Journey Home 11 07 2011 Convert from Judaism Marcus Grodi with Dan Burke

good evening and welcome to the journey home my name is Marcus Grodi your host for this program EWTN gives me this great privilege each week I let you sit in on these conversations but the real privilege is that I get to meet these converts to the church and hear their stories every week they their stories give me an encouragement I've been a Catholic now about 20 years 19 years but I get to hear their stories afresh and the reasons that their hearts and minds were open to the church the struggles that they go through and I know from the letters that we receive from you the emails that often their stories and the struggles that they go through are the same that you experienced whether you're a new Catholic or a lifelong Catholic or on the journey these stories are to encourage us that God still works in our hearts he's very much alive and he wants us to experience the unity of his church and that's true of our our guest tonight Dan Burke convert from Judaism a few a few jumps along the road he's going to talk about it but in a moment but one of the significant reasons that Dan is joining us on the journey home is he may have been a guest on the program a year or two ago for a different reason but now he has a unique connection with the work that he does as the executive director of the National Catholic Register which is now a part of EWTN so it's good to have Dan join us not only to give his story but a talk about his work with NCR dan welcome thank you welcome to early homes great to be with you it's good to have you here that you're a part of the family oh yes exactly it's and I feel I felt very welcome coming into EWTN and being here with you it's been a wonderful talking in preparation it's a great organization isn't it yes it is and of course Nath National Catholic Register as in my mind always been you know a great symbol of faithfulness to the church and delivering the truth that it's always been there it's had its ups and downs as any publication will we might talk about it later because it's tough I think for all hard copy publishers today with this new electronic world oh yeah yeah it's a real challenge to get the truth out that's for sure yeah this I mean god gives us these great technologies like television radio internet and then news media but the enemy also uses it to fight the battle he does and we if we're going to engage our culture we've got to be where people are and and we're working to do that when you were a young man did you ever think you have this position that you're not a chance not a chance never thought I'd dawn the door of a Catholic Church either but you know you never know what the Lord's gonna do let me invite you to take that long step back and let the audience know where you came from spiritually great well I grew up in a in a home where Judaism was the predominant religion my dad is an agnostic my mom was a practicing Jew in the reformed Jewish tradition which is a little bit like Methodists the older Protestant denominations of today it's more of a social construct than necessarily a religious one but we went to synagogue and I was exposed to all the stories in the Old Testament and you know that sort of thing the usual hoops your usual hoops yeah yeah your dad just get about that as a agnostic versus an atheist right agnostic yeah he's he's and I don't know regarding faith in God yeah so he never was religious or participated in anything religious at all so he didn't do the Jewish oops no he didn't and it's funny because I unlike my brothers I'm their oldest you know in the oldest son I but I did I saw my primary identity as a young man as Jewish so somehow that you know stuck with me as a kid that was my identity we did go to synagogue we did participate in Passover Seder meals I had Orthodox Jews and the family that that we we practiced our we participated in Seder meals with that sort of thing and certainly the lineage on that side of my family for whatever reason was the lineage that I connected with and that was the Russian Jewish heritage so like in the like in the play yeah yeah music man yeah yeah yeah there's that heritage now for you then as a young man with unlike your father you you really did have a faith yeah right I did it was it was a strange situation and that my mother came out of a quite a bit of suffering as a young woman and she was working to try to understand that I think now I've never asked her about this but it's it's the way I understand it is and she was seeking to deal with that suffering it was a very sick child in a hospital all the time so she turned to the occult and new-age in the midst of her practice of Judaism which you know if you read the Old Testament isn't all that is not foreign territory so though my identity was Jewish I was exposed to New Age and occult practices as a very young child I had a past wives reading for instance at one point where I was apparently a small Chinese boy that was drowned by his mother and you know in my reincarnated one of my reincarnations and as you can imagine that was a bit difficult for a child to process young man the process like I say there you are your mother's delving into this your dad is probably wants nothing to do with this yeah and that may have made it tough for you as a teenager trying to figure out yeah what's going on well certainly it was stuff they went you know they divorced when I was young and that throws anybody into a great deal of pain and so that the physical suffering and the the the suffering in my home emotional was such that it it drove me later on to try to examine and understand you know if life is this hard when you're when in the first 15 years of my memory what's it going to be like the