[music] Marcus Grodi: Well,
good evening, and welcome to
'The Journey Home.' I'm Marcus Grodi,
your host for this program. Our guest tonight
for the program is a returning guest. He was on the program,
oh, about 11 years ago now. But he's got an added
title to his name now that he didn't have when he was on the program
first time. Then he was just
Scott Carson. Now he's Deacon Scott Carson. Deacon Scott, welcome
to 'The Journey Home.' Deacon Scott Carson:
Thank you very much. Good to be here. It lists on the program that you were
a former Episcopalian. But I do kind of remember
from your story that you had a little bit
more jumps in there than just
the Episcopal Church. Yeah. That was
the first stop on a long journey,
I guess you could say. When I was growing up, my family wasn't religious
at all, really. My father's side
of the family was largely Presbyterian. My mother's was
largely Baptist. But when I was a kid,
they didn't go to church. We didn't have religious
talk at home or anything. My sister did join
a Presbyterian church when she was
in high school. But she was 14 years
older than I. And so, I didn't talk to
her about religion either. So, I was basically... <i>Just nothing.</i> ... nothing. Yeah. Now, you came up
from Athens, Ohio. Was that where
you grew up, too? No. No. I grew up in
Canton Stow there... Oh, yes. Okay. ... just northeast
part of Ohio, there. My father was a manager
at Goodyear. And so, we lived in Stow
when I was really little. He died when I
was seven, though. And then my mother
moved to Kent, because that's where
she worked. <i>Yeah. Yeah.</i> It still, in some sense, amazes me when I think
about our parents. Some of them just; their faith wasn't
important to them. They had been brought
up in the faith. But by the time
we were born, and the faith had drifted
out of their families so that so many
of our generation were brought up
without really any faith. And sometimes it was
the parents saying, 'Well, we'll let them
decide for themselves.' Well, then we don't
get anything. Right. Yeah. I had no actual
education at all. The one exception I would
draw attention to is that my mother did
teach me the 'Our Father.' And I remember it. My father was
still alive even. So, it must've been before I was six
or seven years old. And I sometimes
think about that. And I think this is one of the many women in my life
who have had a, sort of a hand
in my religious formation, if you will. So, that was
the only thing though that she taught me. No baptismal graces? No. I mean,
I was baptized. So, they did take me
to be baptized. But I was almost; I was over two years old
when that happened. I don't even know what
the story behind that was, why it was so long
in coming. I did try, when I went
into the diaconate, I had to get my; all my records,
baptism included. And I was sort of
at a loss, because I didn't
even remember where it had happened. But I did, in the end,
I was able to figure out, not only where
it took place, but also the name of the guy
who baptized me, was Douglas Potter
was his name. So, I don't know
if he's still around. But I wanted to try
to contact him and say, 'You know what?
Guess what? That kid that you baptized
all those years ago, look where I am now.' But that was it
for me really. Baptism was it. Yeah. All right. No Bible laying around,
no Bible stories? No, nothing like that. Prayers at meals?
None of that. Wow. Now, there was no hostility
to religion either. It's not that
they tried to prevent me from being religious. It's just, it was,
never came up. Just never an issue, which is interesting, because that's
like majority of television shows
you watch nowadays, they tell the stories of everything that's
going on in these lives, but no mention
of God whatsoever, as if God doesn't
even have a place in any aspect
of a person's life. So, that's what you
experienced, though. Yeah. What about Catholicism? Interestingly, one of my best friends,
as a kid, a next-door neighbor,
Peggy, her mother was Catholic. Father was not, but
her mother was Catholic and took her and her
little brother to Mass. There was
a Catholic Church just about a block-and-a-half
from our house. And I remember
my mother mentioning that that's where
they go to church. And it was all
very sort of, 'What's that about?' I don't remember very well
what I thought about it. But I do remember thinking
it was kind of mysterious and strange and not like
all the other kids I knew in the neighborhood. Almost like
a secret society. It seemed like it, yeah. Because none of my other
friends went to church, that I knew of, even. All right. Well,
how long did those; so, would you have considered
yourself an atheist or just ignorant? Well, philosophers love to draw distinctions,
I guess. I would say I was not what today I would
call an atheist. I didn't have
any strong beliefs that there is no God. I don't think I would even
say I was an agnostic. Because I think
to be an agnostic, you have to at least
think to yourself, 'I wonder whether
there's a God.' So, I don't, I never
thought about it at all, to tell you the truth. So, I suppose, literally, there's probably
no word for that, just not religious. <i>Okay. </i>All right. And there might be more
than we think of out there. Boy, we could have a nice
philosophical discussion about whether you had a
conscience at that point. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I do remember feeling
guilty about things and proud of things. So, you do,
it's interesting. You do; there is
a sense of that. I remember specific
episodes as a child, where I felt
distinctly like, what you're about
to do here is not something
you should be doing. And that's interesting,
in a way, that someone that age, because, again,
it would've been before I was nine
or 10 years old. And you often think
of children, they pinpoint
seven or eight as sort of the age of reason
coming on. Right? And it must have been
before that I was having
these intuitions. Okay. Okay. Some would argue
baptismal grace. Some would say
it's the conscience that God planted
within us. But when, then,
would you say that first glimmer or
thought about God sparked? Well, by the time
I was in high school, I did have friends
who talked about God. And so, we would get into
discussions about religion. And I was a little more
on the atheist side at that point, because I was very
