just
sounds cheap, right? Like, either
you've actually worked for this
or you haven't. And I'm uninterested in these kind of saccharine
portraits of the afterlife. Yeah, for me,
I just thought of, I thought of death
as the end. And I thought of any other
explanation for that as just kind of
wishful thinking, just people desiring something
to be beyond that. So, they're kind of constructing
this false reality. What's funny is that
the first work of soteriology, sort of that
I did find compelling, as an atheist, was CS Lewis'
'The Great Divorce.' Yeah. And what was
compelling about it wasn't even... It felt like some pitches for the afterlife
were bribery, right? And not Lewis. Lewis is writing
a whole book about people struggling
to enter Heaven, because they're reluctant
to relinquish their sins. And that made
more sense to me. And as an atheist, that was the first description
of an afterlife I read that I believed
could be just. <i>So sermons</i> on hell and brimstone
didn't kinda move ya? Not at all. The opposite. If someone is
threatening me, I'm going to hold
more strongly to what I believe
to be true. And if the reason
to obey God is because He might
punish you with hell, that's not
a compelling reason any more than this mugger
has a gun to your head. I'm like, "Well,
that hardly gives any moral authority
to the mugger, right?" God's authority doesn't
come from the fact that He can
send us to hell. It comes from
something else first. Yeah, and
I'd say that was the most ineffective thing that anyone ever said
to me was, "You know you could
go to hell." Really? I mean,
at first of all, I don't believe in hell. But, second of all, that's how you're going
to evangelize me, by threatening me
with eternal punishment? Without any pitch for why
it would be just. Right? Yeah, just kind
of a threat. And what does that say
about your view of God, also, if that's how you kinda start
out with someone is... Yeah. In that sense, it's not just hell that you didn't
believe in, but sin. No, I believed
in moral wrongdoing. Right? I wouldn't have always used the word 'sin'
to describe it, but GK Chesterton says, 'Original sin is the part you least have
to make a pitch for. Everyone knows
it's there. Everyone knows I do not
what I want, but what I do
not want, I do.' So, I would have said,
you know, there's just this gap
between who we are and what the moral law is, and we struggle
to approach it. And that's sin, right? I just wouldn't have
used that language. Yeah, I think
I was similar. I think I had this almost
Pelagian view of, and an unrealistic view of how virtuous we can be
without God, maybe, but yeah, that's how. And I also think, I think our view
of moral wrongdoing can be watered down
when we don't realize that it's a sin, not only against others,
but against God. So, it did become a little bit watered down
for me over time. I was worried it was
the Christians who were watering down. Again, what I wouldn't
have described as sin, but, you know, it was just
like moral shortcomings. Yeah. Because to me, the idea of
forgiving sin was weird. I really liked
Inspector Javert from 'Les Misérables,' because he has this
uncompromising moral standard. He doesn't meet it. He throws himself
off a bridge. And it's not that I was,
you know, hoping for that
to be the outcome, but I kind of shared
with him the intuition that the moral law is
almost more real than I am. And that if one of us has
to go, it's me, right? And the idea that,
you know, God, you know, almost the way I thought
of forgiveness as ignores
or overlooks our sin, as a Christian pitch. I'm like,
"Well, I'd rather just be condemned, right? I don't want
someone to say that what I've done wrong
isn't really wrong. Right. Yeah, yeah. I do think, we used
to have an atheist family that lived across
the street from us. And one thing my mother
said to me one day, and this was after
I was an atheist, she said, "You know, they really do focus
on how to be good, you know,
almost more than we do." And I remember thinking
about that and thinking, 'Yeah, that's why,
that's why I'm an atheist.' And I think, I think that that can really
work against Christians when we're not focused
on living a virtuous life and how grace can allow us to live a virtuous life, especially when
we're surrounded by atheists who really are
concerned with that. Not everyone,
but a lot of them are. <i>Which is</i> <i>a</i> mystery
to so many Christians, when they just assume that, 'Well, an atheist doesn't have any foundation
for morality. So then, therefore,
they shouldn't be moral. But, yet, why are
they so good?' So, I mean, how do you
put those two together? Just to make sure
I get this in, our guests are
Sr Teresa Aletheia Noble and Leah Libresco Sargeant. How did you, as atheists,
understand conscience? Or did you recognize
conscience? Something I struggled
a little to formalize
into a system, right, because from
my point of view, conscience is like
your eyes, right? It's a sense of some kind. Everyone receives
sense perceptions of moral judgment before they're
old enough to say, "sense perceptions
of moral judgment" the same way we see
before we articulate that we're seeing. You know, it almost
felt like, to me, that I lived
in a weird time, like before the study
of Optics, but before like the full
understanding of conscience, where, you know, for long
parts of human history, no one had dissected
an eyeball. And people did not walk
around saying, 'Gosh, I don't understand exactly how I see things, so probably
the whole physical world is illusion, right?' And to me,
the crazy thing was that people seemed
to take this approach towards conscience,