next 15 and frankly though it's I could get to a little bit later that me too a real serious exploration of why am i here and should I stay you know is that serious well yeah this has happened later in life at this but at this point in your life as a young man you're practicing Jew yeah with these other cults things on the side we hasn't Judaism but else it's just it just is seeking to understand what going on to try to gain some control you know a lot of people are drawn into the occult and those sorts of practices because they're seeking answers and trying to gain control and trying to find meaning and purpose for me what it did so in that there were some dark experiences I had that really helped me to understand there was a spirituality so the greatest benefit of the spiritual world in of my youth was that I came to learn that there was truly there was a spiritual realm it's not just it's not just wood and dirt and and and what we see in the material world that makes up all that we are as individuals all that it is in the universe and in the world and later on that helped me because it it gave me a sense that there there might be hope for for me and for what I was experiencing and how to get through it but I didn't know but it was enough that I thought well I'm going to explore as a young man I'm gonna explore the spiritual side of life and see if I can find a reason to keep take to keep enduring it if you will so it is interesting to see those a gift yes no doubt it was good because there are people that could have followed your dad's direction and gone from agnostic to there is no unseen there is nothing unseen only the sensual is what's real yeah and that's an unfortunate thing and I think the enemy likes to stay hidden for that reason at least in our culture and society so that people I think because I think it can have that effect and people can become more spiritual if they recognize there's something there if they have a tendency to Christ or a tendency toward truth or event towards truth there would be a desire to not allow somebody to go down that path but God's mercy he brought me through that as a young man my home was very tumultuous my parents divorced my first encounter with a Catholic was through her second my mother's second marriage and in between firing a gun in our home destroying our home and and and beating my mother into the emergency room he tried to convince me that the Catholic faith was the one true faith as you can imagine not a great means of evangelization we had laughs but I mean it drove you so you really had what it did was at least in that in that early stage probably said this isn't an option Oh exactly you know that's exactly what happened is I thought well I don't know what this thing is all about I know this there's a spiritual reality I know I don't care for my life and what's going on I don't I don't think I'm ready to go keep moving but I but whatever the answer is if there's an answer it didn't in the Catholic Church there's just no way so he helped to illuminate that off you know at least for time okay so how long is this a teenager high school college well I went through all that difficulty he came into my life as a young teen my parents divorced before I was 10 it's it's a little bit of a blur I asked my mom about it recently to try to try to as a because folks are asking me to recount the story but essentially when he fired the gun in my home I think I was around 10 years old but as I entered into the teen years which are even more difficult for for you know a lot of people I when I began to explore that's that's where I rejected out of hand Catholicism and really the exploration led me back to not to Judaism as much though the Bible has a place with me in it was in my peripheral vision if you will as is something that should be addressed but I didn't address it to later but I went to the New Age movement and began to study and I you know it's very interesting I mean all roads lead to God everybody's good you know just pick one and we're all going to be fine and and isn't Jesus great and Buddha too and and so this this syncretism was it's very appealing on a superficial level it doesn't hold up if you're really looking for truth it doesn't hold up and it eventually disintegrated for me often people are looking for truth they looking for permission permission the life that you yes you know by having all these options than whichever one I choose is alright yeah it's some people are looking for I think permission validation is another way of saying it where I kind of want to cool to construct your own God and he'll do whatever you want or she or whatever or the tree you know so you construct your own God you get to do what you want and you're affirmed in whatever you want to do yeah there's a lot of that in the new-age world as well certainly and I've seen a lot of that so how long did that take you oh it took me a few years what happened the turning point there was I was sitting in the audience of one of the major New Age gurus and she quoted Christ in scripture where he said ye heir who did not know the scriptures or the power of God and I thought well that's interesting maybe it's time that I read the Bible you know because I did I saw the Christian tradition as Scripture and the Jewish tradition of Scripture so I didn't really distinguish them I didn't really know the distinctions my my mother was not anti-christian you know she was very eclectic as you might expect in her spirituality so I picked up the Bible and I thought well she had a book out called the primacy of the spoken word which I do not recommend but in that book she based the entire premise of the book on job chapter 23 and it was words of elephant's Alif as said and this is King James that