interested in science, and I was very skeptical about claims
of the supernatural, which is what I classified
all those claims as. And so, probably
in high school, I was thinking
about it more. But I don't think I ever
really thought seriously about any particular
religion. It was more sort of the
abstract notion of God or a deity of some sort. It wasn't until
I was in college that I even had any experience
of Christian worship. I went to my
sister's wedding at a Presbyterian Church
when I was 12, but that was sort of
a one-off deal. And so, when I was
in college, though, I was dating a girl
who was a Methodist. And I went to church
with her a few times. And I had no idea
how typical that was. I guess I just assumed this is what Christian
worship is like. You go into a church,
and you sing some songs, and you hear a sermon,
and you say some prayers, and then you go. That's what it
consisted in. And I didn't have any
strong feelings about it one way or the other,
not negative or positive. It was just something
people did. It didn't really,
at that time, pique my interest
in religion either. And I got to say to myself, 'Well, this is
what they do.' But I didn't think
about why they do it or I didn't
start reading the Bible or anything like that. So, it'd be like
going to a lecture or to a Rotary meeting
or something. Yeah, kind of. It was not really
a mandate or a challenge to you to become
a part of it. I seem to remember,
it was mostly singing. I don't even remember, you hear these stories
about 30-minute sermons, and I don't even
remember the sermon, to tell you the truth. It was, to me,
it was all singing. All right. All right. Methodists. You know. Yeah. Well, and there's
a wide band of those. So, even on into college, you have your first
religious encounter. But it doesn't
awaken you at all. No. I would say
that I didn't really begin to think
about religion in anything like
a serious way until I was in
graduate school. And that was; so,
we're talking about, I went, I moved from Kent
to North Carolina to go to graduate
school in 1978. And so, I was
20 years old. And I met a girl there
who was Episcopalian. And she just invited me
to go to church with her. And I thought, 'Well, this is something
I've done before.' So, I went with her. And, of course,
it's very different. It's not like a
Methodist service at all. And I was really struck
by the difference. There was all this
standing and kneeling and different
body postures. And there's this whole
different thing that they typically do that the Methodist
Church didn't do at all at the altar. And, of course, there's
this big altar there. At the Methodist Church,
it was a little table, and people are wearing
different kinds of clothing. The vestments and everything
were all different. So, I was really
struck by it. Just aesthetically,
it was very different. And I remember thinking
that it was very exotic. I had had no experience
of this before at all. And so, I went with her
fairly regularly, because I was
sort of drawn to it. It struck me
as being somehow something very
distinctive to do. It was a little different than just getting together
and singing songs, I think as;
for me, anyway, that's what it
struck me as a; people were very
serious about it. And my girlfriend was very
serious about it, too. She was a fairly
devout person. And there was a priest
there, Robert Duncan. He's now like an archbishop
in the Anglican Church. He was the campus
minister there. And so, I got to be
friends with him. And he and I talked a lot
about different issues. He's the one who taught me what the various parts
of the Mass are for, where they come from and what the various
symbols mean. And we talked a little
bit about theology. I was studying classical
studies at the time, Ancient Greek
and Latin Literature. So, I was
sort of familiar with some of the
philosophical background to some of the stuff. But I had never really
read the Bible before. So, I started doing that. And that was kind of key. So, that was where I began to really think
about it seriously for the first time. It sounds to me still; oh, our guest is
Deacon Scott Carson. It's still looking
at the Mass and understanding
what's going on there, a little bit
of theology, and a little bit of the
background, but not Him yet. <i>Right. Right. </i>Exactly. And that's, looking back
on it now, nearly 40 years later, that's a huge gap
to me in my sense of it. I often, in thinking
about my overall journey, I often think,
at that time, I was, because I was
in graduate school, I seemed to approach
everything as a kind of a study. "I need to learn
about this. I need to look into that. I need to study
these texts." So, that's sort of
what I did at the time. I mostly read
theological writings. I was working, at the time,
on Aristotle, an Ancient Greek
philosopher, who was very influential on some later
Christian theology. And so, after studying
Aristotle for a while, I got interested
in Aquinas, because he's one of the great
medieval theologians, who was deeply influenced by both
Plato and Aristotle. So, I saw a connection
there in the underlying, the philosophy
influencing the theology. And at the time,
that's what fascinated me were these ideas. Here are these concepts that to me were
extremely interesting and had great
explanatory value. That's the
philosopher talking. Right? Great explanatory value. So, for me, it was a largely
intellectual experience. And talking to Robert
Duncan really helped, in terms of convincing me
that this was something worth pursuing,
and even believing in. But if you were to ask me
at that time, 'Well, what is it
that you believe in?' I would have had to say
something like, 'Well, I believe
these doctrines. I believe these teachings.' 'Well, what about Christ? Where is Christ
in your life?' 'Well, He's the subject
of these teachings, and these beliefs.' I think that's what
it was like for me at the time. Now, of course, you're
talking about a young guy, 20, 22, and someone
who's in graduate school, so, looks at the world
in a certain way. It's been my experience, and maybe this has been true
for you as well, that that really is, Christ part
of Christianity really is a
personal encounter. And you can't have
a personal encounter with just books. You can find out
all about a person. Right? So, my story is going to
be in your newsletter. And so, people