where they're like, I've never dissected
the conscience. I don't understand
exactly how it works. So, the parsimonious thing is to assume
it's not real. I'm like, that would have
been a crazy thing for people to do about eyeballs before you've
taken one apart, and it seemed just
as crazy to me that people were willing to make
that leap about conscience, that the perception
is just as strong, just as immediate. The mechanism,
to me at that time, not being understood. You go, 'Wow. I hope
I figure some stuff out about the mechanism that I can kind of intuit
must exist; not... 'Well, if I
haven't had it, you know, with a scalpel, I should probably
disregard the sensation.' Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I imagine, you know,
one of the issues is that people will assume
that this voice from within, that's telling me that which
I'm doing is wrong, that's just another one
of those lingering ideas from that religious
past of mine that I just
need to squelch. But people don't think that
day-to-day, right? I don't know that,
but that's what I'm wondering. I think they think it
on a couple of edge cases where they really want
to do the other thing, or where they have
mixed feelings. But for the most part, people hear the promptings
of their conscience and act and don't go, 'Oh,
I'm a little frustrated. I might kick this person, but, ah, is that just
a remnant like "Oh yeah, no, I can't kick
this person, you know,
for.., you know, for standing on the left side
of the escalator.' Well, see, where I see it
is when there's that... There's that wonderful... In fact, just recently,
it happened to me when I went
and bought lunch, and the person, instead
of giving me $6 back, gave me $56 back. So in that moment, I have a $50
that ain't mine, it's supposed
to be a five. What do I do
in that moment? Now, I could say, 'Well, I'm feeling like
I ought to give that back,' but I could say, you know, that idea to give; why? You know, to me,
I'm not sure they go through
the analysis of it, but again,
this issue of conscience, in fact, I'm wondering
with what you atheists would have felt
about St Thomas More. Was he a fool for giving
His life for conscience? Would you have
thought that then? No, because that's what
he believed was true. So, I definitely believed
in conscience, and I believed in
following our conscience, but I think, unlike Leah, I did experience moments where what my materialist
atheism told me was, 'This was okay,' but then I would do it and I would feel like
it wasn't okay. And in those moments,
I would say, 'It must be my Catholic guilt or these things
in my background that are kind of
making me feel guilty about something
that's really not wrong.' But in reality, those moments
were actually very helpful in the sense that
I felt this pull in two directions,
and really strongly. And I wondered, 'I don't
know what to do here. What's happening?' You know, because I did
believe in conscience, and I didn't know
which pull to trust. I think as my praise
of Javert suggests, even though they are
different people, I was in favor
of St Thomas More. And part of what I found
striking about it is I thought, you know; and this helped me
understand what martyrdom means in the Church, especially the play
treatment of his life, 'A Man For All Seasons,' because part of what being
a virtuous person is, isn't expanding your
capacity to do anything, which is how we talk
about freedom, being free to
choose anything. It's actively giving up the capacity to do
things that are wrong. And that what I found
compelling about More's life, especially as told by Bolt,
is that More just kind of became
the sort of person who could not blaspheme
the Church, right? And didn't seek martyrdom, but got to the point where
it wasn't really a choice about whether
it'd be martyrdom, if the king had said
to them, 'Sir Thomas More, I need you as a sign
of your loyalty to me to jump out of this
third story window and fly.' He'd say, 'That's
just not something I can do for you;
I'm unable to do it. It's not even that I'm
refusing; I'm unable.' And that he loved
God so much that He was unable,
as much as unwilling, to blaspheme His Church. And that's, I think,
part of what growing up is. It's not learning
to do everything, it's learning
to relinquish things. I, so, you would
consider yourself... Would have considered
yourself a first-generation
atheist? Mm-hmm. You were kind of a
second-generation atheist, because you said
in your story that your dad actually was brought up Catholic
but was non-practicing. Your mother was
a non-practicing Jew. We can't remember
how far back you'd have to go
on my mom's side to find someone
who practiced. So, in some sense, you represent a person who comes from
a very strong family. As far as your parents
were concerned, they probably
did everything they thought
they needed to do to make sure they delivered
the faith to you, and it didn't catch. Yours, way
back when...okay? Why is there such an
increase of 'Nones' today? in our culture? Even just recently, within a week or so, there was another
Pew survey that demonstrated
that both Protestantism and Catholicism
are going down. They've reduced
by 3% nationwide over the last 10 years, whereas the 'NONES',
N-O-N-E-S, the non-faith Atheist,
Agnostics are increasing. What's going on
from your background, given, given
where you were? Are a lot of them
where you were, where they were given it, and then just
rejected it, or were never given it,
do you think? There were a lot
more people in your bucket
than in mine. There may be more
in the next generation who are like me, but... I was at the cutting edge. But I think
one problem is that, less so in your case,