I read it once and it stuck he said and when thou shalt returnest under the Almighty thou shalt decree a thing and it shall be established unto thee so the whole book was the power of the spoken word and that essentially faith is a force and words are containers of the force it enables you to change reality in effect the world and the way that you want it to be aligned and you know of course so oh yeah you know there's some of that's crept in in places we wouldn't like either but so I read to the end of the book and gods take on Elif as was very different than theirs and you know as you know God gives a thundering rebuke of Alif as of Jove and it and basically says you all where were you when I set the world in its place where were you when I put the heaven I mean it's of glorious rebuke I mean it's really you know something something to behold and I thought well wait a minute you're basing this whole book on Elif as land and God in the end says Elif as is not you know this guy doesn't know what he's saying so I went back and I said what is this contradiction I mean well why is it that God said and you're basing the whole book on his words and they said well the Bible's corrupt and I said great Bibles corrupt I have no problem with that claim so but you picked diverse right so how did you know that verse wasn't corrupt and they had their answers were very spurious as you might anticipate so I thought okay you guys are a little bit wacky and I'm not I'm done with this you know so I moved on started reading the Bible though and trying to understand it which is a which is challenging without ya assistance as we believe in the why one of the reason many reasons we become Catholic but I also at that time was listening to started listening to evangelical radio and folks like dr. Walter Martin God rest his soul was passed on Christian Research Institute but he said one day that he let it slip he never shared where he was and which denomination he was a part of but he let it slip one day that it was so the Baptist so I thought well I'd so I opened the phonebook I thought well I like this guy because he backs up everything he says so he believes in the Bible I don't know about that but at the very least when he says I this is my view he would didn't go to scripture and say and this is why I believe it and other people disagree and this is why so I had a great deal of respect for him he's very blunt so he sledded slipped me to Southern Baptist I opened the phone book I ended up so I sat in the back just you know second or third row in the Southern Baptist Church the first five fill up so I but I thought I was gonna hide out and check these Christians out because I had no idea what happened in a Christian worship service or whatever but I thought I'd hide out in the back of that church and see what was going on and the first five rows filled up and then there and then there was 15 or 10 rows and then there's nobody but me so as you might imagine a good evangelical good sedative out of this pastor he and the deacon pounced after church and let me know what they thought it was all about you know so that started now what the great blessing of that particular pastor was that he agreed even though I wasn't the nicest guy or I wasn't all that I was interested but I wasn't easy I was very different different God's done a lot of work on me as far as my even my affect and my ability to communicate in a gentle manner and all of those things but he just he stuck it out with me for a year we went through evidence that demands a verdict by Joshua okay and at the end of that I mean how do you walk away from evidence demands a verdict you know where that for the audience that we definitely it's Evangelical Protestant book but a big part of the book is not so much defending Protestantism it's starting from scratch to defend the reality of God yes in reality of reality yeah that's what he does and the validity of Scripture I think what I took away from that was the Bible was a reliable document the he described the way that the that the scribes would would Trent would duplicate the text he used the Isaiah scroll as an example which was discovered in the Dead Sea area with the Essene community where you know he he described the fact that we had us we had the Old Testament dated at a certain period well when they discovered the scrolls they were older by somewhere in the neighborhood of nine hundred years the Isaiah scroll in particular there were no contradictions there were no substantive differences between the the oldest scroll that we discovered in the newer manuscripts that we have so through those kinds of evidences I began to understand and accept that the Bible was a legitimate historical document and it was reliable from the standpoint of archaeology from the standpoint of even external witnesses like Josephus as to the validity of the events that surrounded Scripture and then and then the New Testament we moved to the New Testament where you have thousands of fragments and you just don't find any any discrepancies you don't find any contradictions you don't find a fragment that says Jesus is God in one section in a fragment that says he's not sorry we were wrong or you know you know it was a trustworthy document so you know if I could step back I had a brief encounter that helped me down this Christian path and then oh if you can maybe remind me I'll come back to where I left off here with the Bible but there was a guy when I went to school in Phoenix who had a big impact on me toward Christianity and opened my mind to exploring that his name was Mark and he worked at a pizza and he was the only guy that was nice to me in that restaurant but initially I thought he was coming on to me and there's a little bit of my mindset