can read that. And they can say, 'Well,
now I know Scott Carson.' Well, you know what? You might know some
things about me. But yeah. So you can read
the New Testament and find out a lot
of things about Jesus. But until you've lived
this life and followed Him
in a certain way, it's just not the same
kind of relationship. So, that's one of the things
I learned over the years, I guess, was that,
that was a kind of a gap in my early experience. <i>Almost makes you wonder</i> in that very
simple statement that Aquinas
makes there at the end when he sets it all aside. <i>Yeah. So much straw.</i> So much straw. Is that what; and if we had
a good Dominican here, he would be able
to answer the question. But was that really
what he was saying? This is all good and true,
but apart from knowing Him... Yeah. ...could be
a distraction, really. Sure. Of course,
he said that after he had a kind of
a revelation. Right? And I can sort of see that, that if you were able to have some sort of direct
experience of that kind, it would seem really sort of an incomparably
grandiose experience. I think, like you say,
it's all well and good. It's all true. And I do love the philosophy
and the theology. And for me, that's one
of the great attractions of the Catholic faith is it has
this really rich and deep intellectual
tradition. So, for me, that's part
of the fun of it, really. But yeah. It's not; it is kind of like straw, compared to what
you can have if you follow Christ
more closely. I mean, it becomes straw when we have an
encounter with Christ that's, of course,
of grace. It's not something
we can make happen, but something
that's a gift that realizes that even
the best of our intellect and words can never
truly describe the reality of God. We do the best
we can. Right? We use a word like
transubstantiation to try to describe
something that's really beyond our ability
to describe. "Homoousios."
Well, what does it mean? What does that mean? What does it mean? We're trying to put words
to something and, but in your life,
at that point, you were in,
just into the words. Yeah. Yeah. The ideas were
what drew me. And I think that
lasted a while. Everybody has peaks and
valleys in their journey. And I think; so I was
in graduate school from '78-'86 is when I did
my PhD in classics. And I actually
went off and taught for a couple of years
as a classics professor. And the whole time, I was Catholic
and going to Mass. And I even,
from an early time... You were Episcopalian
or Catholic? Well, I mean, because, I,
by '86, I had converted. So, let me back up
a little bit. Yeah. So, from '80
until '83, I converted
in the summer of 1983. So, from '80-'83, I was basically
an Episcopalian. But even at that time, I was already praying the Liturgy of the Hours
from the Catholic Church, because that was
the prayer book. Of course, there is
a set of prayers in the Book of Common Prayer
that you could do. But somehow, the Liturgy
of the Hours, it seemed more fun, because there's
more hours to do, and there's more readings and it just
struck me as being a little more,
I don't know. It seemed more intense,
and I liked it better. So, I was doing
that already. And the more I talked
to Fr Duncan, to tell you the truth, the more he was sort of
talking me into converting, because he was a very
sort of "Catholic," Anglo-Catholic
person himself. And so, his ideas
were sort of solidly within the Catholic
tradition. So, the more I read about it,
the more I studied it, the more I just was
thinking to myself, 'I don't really have
any particular reason to not be a Catholic. There's nothing
for me to protest. So, why am I
a Protestant?' So, I decided, in '83, I had a lot of friends
who were Catholic, too, in the graduate program
that I was in. And they were very
influential on me as well, because they like to
argue with people. And they were all very
sort of gung-ho Catholics. And so, yeah. So, I decided
I would convert. And I did start going
to Mass and attending, not only in Chapel Hill
where I was living, until I finished
graduate school, but once I left
and was teaching, I attended regularly
and was very devout about it. But again, it was just this sort of set
of practices that were drawn
from a tradition. And again, I,
if you asked me, 'Well, where is Christ
in all this? What were you doing
that was Christlike to follow your Master?' I don't know what I would
have said at the time even. And looking
back at it, I certainly don't know
what I was doing. Well, again,
this is fascinating, because often
in the program, what we're talking
about is a person who's had a
conversion to Christ, and then they become
a great Protestant, and then in the process they discover
the Catholic Church, and then they come
into the Catholic Church where their belief
in Christ is fulfilled
in the Eucharist. You've gone through
this journey. But in some ways,
you're saying, 'I hadn't really
met Christ.' I don't think so.<i> </i>Yeah. Well, that's interesting. So, we're going to get
to that in a little bit. But I want; if you look at your transition
to the Catholic Church, I do know that Newman
had a part to play in that. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, I was really
interested in, as I said, reading
as much as I could. And when I went to talk to one of the Catholic
priests in town about conversion,
he recommended Newman. He was a big fan
of Newman himself. And he said, "Well,
you like to read. Why don't you take a look
at this stuff by Newman?" And, of course,
what he recommended at first was 'Apologia.' And that's what I read. And it was very
interesting, and I was drawn to it. But to be honest, it wasn't really what
tipped the balance for me. In the end, I wound up reading a couple of
other things by him. In particular,
I read this book that I don't know
how many people even read this anymore, but 'An Essay in Aid
of a Grammar of Assent.' <i>Oh, yeah.</i> That was one of
the last great works that he produced. And it was, I suppose
you could say, it was sort of more
up my alley, because it was a more
philosophical kind of text. It's about the nature
of knowledge, and in particular, the nature of our knowledge
of religious truths. So, there's this
distinction that we can draw between the things
that you know by virtue of direct
experience, if you will, as opposed to things
that we know because we
can deduce them, like mathematical truths