right? But for many folks, the Christianity
they're rejecting was such a pallid
example of it or so little was given, that they're not
wrong to say, "This can't be true. This doesn't hold
together." You think about going
to Mass every week and hearing a preach, a preacher, a priest, kind of take the parables
and take the gospels as interesting
moral lessons, and only that. And you know, say something that either of us
could have perhaps been in the room
with and agreed with without really discussing
who Christ is, that He's active
in our life, He didn't just
give us a set of, you know,
interesting conundrums to muddle over privately. You can walk away
from that; that's not what Peter,
you know, said he wasn't
walking away from. That's not;
"Where else will I go? You have the words
of eternal life." And I saw someone say,
you know, briefly enough
to tweet, right, that if the Church
is a social gathering, there are other places
that do that better. If the Church is working
for justice in the world, that's important, but there are other places where that's
their primary mission, they do it better. The Church has to be
about Christ, first and foremost, because that's the thing
that no one else has. <i>Yeah,</i> we need to know that beneath everything
in the Church is Jesus. And if we don't
know that, then everything eventually
loses its meaning. And to be honest,
if you don't say that, then it's not Christ
that people are turning
their back on when they move
toward atheism. Yeah. It's this
particular way of spending
time together and talking about
how to be good people. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. What about
first-generation atheists? Um, I think,
you know, in my case, it was an abrupt decision, but I think
for a lot of people, it's a gradual decision. It's something that
happens over time, and I think often
what I have found is the seeds of doubt
are planted very young. That, that faith is not
compatible with science or math, or other, or reason. And that's really
a very un-Catholic way to think about it, but I think living
in the United States there's kind of
a Protestant world view in a lot of places. And so, the
incompatibility of that is drilled into kids' minds, especially by New Atheists. You see it all
over the internet. 'This is just incompatible. Faith has nothing to do
with reason.' I think that drives
people away, because, obviously,
that's not true. Atheists, you know, you can't generalize
all atheists, just like
you can't generalize all Protestants,
you know. Yeah. But a disbelief
in the vertical; God, angels, all of that. Mm-hmm. I would assume,
therefore, are questionable about, as you've used the word
Teleography, in other words,
meaning, purpose, plan, direction, but also a denial
of the reality of evil, the devil and his horde; almost to the point where even I almost
feel funny saying that, because we live
in a culture that just thinks
it's a joke to believe in devil. As you look back
on your days of ... was the devil actively
involved in your lives? Absolutely. I mean, he's still trying
to get me. He's trying
to get us all. Right. But, yeah,
I think that, something that
struck me a lot is after
I came into the Church, I went through RCIA. And then, the next year, I was asked to be
on the RCIA team and help
with the catechesis. And one time before
they did the rites, which are mini exorcisms, I was trying
to explain to them about the devil, and I realized
I hadn't really... This hadn't really been
talked about with them. And as I looked around
the circle, none of them believed me. Like, they
believed in God, but they were shocked that I was talking to
them about the devil. And, to me, that was
pretty shocking. I think that is a problem, because when you lose the supernatural
aspect of Catholicism, I mean really,
what else is there? And you lose the eschatology, you lose the context. If it becomes just
about this life, then why not try atheism? Why not try virtue ethics? Why not try all these
different things, because if it's just
about this life, then maybe another way
is better. Marcus: <i>Yeah, yeah.</i> I just think the reality of moral evil
is pretty stark. And many atheists
reply strongly to it. Just as you did by
becoming a vegan, right? Yeah. That, you know,
the devil is an active
agent of evil, rather than just evil
as something people are doing
themselves, that kind of takes an
additional pitch or argument. But, as Solzhenitsyn says, 'The line between
good and evil runs through
the heart of the; through every
human heart.' And everyone
knows that, right? Everyone knows that both
by looking at history and by looking
at their own lives, and the things
they're not proud of, or the things
that they haven't done, but there's like that
little bit of tugging that you might, right? And even the fear
that you might, right? A lot of the things we do
that are evil, we're not excited as we, we're about
to do them, right? And so, I think one of
the transitions is more that there is someone
back stomping us when we resist temptation. It's not just something
we're doing on our own, as both of us thought
as atheists. And honestly, it's a
little bit of a comfort to now pray
the St Michael's prayer in moments of temptation, or in response to evil, and really
to rebuke satan, rather than just,
you know, see it as a choice
I'm making by myself with no one
on either side. Right? <i>You know,</i> I'm older
than both of you, but I remember cartoons
when I grew up, that would draw
these little figures of the devil and angel
whispering in the ear. And what that is
subtly doing is in the child's mind, 'This is a joke,