you know so I confronted mark outside the restaurant said I'm not having any of this you can you know go find some other guy that you're in she said no no no I'm not I'm not I'm not hitting on you I'm a Christian I'm supposed to be nice you know so mark told me his testimony about conversion as a form of cocaine addict anyway so that's kind of set me out to listen to evangelical radio and got me into that whole world but I never went anywhere with Mark because I thought Bible study and faith was kind of an effeminate thing I mean it tells you a little bit of where I was coming from I I thought it was you know if you want to go shoot something or blow something up with me I'll go do that but I'm not all that interested in getting together and talking about how we feel about Scripture and that sort of thing so which is interesting because even you know that sadly where a lot of men think that the faith the church is a woman's thing yeah and it's not it isn't at all I mean I look at the great Saints and the founders of the church you know the the Apostles and Peter and these are men of men so that's but yet that's also the way the devil is going to portray it in in men's minds so that it puts a storm door there to prevent you from being open to scripture study or listening to the voice of someone love the Lord no doubt and they and as you say they were men's men as was Christ right and it was st. Joseph's so I so I went through evidence of mansburg I guess the key point to end with there is that if Scripture is valid what are you gonna do with Jesus you have all these prophecies of the Old Testament I still to this day hold on to my identity as a Jew I'm a fulfilled Jew if you will so though I was confused in all of it which Jews are good at and we if you read the Old Testament you know that I still was still my my anchor points spiritually so when he showed me the prophecies of the Old Testament there's somewhere in the neighborhood of 600 knowing when the books were written and then seeing how they were fulfilled in Christ like where he would be born and what he would say or do at certain times and I mean it was it closed the deal for me that and the final piece was CS Lewis's Lord liar lunatic are you male you know the the pastor rightly pointed out look Jesus is a nut or he's a liar a deceiver or he's God but you don't get to put him with Buddha and all these other gods or all these other spiritual figures because he said I am the way the truth and the life no one comes to the Father but through me that that doesn't work it's not an eclectic statement it's not an Allroad statement that's pretty exclusive so now what are you gonna do with Jesus and I so I I decided that I was going to give my life to Christ now I prayed the sinner's prayer right but to me the fundamental Act which I couldn't quantify until I became Catholic but the fundamental act for me was one of submission I thought okay you're God I'm not so what do you want me to do you know it was pretty simple for me once I gotten past that hurdle and I knew I was gonna have issues of my family and I knew they're gonna think I was nuts and you know but it was fairly simple it was just truth and it was just real and it was just right and I couldn't and I couldn't there's something in me by God's grace not in me that is not something that I own but God blessed me with this sense of you have to live and die for truth if you're gonna live if you're not going to opt out of life like I thought I might you you're gonna give your life to something it has to have some meaning and substance beyond making money and buying things and you know watching to you whatever it is it isn't enough for me to survive through all this suffering there has to be ultimate meaning in Christ met me and wow did I encounter ultimate meaning when you when you look back did you know at the time did you realize at the time or is it merely looking back to recognize that it wasn't merely the intellectual convictions of this book or the data a and B brought me to see that there was a life-changing touch of grace oh no doubt I mean I Christ the encounter with Christ was world-changing it was soul altering it was you know I went from as you hear a lot of testimonies that were and evangelicals are just wonderful at telling their testimonies I mean there were things I was delivered of instantly that I never participated and again and it what I wasn't delivered of those things because of an intellectual argument I was delivered of those things because I'm an encounter with the Living God because I met the god of the universe who reached into my heart and changed fundamentally who I was I wasn't it I would never be the same now it's true that I wasn't healed with many other things that's when you come out of hell if you will a kind of a hell you bring pieces of it with you and I'm still working through and fighting sin and trying to submit all that I am to Christ because he deserves everything that I am those that still a work in progress but yes to answer your question it I had no doubt and today have no doubt and have never had any doubt I had a friend who who abandoned Christianity in Krita Bandhan his faith in Christ I worked with him at folks on the family for years great guy and he said I don't believe anymore and I said you've never believed and he he said no I believed what you believe I said Dennis I've met the King of Kings I can no longer deny his existence that I could deny yours if you truly knew you couldn't unbeliev because I mean it's like saying I'd you know walking out of this studio and saying to somebody I didn't want to believe in Marcus Grodi anymore well that's absurd you know but that's how real was to me it is I mean Christ is is not an it or a or concept he