or something like that. And I was really drawn
to his idea that our knowledge
of God is something that we come by
experientially. And so, for me,
that was the opening of a whole new book,
if you will. And of course,
I'm really interested in books and reading. And so, I think
that was the beginning of my coming to see
that knowledge of God and knowledge of Christ
in particular is something that
you have to live into. Nowadays, when I think
about this, I sometimes compare it to, if you're
a married person, it's an easy
comparison to make. We all love our spouse on the day
that we get married. And you think,
at that time, this is the most
wonderful feeling I'm ever going to have. But then you find out 20,
30 years later that - or at least
I have anyway - that as wonderful
as that feeling and experience was, I wouldn't trade
the feeling and experience I have now towards
my wife for that one, because it's so much
deeper and richer. We've been married
31 years now. And you enter into a
relationship like that, and it just
grows over time. It's like it doesn't
really change, but it sort of expands,
if you will. It's the same
relationship. And yet, there's ever
more depth to it, and ever more intimacy. And you come to feel like
the person is; well, they are one flesh. It becomes more
meaningful over time. You begin to realize, this person really is
a part of me in a way that
when we got married, I just took that to be,
that's just an expression. But now it's reality. And I think that the same is true of any
conversion experience. I mean, Newman himself had
a conversion experience when he was 16. And that was obviously
before he was Catholic. But I guess it was
a fairly common thing among English evangelicals to sort of have a moment
that they could point to and say, 'That was
when I realized that God was calling me
to a certain form of life.' And he did really change
his life at that time. And he lived a very religious
and devout life from; and I'm trying to
think when I was 16, that that wasn't going
to happen. Right? But even in his case, he was able to pinpoint
moments of growth and change and deepening. And I think that that's
going to be true for anybody, and including
the person who's been religious all
their lives. Right? You're baptized
as an infant. But your baptismal grace
continues to work in you. And you become, if you're
serious about your faith, I believe you'll become
ever more deeply aware of the importance of
the faith in your life as you grow older and experience
living the faith. So, for me, that was a really
important turning point was Newman's idea
about the essential nature of experiencing
Christ in your life as the foundation
for being able to claim to know Him
in a meaningful way. I suppose one
would say, though, that one of
the primary reasons that Christianity even
exists after all these years, with all of our Creeds
and theologies and doctrines
and all that, that it really comes down
to an experience of He's risen. Yeah. I mean, that's it. If it wasn't for that... If it wasn't
for that one thing, that's right,
none of the rest of it would be plausible at all. Yeah. Yeah. And yet, how would you; how do you come to believe
that He's risen? I mean, it says so
right in the Bible. Right? So, it's either
true or false. But yeah, that was
my experience is, you can't pick up
the Bible and just say, 'Oh, well, it says
here He's risen. So therefore, He's risen.' You come to realize
His risen Presence in your life over time. Yeah. When Our Lord
turns to Peter, after everybody's left because of His
Eucharistic statements, and He says, "Where are
you guys going to go to?" And they said, "Well, we've come to know
who You are." There's a realization
that has changed them. Now, it doesn't
make them perfect, because after that,
they're going to fail. But still, there's
something there, an experience of
the reality of Christ. And it's interesting,
then, in your story, what you're saying
is you became Catholic before that really happened. Yeah. Yeah. Why don't we take
a break now, because I want to find out what led to that
deeper walk with Christ. I do believe that one
of the ways the devil does all kinds of strategies
to keep us from that, and one of them is that,
for many of us, we could become so absorbed in the teachings
and the doctrines and the things
of the Church that we become convinced we've arrived
and we're fine... Yeah. ... without knowing Him. Yeah. Yeah. It's true. The danger of that. So, let's pause
in a moment. And I just want to
remind those of you, in case you are new
to the program, this isn't my main job, hosting this
wonderful program. I'm the President
of an organization called The Coming Home
Network International. We have a website
called chnetwork.org. And I mention that because there's lots
of conversion stories on that website. And Scott's story has
recently been posted in our October newsletter. So, if you go to the website, you'll be able
to read more details of Deacon Scott's journey
to the Church. So, we'll come back
with more of his story in a moment after the break. [music] [music] Welcome back to
'The Journey Home.' I'm your host, Marcus Grodi. And our guest is
Deacon Scott Carson, former Episcopalian. As you mentioned,
in your journey, you went from really
not having any, just really any inkling about the reality of God, to learning a lot
about Him, being drawn to the faith, affirming what you know
about Him as Episcopalian, and then coming into
the Catholic Church. And I'm thinking, but you admitted
that you probably didn't know Jesus
personally at that point. I want to get to
how that happened. But I'd like to also ask, when you came
into the Church and you're accepting,
as a Catholic, there are things
that we believe in the sacramental life that are more than
just what's on paper than where we come from. So, that's Him in,
we believe that's Him, or that's Him that the priest
is carrying around. How did you deal
with those transitions in accepting
those doctrines? That's a very
good question. I remember distinctly when I was in
the Episcopal Church that there were sort of
two opinions about that among Episcopalians. So, there were some who were sort of what we
might call "High Church," who were readily
embracing this idea that Christ is
really Present in the Eucharistic
species. But others didn't; they just couldn't