this isn't real, this is just cartoons.' And the battle, as St Francis de Sales
talks about, that's a very real; and if you're oblivious
to both, then you don't,
then you're oblivious to whether those
voices that you; temptations
are temptations. Medium on whether it
makes it a joke, because I find it
a little helpful, maybe it's a childish
spirit in me. But, you know, sometimes
there are moments that are kind of clearly
not of God, you know, in my life, that I have more trouble
recognizing in myself, right. You know, especially when
I was first converting in the sense of, 'Well, you're really too
bad at praying to pray. You should hold off
on prayer till you're better
at prayer.' And that's not
from God, right? And I had a friend who was
saying the same thing, who was also, you know,
in her case, coming into the Eastern
Orthodox Church, and what sounded
reasonable in my head was clearly crazy
when she said it. And then I would
pray for her. And I would think about like hitting that shoulder
devil with a two-by-four, where he wasn't
expecting it, because it was her
problem, not mine. We could; both of us
had trouble praying for ourselves in those
moments of temptation, but we decided we'd just
pray for each other. And whenever satan was
bothering one of us, it would be a prompt
to save the other, and we'd get him where
he wasn't expecting it. Well, I know I've mentioned
this on the program, but Paul Harvey,
the great radio announcer, once gave a talk on 'What I would do
if I were the devil.' And his first thing was, I'd convince the world
I don't exist. Yeah. And that's it, you know, and that's it. Well, we're going
to take a break. And we'll come back. And I want to ask you whether the Psalmist
was true when he said, 'that a fool says
in his heart; there is no God.' All right, so we'll come back
in just a moment. See you in a bit. [music] [music] Welcome back to
this special edition of 'The Journey Home,'
our Atheist Roundtable. And I'm Marcus Grodi,
your host, and our guests are Sister
Theresa Aletheia Noble and Leah Libresco Sargeant. And before we jump back
into the story, I wanted to take a moment,
first of all, to remind you of a book
published by EWTN, 'Nine Converts Explain
Their Journey <i>Home</i> <i>From Atheism to Catholicism'.</i> <i>This is a collection
of, I think,</i> <i>there were eight or nine.</i> <i>Nine. I just said
that, didn't I?</i> <i>Nine former
'Journey Home' </i>guests, and EWTN took their stories and put it
in this fine collection. Second of all, again, I want to remind you to go
to: chnetwork.org. That's my website, the work of
The Coming Home Network. We have lots of
conversion stories there. And especially if you're
somebody on the journey, you want to be connected
with others on the journey. That's why we connect
you with our website, chnetwork.org. Boy, I'm anxious to
move your stories on. But before I get there, I want to ask you
a couple of other questions. From an atheist
perspective, how did you
understand beauty? Now, that's;
to some people is, 'Well, beauty is in
the eye of the beholder.' Well, is that
all that it is? There's no depth to it? It's just, really, blah, whatever, and just in this
world that looks beautiful. Do you love beauty? Or could you see that
there was something much more eternal to the reality
of essence of beauty? I think part
of what I understood to be at the heart
of beauty was order
and resolution, right? That, you know, I'm not
a music theory person, but there are times,
you know, and I'm particularly into
Broadway musicals where, you know...
The 'Tonight Quintet' from 'West Side Story,'
you get to a chord. And you know there's
something really good about the chord. And if I were a music
theory person, I'd say, "Oh, it's resolving
to the tone, like, I don't actually
understand what it's doing, to be honest, but they're right. That there's an ordered-ness
to the whole song that kind of creates
a yearning, delays the yearning,
if it's Sondheim, like teases you that the
yearning will be resolved, does not resolve it, and then, eventually
resolves it. And a lot of beauty is,
I think, that sense of things suddenly
fitting together, falling into place, and being in right
relation with each other. Marcus:<i>
I was going to say,</i> for you for
a scientific standpoint, that's how you determine whether it's a good theory or not is
the beauty of it. It's always an active
argument in Science, whether you're allowed
to use that as criteria, because mathematicians
have the problem now where there are some
computer-generated proofs that are true,
but we're like, "Well, there must
be a different proof beside this one, because
this one is ugly,' right? And everything true; and a lot of
mathematicians believe this must be provably true
in a beautiful way, not just true
in a kludgy, messy way. <i>Yeah, that old
cartoon</i> of the scientist on the big board with
calculations everywhere, then, right here
it says, 'God,' you know, well;
from their perspective, that's not beautiful,
that's not ordered. That it, you know,
in a way. From your perspective, did you deal
with the issue of beauty? I think I,
similar to Leah, I believed in the
underlying rationality that in morality
and science and mathematics and art, and I thought
that that was beautiful, but I didn't think that that necessarily
meant that God existed. So, I didn't
make that connection. But I think my conversion made that connection for me, where it was really
a moment of grace, where I realized that there is;
I'm surrounded by beauty, and there is an exemplar
of beauty, there is someone who is beauty itself
and truth itself. The Christian Church
hadn't been around more than a decade or so, when Paul wrote his letter