is present real the God of the universe has condescended to meet us in the flesh as a human being who did go to the cross for us and now in this great institution of the church and in the Eucharist there is no doubt that it was more than so you had this light of grace yeah but open Europe so the next day went over and you left the Southern Baptist Church and became kappa exactly well hardly right right well you know my my experience with my stepfather's cemented a real emotional wound in the catholicism so this Southern Baptist Church was very anti-catholic and that fit perfectly with the grooves of those wounds and their anti-catholic sentiment of course worked very well and that book that you mentioned as good as it is the evidence demands burning yeah the weakness or maybe the problem with that book is it also seems to say that you know you don't need the church yeah I mean it what here's logic and everything is based on a presumption that we don't need to believe in the infallibility of Scripture you don't need the church right which is very absurd when you're on this side of it right now at a time though no it fit everything that you were experiencing there Southern Baptists and their realness of yeah version and it's what I need it you know it's what I needed at that time but I eventually I began to question the idea that you could divorce so you could you could insist that I line up this verse with this verse and this the old testament the new but but this oh that the other context of the New Testament had nothing to say about what those verses meant by what they said you know when you use the word like episkopos or you use you know what did it mean to the writers themselves well when you be and ask those questions things start to unravel but I didn't quite do that darling right so so the the grooves of the of my youth and the suffering and my disdain for Catholicism fit very well Lorene Buettner was the text as your wealth American familiar with Roman Catholicism probably one of those strongest anti-catholic witnesses of their book form that been around for a hundred years and particularly from a Calvinist yeah perspective so and Calvinism was a big you know as I began to delve into scripture in history I believe I don't know if you agree I know you're you were you came from there but Calvinism from a Protestant standpoint was the most coherent the integration of theology and thought and epistemology and all of that than anything in the Protestant world well why don't we pause there den you know you deputy and wants us to take a break halfway through so let's take a break we'll pick up because now here you are you're on on fire Christian yeah in fact a Calvinist again come back to that way after the break but we want to we'll see at this point at what point the church becomes an issue for you we'll see that later in the program Dan Burke's our guest tonight he's the executive director of the National Catholic Register let's take a break we'll pick up at this story welcome back to the journey home I'm Marcus Grodi your host our guest is Dan Burt convert from Judaism but that simple title doesn't really describe it because if you left us off before the break not only had you have a completely life-changing touch of our Lord's grace that convicted you of his reality and his love for you but you were discovering the Calvinist strain of oh yeah a Protestantism yeah and I I loved my faith I mean from the very beginning I was in I I had it truly experienced God and and and I wanted to give that to anyone and everyone I could and so I went door to door I memorized scripture continuing witness program and Southern Baptist Church and but during that time is when things an interesting event occurred that began to make me look to to Rome a little bit but essentially what happened was in my neighborhood as a young Southern Baptist there was a Jehovah's Witness who confronted me and he said to me the bad guys won at the Council of Nicaea and Jesus isn't in the Catholic Church corrupted Christianity and were that you know they're the true Christianity and Jesus wasn't truly divine and all of that and I thought well of course the captive Catholic Church corrupted everybody knows that right but I don't care for this attack on Christ and some of these other things you're saying so what happened at that point was I thought well there's got to be documents that that help us to understand you know what happened at the councils what happened in the early church when what about the disciples of the apostles and what's the what about the context all of that and how did the Bible come together you know those things start to crop up if you're a student of history I've always been a avid reader and and again loving my faith I wanted to be able to communicate it so so that's really how I got into Calvinistic theology I read through Luther's treatise on the will and in I ended up essentially historically moving into solidly into the Reformation theological II and Westminster Confession was to me the most coherent statement of faith but I had a great deal of respect for Luther Heidelberg catechism I thought out of as well but essentially that encounter with the jovis witness led me deeper in history I think it's the essay on Christian doctrine by by Newman by Newman that said to be deep in history is deceased to be Protestant if that's the right quote right but that that began to happen to me I sliced I picked up at fuller the library by fuller seminary in California or in a book store that carries all the books from the seminary so I picked up I had no clue what I was getting I picked up a treatment by Cyril Richardson who was an Episcopalian minister of the Apostolic fathers so those are just the first few hundred years and