grasp that. Or they didn't
want to grasp it. Great story about
one of my friends who was also a convert
to Episcopalianism from, I don't know what
she had been before. But she brought
her elderly mother to an Episcopalian
Eucharist service. And as you know, right, it's very similar
to a Catholic Mass where they hold the Host and they're doing
little prayers with it over the chalice. And they're making the
little sign of the cross. And after
the service was over, my friend's mother
said to her, "That man didn't fool me. I saw him waving that little piece of paper
over that cup." Like it was some kind
of magic show or something. Right? So, I think
among Episcopalians, there is this view that we want to maybe
distance ourselves from, I don't know what, potpourri or something
like that or superstitions
about the Eucharist. But at the same time, there were those
who were fairly receptive of those views. The crowd that
I hung out with was more the
High-Church type. So, I was already
open to it. But it was, to be honest, it was a difficult thing to sort of get
your mind around. What does it
even mean to say that this thing,
which was bread before, is now the Body
of Christ? And not just the Body, but the Soul, the Divinity,
the whole Christ. And I don't remember exactly what I thought
about that. But I do remember
that it tugged at me. It's something
you feel like, 'Well, this is what
the Church teaches. So, I have to come
to grips with this. I have to understand
it somehow.' And it's not
that I resisted it because I didn't think
it was possible, or I didn't think it made
sense from a scientific. I knew it's not
a scientific claim for one thing. Right? So, I wasn't having
trouble believing it. I think what I was
having trouble with was understanding
what it meant or what it ought to mean
to me as a believer. Should I be having some sort of
mystical experience when I receive it,
for example? And I just,
that was a struggle. But it is the kind of thing, I believe, that like, just like the other
sacraments, it draws you in, because Christ
is Present there. Right? Suppose if He
weren't present in those
Eucharistic species, then maybe nothing
would happen, or maybe you
could talk yourself into thinking
certain things about it. But the reality
of that experience is, at least for me
anyway, undeniable. And over time,
if you approach it with the right
frame of mind, humbly and with prayers, then you begin to have a sense of
the meaning of it, that it's; and then
as I got older and older and became a deacon
and studied theology, I've had some little
minor epiphanies along the way
about it, too. You suddenly realize that
there isn't really any, if you can
believe that God can take on human flesh
and be a living human being, why can't you believe that He could be taking
on bread and becoming...? You know what I mean? It's like, why is
that a problem? God is this entity that
can do literally anything. And if He wants to be
present to us in this form, it's just not a problem. So, I think, yeah. You have to grapple
with these things. And I think as I did
over time, it helped a lot to just
sort of be open and to be
prayerful about it. And humility is a really
big part of it, too. You can't go in
thinking, 'Okay, God. Prove to me that
You're here somehow. I want to see a sign or I want to see
some sort of, I want to have
an experience of a certain kind.'
Right? You can't put God to the
test like that obviously. Yeah. We bring a lot
of baggage with us... Oh, yeah. ...along the way
that has to be, we have to be willing
to let go of. Yeah. Yeah. And that's humility. That's what you're
talking about. Can you look back at it? Newman had a time when he
looked back and said, "On that day;" Can you look back
to a time or a period when that awakening
to Jesus became a cognitive
reality for you? I think, to be honest, probably not a very
specific point in time the way Newman could,
but a period of time. And it wasn't even all
that long ago probably. I suppose very gradually, I had a kind of a valley, when I talked about peaks
and valleys, when I had been teaching
in classics departments for a couple of years, I decided that I would rather
do philosophy full-time. So, I actually quit
as a classics professor and went back
to graduate school and studied for a PhD
in philosophy. And I was at a university,
Duke University, that was very; the department there
was very secular. Many of the faculty were
openly hostile to religion. And it was a very
difficult period. And it's so materialistic
and so skeptical that it was hard
to sort of resist. And I felt my old skeptical
impulses arising again. So, that was
a difficult time. And getting myself
out of that, it wasn't probably until,
oh, the mid '90s, late '90s or so, that I began to realize that I was being lured
down a dangerous path. Is this the time, were you
Catholic at this point? Catholic and... Yeah,<i> </i>I was
fully Catholic and was a fairly
serious Catholic. I had been working; I had done volunteer
work as a teacher in the religious
education program. I had been a minister
of Communion. And yet, I was
starting to feel like, 'Well, what do I believe
about this stuff and why do I believe it?' I mean, that's the thing
about philosophers. They always want to know,
"Why do you believe this?" And that could be, it's
a really great question. But it's a really
dangerous question. I always feel, when I
teach philosophy now, that I have to
make it really clear, to my students anyway, that they really
have to have an open mind when they ask
that question, because sometimes
the answer is going to be
something other than what the materialists
and skeptics are telling them. So, but that for me,
that was a stumbling block, to tell you the truth. And it took me a few years to sort of wrestle
my way out of that. So, I would say,
by the late '90s, I was already
having a desire to learn a different way
to approach Christ. I had just recently
gotten married. My wife and I were
married in 1989. And for me, that was also
a big plus, just to see that
part of humanness, as God intended it,
is this complementarity. I mean, I had had
girlfriends before. But I'd never had a person
in my life who was; they talk about
your better half. But according to
our theology, right, your spouse is literally
a part of you. You're not two things. You're one thing.