to the Galatians a couple of
decades or so, and he says
that he's amazed that people are already
following false gospels, and that and other verses always tended to tell me
that every one of us, created in God's image, has been created
to follow the Gospel. But if we don't know
the right one, we'll follow wrong ones. And sometimes we think
we're doing the best thing that ever happened, because we're off
after another gospel. I was thinking about
your own journey, in essence,
into veganism, from your perspective, was a bit of
a false gospel? Yeah, well, I don't know
if I would say that, but I do relate a lot
to Paul who was kind of... He was the best
of the Pharisees and followed the law
to the letter, and veganism kind of became something like that for me. It became my moral path, and I was such
a perfectionist about it, that I would be looking
at ingredients. I didn't eat honey;
there was so... didn't wear leather, there were so many, and it almost made me feel morally superior to others. So, I think;
but God worked in that. You know, like I was
really trying to be good, and I think in the midst
of that, I realized how much
I was failing, even though I was capable
of this life of pretty, like,
stark discipline, I really was still
a terrible person and I really needed
a lot of help. And so, I think God helped
help me to see that. But it was touching that void
inside of you with; and it gave you meaning
and purpose and a goal. Did you have
anything like that in your journey? I mean, I simply wanted
to be a good person. I thought I was
a stoic Kantian, right? I think in many cases that when people
are seeking to live rightly,
and are wrong, you know, in good faith,
about what that means, you don't get them
closer to God by saying, 'Care less about doing
the right thing,' right? You say, 'You know what, there's a bigger good
you're ignoring, and you should
be applying your considerable loves
and talents to that.' Right? Or, you know, this is kind of
a wrongly considered good, but you kind of
never want to take away the motive force
that's driving someone to try and live rightly. You want to say
that motive force needs to be
directed elsewhere. Yeah, well, in veganism, you know, based
on honoring the life of non-human creatures,
is a good thing. I mean I'm going to say
something I'm sure some people think I'm stupid
to even say, but do we know
that over 100,000 animals are killed every year
on our highways? I did not. You know, we know that, and we don't even
think about it, oblivious because,
hey, having a car and doing that
and having a life, that's... Mm-hmm. You know, there needs
to be a balance of respectability
for the creation God has given us to find
a balance to that. What did; okay,
let's try and move forward. The psalmist,
which is interesting, because one of
the two psalms that are almost repeated is one of the few psalms
that are repeated. Psalm 14 and Psalm 53
are almost identical, both of them begin
with the idea; "The fool says in his heart,
'There is no God.' They are corrupt,
doing abominable iniquity. There is none
that does good.'" Did you think
it was foolish, as you look back? You know, and was
the psalmist right? Or how do we understand what
the Psalmist says on that? The fool says in his heart,
'There is no God.' You know, almost immediately
after my conversion, I did, when God was
giving me the grace to have a sense
of the depth of my sin, I did kind of beat
my chest and say, "Well, I was such a fool,
such a sinner." But I think
after this many years of just really
getting to know God, I'm able to see myself as God,
I think, saw me, and I think He had so much
compassion for me. I think He just
really loved me and wanted to guide me
to the truth, but I think
He did it slowly. I fought against it,
I ran away. But it was all; I just feel ,
when I think of myself, I'm able to see myself
with so much compassion, because I think He saw me
in that way, and that's what made
me love Him so much. Marcus:<i> Yep.</i> I don't know. I mean I started
completely outside the Church,
right? So, I didn't start
by rejecting a God I had known in any way. And it's hard to take the
Catholic Church piecemeal, and in some ways that itself
is somewhat bonkers, right? So, it's a big
shift to make, and it took time for me to be persuaded to make it,
and to make it. And I could have,
I'll just say in my defense, I could have done
much more foolish things, you know,
which includes saying, 'I don't understand
what conscience is, so I have to deny it,'
right? And, I don't know,
I feel like that's part of what
the psalmist is getting, like, 'What will
you throw out when you
don't have God?' And I hope I held
onto as many true things as I could manage
in the meantime. <i>I'm assuming</i> the
context of the Psalmist is the people
of God, Israel, where everyone believes. And then, if you foolishly
deny everything. But I, honestly, in what
I was talking about earlier with when I said
false "Gospel" is that people
are yearning, that God does put within us
a seed to come home, and we look
for other things. And that's why
I was thinking of a Scripture to mention where it says
in 1 Timothy 2, "First of all, then, I urge the
supplication, prayers, intercessions, thanksgiving
be made for all men, everyone, for kings and all
who are in high positions that we may lead a quiet,
peaceable life godly and respectable
and everywhere," because that promotes
an environment that allows us to reach; and then he goes on, "This is good
and it is acceptable in the sight of God,
our Savior, who desires all men
to be saved and to come to the knowledge
of the truth." Everyone.