that treatment gives you a survey of their thought in their writings with some commentary and I began to read through that and it was pretty amazing initially I my reading I was I still had a very negative and I Catholic bed so I still have the copy and I still have you know in in the notes I wrote papist nonsense you know or they're just trying to manipulate or Piscopo means you know I had started studying Greek on my own I was exploring going to a Bible College which it didn't quite work out but the I I I was arguing with the Apostolic fathers which is another absurdity from from this angle right but I really was moved by them so I kept going back and going back and then I got larger volumes of the the the fathers that had written outside now the Apostolic fathers wrote mostly within the new so my period slightly beyond clement of rome wrote i think during the time that some of the New Testament was was constructed and so I thought well you know this is powerful stuff and but I began to have this conflict of what this idea in the Southern Baptist Church in particular even Jellicle Protestantism is that there we're gonna strip away all man-made things man-made ideas and traditions of men and tradition is seen as negative work and we're going to just get down to the bare bones of what Christ was and what the church was well the early Christian fathers don't in any way depict a world that looks anything like the stripped down you know modern era Protestant church to the to the even no matter how sincerely they're attempting to reconstruct this thing the disciples of the Apostles had a very different view and understanding of what what the church structure should be what what different doctrines were and what we're not and what early Christian worship looked like before this great corruption that the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Mormons claimed and just for the audience the the claim of this great corruption that Nicaea yeah it's 325 right right so there's 300 years in there after the if we take the death and resurrection of Jesus yeah wrong 30 ad 300 years later is Nicaea right well the Apostolic fathers you're talking about are the end of the first century right 70 years 80 years 90 years exactly they knew the men that Jesus chose as as apostles many of them themselves were converted by the Apostles exactly exactly so I can't it yeah I mean if not to listen to them is is is if I can just be very blunt it's foolish I mean it really is foolish I mean if Marcus if you had passed and you had just an extensive library of writings and and I had begun to be influenced by you and I wanted to understand what you meant by what you said and let's say god forbid that happened and your your son or your family survived you well look if I'm gonna if I have trouble with understanding something you said wouldn't I go to somebody who knew you and understood what you meant by what you said so that idea just begin to surface in my mind and I thought over it and this is a 15 year of struggle because the Catholic Church was was such it was it was so negative to me because of my experience and then I was indoctrinated so I emotion was solidified by doctrine that it took a lot of unraveling but I kept going back to the early church fathers and I found men that were astounding and there were two fundamental ways that they encroached on my view and that was the their proximity and their piety so this has relates a little bit of what you were saying so the proximity part is so when did Clement of Rome write his epistle when was that when when were certain sections that are just written so he was there in that period so Polycarp was a disciple of John so okay and what did they say it all looked like so--you it begins to really unravel you and then so the proximity of them was was very compelling but then piety was was a big thing they gave their lives for their faith it's easy to talk about Marcus very easy to talk about it's a radically different thing to hold to your faith until your your your burned alive enough to where you you have no more words and you're you know it's a radically different thing to be faced with being torn limb from limb in the Coliseum it's radically different to see your family members tortured to see to give everything the witness of that incredible faith was so compelling to me that I just couldn't let go of it it kept calling back to me so as I'm reading the the Apostolic fathers and then the early Christian fathers and up until around 800 AD it's it's influencing me but I it's still very Catholic and I'm just kind of going ah you know I can't do that I'm deepening my view of the church in history through the Reformation I'm solidifying my theological ecclesiology and my soteriology was all Calvinist because it was the most coherent system I still still believe that and brought me many blessings the the understanding of the sovereignty of God the great glory of the work of Christ on our bath Wow I mean there are some things there that are that are so beautifully stated that penetrated and furthered my faith but what I did at one point was I said well I'm going to read the father's and it was as if I set them I had no concept of the communion of saints but it was as if I set them in a room around a table and I said to them tell me what there's one thing you want to tell me what is it just tell me because I'm you're affecting me but just would you speak to me so I went back to that same original treatment that I had read and I read through Shepherd of hermas and Irenaeus and Polycarp and Clement of Rome and you know the lesson and what stood out to me was apostolic succession and and so so I'm historically I'm working deeper into the church I'm with in pastoral frameworks that