You're one entity. So, the union of
that sacrament, to me, it was a very moving
and a very instructive thing to realize; I don't want to
use fancy words here, but there was an
ontological change. Right? I was no longer the thing
I had been before. Because of this public
promising of fidelity to another person, in the presence of
certain kinds of witnesses, I was a different thing. And that really; obviously, the sort
of the philosophy of the theology
of marriage helped me to sort of
intellectually grasp that. But obviously living it is a much better way
to grasp it. And so, for me,
that was a major help in realizing that this is just the tip
of the iceberg. Right? This is God
joining us together so that we can be one
as He is one, in a certain sense
with His Son, and with all of us. And so, I began to sort
of think very differently about all the
sacraments after that. So, I mentioned my mother
being a strong, teaching me
the Lord's Prayer, and my Episcopalian
girlfriend maybe sort of
introducing me, too. So, my wife,
in a certain sense, has been the third woman
who, in a certain sense, was instrumental
in helping me to grow in a spiritual way. This was clearly not
a rational or intellectual
change in me. This was a genuine
perspectival change, a different way of seeing my experience of
reality itself. All right. When did the idea
of the diaconate pop up into your thoughts? Well, it wasn't too much
longer after that, to tell you the truth. When I was an
Episcopalian even, I was attracted
to the idea of being
an Episcopal priest. So, I'd thought about
ministry in a church fairly; of course, at that time,
I don't even know if you; what did I think
I was going to do? I don't, at this point,
remember, because, again, I was like,
what, 22 years old or something like that. I'm sure a lot
of young guys think, 'Oh, I want to do
that, too.' And then they get into it
and they find out, 'Oh, I have to go
to seminary. I have to balance budgets. I have to run a church.' That's probably not
what they think. Right? And so, I was not
probably good material for the priesthood
when I was just a young man. I was too immature
in so many ways. But when we got married and we started
attending a church that had a
permanent deacon, I was reminded of that
sort of feeling that, there's more I could be
doing in the Church than just coming to Mass. And to be honest,
I do love the liturgies. I'm very attracted to
the liturgical structures that we use in the Church. And I'm also; I've always
been interested in Benedictine
spirituality because of their
interest in liturgy. And I recently became an
Oblate at Clear Creek Abbey. So, I'm even a
Benedictine Oblate. And I did that
partly because I love their attention to detail
and prayer and liturgy and chant
and all these things. So, for me, there was
a certain, again, aesthetic attraction to it. But I also was just
attracted to the idea of serving
in the Church somehow. But in North Carolina,
in those days, they didn't have
the permanent diaconate. And then in 1996, I took my job
at Ohio University, in Athens, which is in
the Steubenville diocese. And they didn't have the permanent diaconate
either at that time. They didn't get it
until 2009, I think is when they first, had their first
group of guys go through their training. And I did actually intend,
in 2009, to go through
the training, but, story of my life, I submitted the application
packet one day late. And, of course,
they're looking for reasons to cut
people. Right? So, as an academic,
I'm... <i>In 2009, </i>that's because
you're on your way to do 'The Journey
Home' program. So, you missed
the deadline. It might have been
something like that, because it was right
about the same time that it was due. But I was thinking
like an academic, because, in my profession, a day late is meaningless. You can be a month late,
and they're still like, "Oh, wait. This is sooner
than we thought." So, I didn't think
that a day late would make a big difference.
But it did. And that was good though, because my children
were still pretty young at that point. And I don't think
I could have really, have done that
to my wife, to say, 'Well, I've got to go off and have weekends in
Columbus every other week.' So, that was
actually God's providence in a certain sense. And that's in the end,
what helped me the most was God's providence,
because, Steubenville, they only start a new class every four or five
years or so. So, that was a group
of guys, in 2009, who were going
to go through it. And so, it was necessary
then that I wait. And in the meantime, a thing happened to me
that really changed my life. I had been playing
a lot of soccer. I was a very avid
soccer player. And although my surgeon
says they're not connected, I did take a lot of
soccer balls to the face. And I wound up
getting a torn retina. And I was, again,
my surgeon says they're not connected. It's because
I'm an old man. That was the main reason. But I prefer to say, it's because of the
soccer balls to the face. But the torn retina, there was a blind spot
in my eye. And I was terrified that I was going
to go blind in that eye. And you call your doctor. It's a Sunday afternoon. And he says, "Come
to my office right away." I was like, "Are you sure?
It's Sunday." He goes, "You have to
be seen right away." So, I went
to his office. He looked in my eye. He says, "I'm going to
call Columbus right now." This is Sunday afternoon.