That's what we want. So, it's not about
pointing out the foolishness of people. Maybe from our
perspective, we realize that, you know, they bought into things,
how do we reach them? So, maybe at this point, let's remind the audience of what was it that broke
through your barriers that brought you home to our Lord Jesus Christ
and His Church? Let's start with you, Leah. Well, I think a big
part of it was kind of pursuing
that question of, 'What is morally right, and how do we come
to have knowledge of it?' And that the further I was
going down there, I got kind of jostled off
of my Kantianism and into virtue ethics, which has
a very different kind of sense
of what morality is, whereas, you know,
I had thought about morality as a big rule book,
and I had to figure out what the rules are
and how you derive them. Virtue ethics really has
this teleological view that there's something
that's fitting to me as a human being. I have to understand
what that is, what the ideal human is, which means I was already in some ways asking
to know Christ, without framing it
that way, right; by God,
God's very generous in kind of the non-prayer
He answered. If I just say,
'I want to know what it means
to be a good person and what, like, the fullest
expression of that is,' I am asking
to know Christ, if not in those words. And God kind of took
every inch I gave, right, and made the most of it. <i>It was,</i> I get the stories
mixed up in my mind, it was you that said
you realized that morality loved me. That's me. "Morality loved me." Everyone in our audience,
reflect on that when a person comes
to that realization, by grace,
that morality loves me. In other words, it's more
than just a bunch of rules. It's a person. Which is more than
I would have asked for. I was happy with a bunch
of rules, right. That felt like
gift enough. And God so often gives us
more than we ask for, if we open the door
a little. It's not just that He
gives what we desire. He has more than
what we desire, because we don't know
how to desire what He longs to give us. Mm-hmm. <i>Yep, yep.</i> And you were saying that once that thing hit, then, all of a sudden, everything kind of
fit into place. Yeah. All right, you,
Sr Theresa. I think for me, you know, my involvement in
animal rights activism helped me to realize that my materialism
just wasn't giving me enough
explanations for the world. And I started to realize that I believed in the soul, and in the immortal soul, but I was trying;
I was really struggling intellectually to explain, to figure out
what that meant, and I think that's when
God broke in and helped me to see
that He existed, and that He loved me, and that He had a plan
for my life. And so, that completely
changed the trajectory of my life,
at that point. Had you been baptized? No. Okay, so you
weren't baptized. I got all three
sacraments in one day. Reason I wanted that
is because sometimes, I've heard many
converts, reverts go look back and realize that the
baptismal graces... Yeah. ..had always been there. I mean,
as you look back, do you see the advantage
of that for yourself? Absolutely. Yeah, and it's something
that concerns me, because I think this, as people fall away
from the Church and raise children, they're not going
to be doing baptisms even out of
any cultural, you know. And that's concerning because baptism is what
makes us Christians. It's a powerful sacrament, and it's something that it imprints itself
on our souls, so it's not something
that you can get rid of, even if you reject
the faith, and it's almost like
a scar that throbs. Yeah. Or you contrast that
with the atheist groups that were doing
the "debaptisms," where they just point
a hair dryer at your head, right? Yeah. And it really, it implies just about
membership or even, you know, our choice in
something we can renounce. And baptism, priesthood, they're all indelible
marks on the soul, and confirmation,
too, right, and can't be given up. Even when we're unfaithful,
He is faithful. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, if you look
back on it, then that's one
of the... most debilitating things that happened
in the Reformation, if you will, was undercutting
the belief that baptism makes
any difference. Yeah. And once we... then now we have
fewer and fewer people that are receiving
those baptismal graces, and the way
it's belittled is they're trying
to make us think, 'Well, you think
it's magic, right? You baptize a person,
and then they're saved.' No, but it's this, it's part of
the sacramental economy... Yeah. ...of the Church. In fact, maybe I'll ask
you both that, because moving from
atheism into accepting, not just Jesus, but the sacramental
economy is a huge jump. Yeah. Yeah. Either of you. I think one thing that's really striking
about it is, you know, it removes
or lessens a temptation to anxiety that
I do hear a lot more in friends who are
Christians, outside the Church,
you know, with the sense of... 'Okay, I prayed,
and I was sorry, but was I sorry enough? You know, I accepted
Jesus into my heart. But then I did
something bad, so I should ask
Him again, right? Maybe I didn't ask hard
enough the first time, right?' That's a real worry. We know we fall down
on our part of prayer. That's a given. And then to have your
relationship with Christ have so much uncertainty and depend so much on your own
heart, it's very hard. And instead,
in the Church to say, you know, God is active
all over the world. The sacraments don't limit
His scope of action, but they give us