have now been completely blown up because if you hold the apostolic succession the light went out of my head I thought wow these pastors are wonderful and they blessed me they brought me to Christ they have no authority you know and it may sound harsh but I really did I do have a deep love for I have no animosity towards evangelicalism or Protestantism or anyone I have great many Protestant friends and I love and respect them and their love for Christ that's valid and but confronted with what the disciples of the apart said I I could it was inescapable that my pastor had no authority to convey the Eucharist to me all right to to speak and teach authoritative lis men that laid their hands on him to ordain iam had no authority to do that it's exactly right it's exactly right so I have this huge dilemma and my dilemma was justification by faith alone it's the doctrine Luther said upon which the church either stands or Falls is that an accurate quote I think it's I was there but I believed in AB stock succession what do I do so I began to study the there are three bodies essentially that claim that they have valid abstract succession that they can demonstrate and that's the Orthodox East the Anglican Episcopalians and Catholics and there and one was already eliminated so that made I was choosing between the other two so I began to explore Eastern Orthodoxy I attended seminary course on Mary of all people because because that you know that was a that was a challenging thing to me to do exactly yeah I thought I can't deal with this you know that's all I went but I discovered the thirty-nine articles which clearly in a mystical Anglican yes Anglican thirty-nine are it's just it's the equivalent to the Westminster Confession or it but it's their Creed if you will if that document is jet clearly teaches justification by faith but they also claim apostolic succession so I ended up in an Anglican seminary to make a long story short but as I entered into the Episcopal Church I entered in doctrinally not I didn't understand the sociological deconstruction that had occurred from its inception and it was a crazy place when I got in I thought wow this is an anglicanism on paper historic Incan ism this is something really weird you know but at the same time I got in connection with Orthodox Episcopalians who are the seminaries st. Andrews Seminary which I attended was in North Carolina and I was a became a postulant for Holy Orders in the in the seminary where I had a collar and a cassock and all that but I I wasn't in for long what it what it did for me was it brought to me it was a bridge to the Catholic Church really it taught me liturgical prayer which I never thought I could participate in it was required that we pray the equivalent of the Liturgy of the hours three times a day which was the Book of Common Prayer beautiful look absolutely stunning yeah I learned high church liturgy because I ended up in volved with a continuing Anglican group that was really seeking to adhere to the roots of historic anglicanism which is Catholic essentially I mean it's in its roots prior the Henry the eighth and you know that story's a bit more complicated then we don't have time to go into that but the so I ended up in seminary all my texts were Catholic they had me at construct an altar for my prayer time which was made up of an icon of Mary and Jesus and wow that was a big hurdle for me to get get over but I loved it I I really thought you know this is resonating with me I loved my journey through him to evangelicalism but I never felt at home I always felt there was always this doctrine but whose right you're saying you're right and who's got authority and and so you figured it out after a thousand okay so now you you've got it all worked out right okay so Fred in his Bible and you know I just become he ended up in Calvinism because of all these different opinions this one seems to be the tightest argument well on Calvin appealed as you know various substantially to the Fathers of the Church so he appealed to a nap stalling Authority that was beginning to be interesting to me so I ended up as an Anglican I think to kind of bring it to a conclusion the Catholic Church so I I I realized as an Anglican that I was just sort of putting off the inevitable that all this beauty and majesty the roots of it came from the Catholic Church the Bible was assembled by the Catholic Church the liturgy that I was celebrating sacred polyphony and chant which salute with the Anglicans do beautifully - the doctrinal components was really Catholic so I entered into RCIA in a parish way in my town but the strange thing I don't know if we have time but I had to pick an Episcopal Church in my town where I was living at the time because there weren't any continuing English in parish Anglican parishes there well it turns out that Phil Webb was the priest at that parish the Phil's been on the journey home program and he was converting to Catholicism and and I'm from what I'm aware is the only Episcopal priest at that time that was doing that in the entire state of Colorado so how did I end up in his parish so he's feeding me Tim gray and Scott Hahn and and I were arguing back and forth and so anyway so I entered in dire CIA and how did you get over though that childhood underlying anger against the church or rejection of the church I went through a lot of healing in my faith and forgiveness for my mother and experiences that God gave to me as I ended up having children and a family where I I went through some healing that was necessary for me to even be open to it but then the but this but the hunger for truth it was ruthless in my heart the the work of God was ruthless in me and I just couldn't rest until I dealt with all the questions but so I ended up