And I'm thinking, 'You're calling
them right now?' So, long story short, I had to go to Columbus
the very next day for surgery on my eye. And the whole experience
of going through surgery - I had not had many
surgeries before. Nothing like this at all. And you sign all
these papers. "If I die on the table,
here's what happens." Or, "I understand that I might
be an invalid after this." You sign millions
of papers. And I remember
distinctly thinking, with each paper I signed, 'This is as scared as I have
ever been in my life.' I was thinking,<i> </i>I recently
had a rotator cuff surgery. And the point is,
it's one thing to maybe lose
the ability of this arm, but to lose
your eyesight... It's a tough thing for a guy
who reads for a living. Yeah. And it's just one eye, but you just feel
like, 'I can't; Please, God. You said there
will be no burdens beyond what
I could bear.' So, I was really
pretty terrified. And then they wheel you
into this room where they
give you injections all over your face
to numb you up. But, of course, you have
to be conscious for this thing, because they talk to you
all through the operation to make sure they're not
damaging your brain, because your eye
is technically a part of your brain. So, I'm in there
and I'm fully conscious. And I just remember
the gentle voices. There's a surgeon. There's the assistants,
the nurses, the anesthetist. And they're all; I actually had
a couple surgeries. And during the second
surgery, there was even, I don't know what
her job really was, because she was a nurse, but whatever
her job really was, she held my hand
all the way through. And it was like,
it made a huge difference. I couldn't believe that
there's all these people, doing all this just
to save my eyesight. So, you get out
of this surgery, and everything's fine. You can see,
and it's like a miracle. And I got to thinking
about that experience, how terrified I was, and how their skill and their attention
to detail and their commitment
to their profession saved my eyesight. So, that's a good thing. And it suddenly hit me. If I hadn't had a bad
thing happen to me, that good thing wouldn't
have happened. Right? So, the coming into being
of a good depended in some
weird way on an evil. And I thought, 'Well,
that's God's providence, right there, to bring
something good out of something bad.' This thing was,
taken in the abstract, losing your eyesight
is just a bad thing. But it gave these
other people a chance to do something
really good for somebody. And I had
benefited from it. So, I thought, 'Well, this is what
the diaconate is for me. It's a chance
to be that guy, to come into people's lives,
who are suffering, or they can't find God
in their lives, or they're going
through a hard time, and they need something,
anything, a guy to hold their hand,
or something.' And I thought, 'Well,
I could be that guy.' So, I thought,
'Well, the next round is going to be in,
whatever it is, 2011-2012.' And I just,
I got it in on time. [both laugh] All right. Well,
you're the opportunity to be Christ
in someone's life. Exactly. Yeah. I mean,
that really is it. And I remember the
secretary at my church, back when I was
a pastor, used to; I remember she would train
her new assistant into saying,
"You may not realize, but as a church secretary, one of your
most important jobs is you're Jesus to people
that call this office." Remember that. In other words, you; and that's what
a deacon is, because, as Paul said, "Imitate me
as I imitate Christ." To me,
that's the banner for what deacons are
supposed to be all about. That's right. That's what
we are taught. Right? You are in Persona
Christi Servi. You are in the Person
of Christ the Servant. And you really do
have to be; I mean, our whole faith; this is another thing
that has deepened, for me, over the years, too,
is this perspective that the Catholic faith, and I suppose the Eastern
Churches are like this, too. But they're so; well, the Incarnation
and iconography is such a big part
of it. Right? So, a deacon or a priest
or a bishop, they're all, in some way
or another, they're an icon of Christ. And icons, as we know
from the Eastern Churches in particular, right, they're not just pictures. So, we're called to live
our lives in a certain way, and to see the world
through the eyes of Christ. So that you can't just; you have to take things
a lot more seriously. I kind of feel like every
Christian who's baptized, or especially maybe if you've been
through Confirmation, that we're all,
in a certain sense, called to a kind
of a diaconia. There was this debate,
a few years ago, about whether women could be
ordained to the diaconate. And my initial thought was, 'Well, every Christian is a deacon
of a certain sort. Every Christian is
called to service. So, probably every
Christian should do this.' But the deacon, for sure,
should look at every act, everything he does
during the day as something he's doing
in the Person of Christ. And that would include
things you do by yourself, like mowing your lawn
or just day-to-day details. You're looking at creation through the eyes
of Christ and thinking, 'How can I love this
in the most perfect way?' No matter what it
is you're doing. If it's the person
that you ordinarily can't stand to be around, the most annoying guy
in your office, right? How can I love that person the way Christ
loves that person? Well, being a deacon
means you only have to be on the job Sunday
mornings, and that's it. [chuckles] That's not what
they told me in seminary. I've mentioned
this Scripture a number of times
on the program. And it comes
from Sirach 2:1. And I just think
it's important. "My son, if you come forward
to serve the Lord, prepare yourself
for temptation." Yeah. It's really true. You say, 'Okay.
I'm going to step forward. I'm going to offer my life
to be a deacon or priest or something.' As soon as you do that, you awaken Screwtape
and his gang. <i>Somebody's waiting for you.</i> Yeah. They're gunning
for you now. That's really true,
I think, especially when we
were in formation. So, at the time I went
through formation, the Diocese of Steubenville was collaborating
with the Diocese of Columbus. And we all took classes
at the Josephinum. And so, we did this
with the guys who were in
the Columbus program. And there were seven of us
from Steubenville and 12 guys from Columbus. And of those guys, in the three
or four years that we took
classes together, there was one guy who had two heart attacks
and a stroke, three guys who lost
a parent, just, a parent died
during the course of the formation. There was a guy
who lost his job. I mean, it was amazing what was happening
to these guys. Now, of course, you're in
a small select group of older gentlemen, whose parents maybe
are even older. But it was striking to me how much they were
being tested. And I felt really blessed that the worst testing
I had to go through was just my eyesight, which, once
it was all done, I felt kind of like,
'Well, that was hard, but now I can do
that anyway.' So, I don't know.