a reassurance that we can come home
to the Eucharist. We can come home
to confession. And God is always
present there, is always faithful. And if we are
repentant, if we receive Him, you know,
without mortal sin, He does for us
what He promised. And He's active
everywhere else, and it's in no way
a reason to stop asking for more
of Him everywhere else. But it's a huge
comfort to me; even when I'm just in, kind of, ecumenical
Christian groups, and say, 'Let's pray
the Lord's prayer together,' because it's the prayer
we know He gave us. And that we're all sure,
as Christians, is pleasing to Him. I think of the sacraments
as kind of the same way. These are the ways
of asking for His grace that He has
guaranteed to us, and we should ask
all the time, but we don't have to be
frightened when we do these. Mm-hmm. Yeah, for me, I think, it's kind of funny, because I converted, and then there was
a several year period before I entered the convent, but I still was
entering the convent as fairly new to things. I didn't know the Angelus when I entered the convent. And I didn't know
words to songs. And my co-novices
would make fun of me, and I'd be like,
"Don't you remember I was an atheist
for a really long time? Like, I missed out
on a lot of things." But part of the
benefit to that is it's really, during one
of my retreats, I came out of my retreat just telling everyone like,
"We're baptized! This is so exciting! Like, the Trinity
dwells within us. We're infused with the
theological virtues of faith, hope, and love,
like this is amazing!" And, you know, even, I would tell
cradle Catholics this, and they'd kind of
look at me like, 'I'm really not feeling
the excitement.' And so, I think I can, it's beautiful,
because I can communicate the beauty of it
because it's so beautiful, and it's so powerful. Baptism is what helps us
become saints. Like we wanted
to be good people. We wanted to be moral. That's really hard
to do on your own. With baptism, that makes
a lot more possible. And I've experienced that
on a real, real level, that I'm capable
of much more goodness when I have the help
of the grace of baptism. And the sacraments. I think it is always
kind of startling how routine these
extraordinary graces are that there's a church
somewhere near you in most places
offering daily Mass. And Christ is right there
on the altar, right? And you'll hear people
say like, 'Well, what will you do
in the Second Coming? Or would we recognize
Christ if He came back?' And it's like,
'He's right there,' you know? And there was,
there was one, I think it's Tertullian
of the Church Fathers, who was giving a homily on people
delaying Baptism. And he's like, you know, 'If I said for one day I was giving out gold
here at the Church, you people would
trample each other to get up from where
it was being handed out. And, instead,
I'm only offering you the remission
of Original Sin and a permanent
salvic mark, and you are dawdling
at the door.' And I'm barely
paraphrasing him, right? I think, even within
the Church, you know, that, you know, they're
one time bored in Mass, you know, thinking about
what I'll do afterwards, and I'm really
forgetting the reality of what we profess. Yeah, we start to
take it for granted. I remember I would drive
to adoration, and I would get
this feeling like, 'I better hurry up, because there might be
a ton of people there.' And every time I got there
I'd be like, 'Oh, actually, there's... there's not a lot of people.' But it was like,
I felt like I was going to a rock concert
to see a rock star, and everyone's going
to want to go because... And if they did
understand, they would, like it would be packed. That's Jesus. <i>Well,</i> it's interesting, you're both
touching on something; how do I put it
into words? That when you move
from atheism into a vibrant faith
in Christ in His Church, there is a movement
towards urgency, a seriousness. And talk about,
if you would, the important element
of that in our faith, the urgency today... Today, remember Joshua
in the Old Testament, today, follow,
who are you going to follow? What about the importance
of urgency in our faith? Well, it sounds
a little bit like that was part of
our lives beforehand, also, because I saw
your program, and I heard
how much about 150% person you were about things
that weren't God, also. Right. But I think
one of the things that really
touched me a bit when I was still
an atheist, and I was going to Mass, because I had
a Catholic boyfriend, we made a deal
about exchanging Mass for ballroom dance classes, and there was just
one of the hymns that was a
modern hymn, right. But it was, you know, ♪ Will you let
the blinded see if I but call
your name? ♪ And I, I did think, 'Gosh, you know,
if I'm wrong about this, I'm saying no
to healing the blind, and letting people free and striking off
their chains,' and I think
I'm right, right, but it kind of brought home
that sense of urgency and the stakes of, 'Wow, if there is a God, and he really wants
to work through me, and I'm saying no,
that is pretty serious.' Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I think, for me, the urgency is on
a personal level, and on a
evangelizing-others level, but on a personal level, I think connecting
with the stoics. You know, the stoics would
always remind themselves, 'We could die tomorrow, so we need
to live well now.' And so, that's... I really, I've been; that's been helpful to me in living urgency
in my personal life. But I also think
knowing Christ and knowing the despair