I agree. Yeah. There's a real sense
in which you have to be
on your guard. It's so easy to stumble. There are stumbling
blocks everywhere, and there are temptations. And it is true
that you're not on duty just on Sunday mornings, but there's a lot of times
when you're by yourself, and who's going to know
if I go down this road? Well, in a recent,
second readings in the 'Office of Readings' that we've been
going through, a letter by St Augustine
to pastors. Right? And one of those,
a couple days ago, he talks in there
about bad shepherds who are living
scandalous lives. And he says in there,
"Well, the people can say, 'Well, if he can
be that way, well, then it's
all right for me.'" You cannot
set a bad example. Yeah. That's really true. And I think that
the notion of scandal is a difficult one, because I look around
at different things you see on social media
where people are presumably defending
the faith, but they're doing it
in such a way that you have
to ask yourself, 'What kind of an impression
are you leaving by defending the faith
in this way? Who's going to be attracted
to this faith by you?' So, I think it's a real
danger for all of us, to really be on our guard, always to answer in love. And that's a tough
journey right there. We have an email from
Maria from Orlando who writes: <i>I wouldn't recommend
you begin</i> <i>with the essay
on 'Dogma and Doctrine.'</i> No. Not that one. In fact, you wouldn't
suffer too much if you never read that one. That's maybe
for a professional. But yeah. I would say, I recently
actually read a biography of Newman that I heartily
recommend to anyone. It's available
from Ignatius Press. It's by Fr Louis Bouyer. It's just called,
'Newman: A Biography,' or something like that. It's very readable. And it not only tells you
all about his life, but it tells you about
his spiritual experiences. And it talks about
his writings. So, it's almost like an
introduction to his thought. But if you want to read
Newman himself, probably 'Apologia' is the
best thing to start with, because it is
the most accessible. It was intended for
a general audience. And then the thing that
a lot of people, like me, enjoyed reading, because it's a great way
to sort of motivate, if you are
coming home to Rome, you might want to read 'On the Development
of Christian Doctrine.' Because that's all
about how; because one of the problems
that Newman faced was this question of, didn't the Catholic Church introduce a lot of changes to the Christian
faith over time? It's just a massive set
of weird accretions that aren't really part
of the original Gospel. And his belief was that
the Church of England had really done
a great job of preserving
the original Gospel. And he really thought that the Church of England
was the pure, and even more so
than the Eastern Churches. And it was in reading
the Church Fathers that he suddenly
discovered, 'Oh. No, it's actually
the Roman Church that has preserved this faith
in its purity.' And that was when
he wrote the text about how it is that
the doctrines we have now are not different
and hostile to the Gospel. They're genuine
organic developments of that Gospel message. And so, that's
a very important text for I think a lot
of people to read. But again, certainly can't
go wrong with Apologia, and there's also
a new biography that just came out
last year, by a guy named
Eamon Duffy. <i>Oh, of course.</i> He's a professor.
You obviously know him. He's a great
history professor. And it's nice and short. And it was written
basically to coincide with the canonization. So, that's a
nice one, too. I forget, that, I think,
is also available from Ignatius Press. It probably is. Of course, there's always
Fr Ker's, which is thick. Yeah. I've been working
my way through that one. Me too. That's not
a beginner's book. That's like, as you say,
it's like that thick. But that's a very; that's obviously the
standard biography of him. I'm wondering - we've got
a couple minutes left, Deacon, that often, people who study
philosophy can be drawn
to the Church or can find that
their study of philosophy is a barrier to faith
and Christ. What if you're talking
to a philosopher out there right now? What would you say
to perk his interest in Christ and His Church? For me,
one of the things that often occurs to me when I hear philosophers
who are nonbelievers, is it occurs to me
that all they need to do is exercise a
little more imagination. Philosophy, Aristotle
famously said, "Philosophy begins
in wonder." The classic line
from his metaphysics. And he said, people were
interested in things like the sun and the moon and the motion
of the stars. And they started wondering
about the world and how does it work. And that was the
beginning of philosophy. Any philosopher should be
interested in questions about why things are
the way they are. You can give scientific
explanations for evolution or quantum mechanics,
or what have you. But when you ask
the deeper questions about why is it better to protect
innocent life than not? Why do I have the inner
mental life that I do have, rather than just go
through life like a zombie? You begin to realize that you can't answer
some of these questions with straightforward, purely materialistic
kinds of answers. And in particular,
even Plato and Aristotle were aware that materialist
explanations alone fail to give a complete
answer to questions. So, every philosopher
should be striving continually to ask, 'Well, why is it like this rather than some other way?' And that's the beginning
of opening the door to looking at more
imaginative sorts of answers, like what the Catholic
faith has to offer. All right,
Deacon Scott, thank you. I just want to remind
the audience that if they go
to chnetwork.org, they'll be able to read
your most recent article in the, because your story
was in the newsletter, 'Discovering,'
what was it called? 'Discovering Lived Truth
Through Newman.' Yeah. I think that's
what your title is. I think
that sounds right. Yeah. All right, Deacon. Thanks again. Thank you very much for sharing your journey
with us and joining us
on the program. And all of you, I hope that Deacon Scott's
journey of faith was an encouragement to you. God bless you. See you next week. [♫]