that I felt trying to figure out
the truth on my own and trying to just
use the power of my own intellect, and finding the truth in
a person Who is Jesus Christ, Who is the way,
and the truth, and the life, that gives me
so much urgency, because it gave me
so much joy. And I want to share
that with others. Um, maybe one
little question here. What were some arguments that religious people used
on you that fell flat? In other words, if we're going to try
to help atheists, what are some of arguments
that just fell flat? I got pitched
on praying, you know, it was almost like,
'It will be okay, like you could just
try praying. And you can tell God
why you're angry at Him.' And I'm like,
'I'm not angry at God,' And some people are, but it's a big mistake
to assume that's everyone's
relationship, especially when,
what I felt is, I had no relationship. There was no one
on the other side. There was no grudge I held
any more than, you know, the, like, secret rabbit
that lives in the moon, right? And so, that was,
it was kind of a guess. And then it shows that
you're not really listening to someone's particular
form of atheism. I think we've both
mentioned kind of the Hell House pitches,
right? 'Be Christian
or else something really bad will happen
to you.' And if you have
a moral atheist, of course, they're going
to say no to that, right? Never give way
to terrorists. Yeah. I think when people... The hell thing
was really ineffective when people
would make assumptions about where I was
coming from, when they would kind of
have a disdain for atheism, as if I hadn't
thought about it. I was like, 'I think
about this all the time! How can you possibly think this is just coming
from a place of rebellion, or something?' Yeah, I think
those are the main things. You just want be
an atheist, because you want to get
away with doing things you know are bad. Which was neither
of our approach. We were both extremist
in our own way, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I think
people do, some say, 'I hope this isn't true, because I don't
want to live according to this rule.' The sense is because they think the rule
itself is immoral, and they're confused about why God would ask
them to do it. But yeah, it was just
definitely not a, 'Oh, you're really
having a lot of fun. You'll give up?' And I'm like,
'I'm walking around thinking about,
you know, what's the most
extreme good I can do, no matter how I suffer
for it? Like, I don't know what
you guys think I'm doing with my Saturday
nights, but.' Yeah. <i>Well,</i> we have
two minutes left, and I'd like
to ask something based on what
your story... But in terms of reaching
out to atheists, people that are agnostics that are just not sure, how do you feel
the effectiveness of the attitude
of gratitude is, in other words,
from our perspective, expressing the gratitude
in life for our Creator, as a means
of reaching out? I know it seemed to be
effective in your journey. Yeah, I mean gratitude, a moment of gratitude is really when
I had my conversion. But I think in terms of
reaching out to people, I have, I really,
really truly believe that us living our baptismal
call to the fullest is what is going to attract
people to the Church. I think partly because
I had a bad experience with hypocritical Christians that kind of pushed me
away from the Church, but I also just think
that is our call as Christians is to live it
to the fullest in a radical way, like radically,
really to become saints. That's what's going
to attract people, more than any good arguments or; all of those things
are very important. We have to have answers to people's questions
and doubts, but I think the most powerful
answer is saints. And I think that's what
converted me was seeing the gratitude
and the humility and the peace and the joy
that Christians lived. They were grounded, there was something
really rooted in them that was attractive to me. I think, you know,
the big mistake people make is thinking, you know, when I'm evangelizing
an atheist, I've picked
an atheist off the atheism
production line. And they're all
the same, right? And then I think part
of the challenge for Christians is, 'Where is God
already working in this individual
person's life?' Look at them
as an individual who God loves specifically
as themselves. Pray in gratitude
yourself for that, and then see
where you can assist. Because God was calling
me very powerfully. It's just I heard
those calls as, "Math is orderly
and beautiful. Dedicate yourself
to being a good person." I didn't understand
the source of them or what they were
ultimately leading me to. But, you know, Christians
had the best chance of spotting
what those were all pointing to around me, and then kind of
encouraging me to say yes, even when I didn't
quite understand what I was
saying yes to. Yeah. Thank you both for re-joining us
on 'The Journey Home.' And I'm going to
encourage the audience to go to, yours is the Daughter
of St Paul website, right? Or pursuedbytruth.com. pursuedbytruth.com. Did you have a website? leahlibresco.com. There we go. And so, if the audience wants to find out more
about their work, you can go
to those websites. You can go to chnetwork.org, also, where you can hear
their stories; EWTN.com, of course, you can hear the other
'Journey Home' programs. But especially if you come
to chnetwork.org, you can get connected
with others on the journey, especially those
that are being drawn from atheism to the Church. So, God bless. See you again next week. [music]