in our CIA summer of 2005 I was sitting in mass and I couldn't take it anymore i I I was sitting in mass and I said I can't watch people take Eucharist anymore I have got to participate because I came to believe in the real presence of Christ as an Anglican and of course the orders are not valid and it wasn't but I was deeply compelled by wanting to have a deeper communion with Christ and I couldn't take it so I called up the woman who headed up our CIA and I said I will submit I said I don't get justification by faith the merry thing really drives me crazy but I understand the Magisterium of the church I understand apostolic succession I understand that the only whole valid expression now the Orthodox Easter our brothers in a very unique in close way in the Eucharist is valid but but I had worked through it to where I said I will submit and I'll figure out these doctrines later I'm I'm gonna stop being the judge and I'm gonna let Christ and his institution tell me what is true and how does that play out in our lives so so they they received me yet they received you they got special permission and on the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel which has a whole significance that I'd love to talk with you about some time I was received into the Catholic Church I received First Communion and all on one blessed Saturday at one time you're coming in without accepting everything what you're accepting though is not you didn't accept them but you recognize as a saint Agustin faith seeks understanding right right faith comes first yeah you can't wait to understand everything yeah it's decided heaven we're not going to arrive yeah yeah but what you were basing it on was the reality of the mystical body of Christ the authority of of the church exactly it and and also that living experience of Christ the the I don't think I couldn't have entered into Catholicism on an intellectual basis alone it was just too difficult there were too many personal barriers that I have and a lot of my journey was very intellectual as many who come to hold staunch Calvinistic doctrines but it was that real relationship with Christ a real call - in a real and he gave me this gift of a constant disses and a constant view of contradiction and you know how with with a lot of things in process isms at I could only resolve it could only culminate in the Catholic Church so it was intellectual tradition it was history and factual it was archaeological it was but that all coupled with a true personal relationship with Christ and the witness of Christ and in his view in the glory of Catholic Church about five minutes left I want to make sure we get to talk about your work with NCR yeah but before we get there though you did mention to me that you're working on a book on spirituality how did that oh sure you know as a real theme in your spiritual journey well this is a tough thing to summarize but when I was in Calvin Calvinistic realm of theology and understanding of the Church in Christ I was having I had a real relationship with Christ I mean I I do and but I was experiencing things in prayer that I didn't understand and struggling and aridity but also experience of Christ well in the Calvinist tradition as you know mysticism is a is a is a bad word and because it threatens sola scriptura essentially in its in its end they they believe but I'm saying look you guys you told me I have to have a personal relationship with Christ but but now I'm there and you're acting as if it's to contract I said where's the consummation yeah where's the you know it isn't I didn't just it isn't just about this juridical pronouncement this this declaration in the great courts of high heaven that says you're clean now and forever because of the work of Christ I'm living with Christ so yes I believe that his he died for me and he set me free but guys personal really means personal he Christ is a person God has made himself flesh that we can live and encounter him and I'm I am so you and now you're telling me that as a category isn't valid that can't be so so guess where I turn st. Teresa of ávila in particular was the one who made me feel sane I am not claiming any sort of elevated spiritual maturity are not claiming elevated holiness or whatever but what happened was Teresa of ávila embodied for me someone who was proof had a profound love relationship with Christ John one of my favorite chapters in Scripture John 14 Jesus says if you love me and you keep my Commandments I won't manifest myself to you I will the Father and I will make our home with you that's not a contract that that's much more than a distant juridical declaration and and it's so in that spirituality I began to find this compelling call as wealth of the church so I'm being called by all these other things we discussed but also by this understanding of of a personal relationship with Christ and how what does that scripture mean when he says he will manifest himself to us what does it mean when he says it's going to be with us what does it mean to really have a personal relationship with God it's not just contractual all right one minute nc our National Catholic Register that's a story in and of itself but yeah our our mission is to is to reveal and talk about the events of the world and the church through the eyes of the Magisterium so we're we're a faithful Catholic publication we have a print publication that comes out every other week we have an online publication that has I think we've reached up over three million visitors in one year and a lot of young people who are facing to the church are turning to it to understand what's going on with the church today and the events the news what did the Pope really say the secular news says he says one thing what did he really say we cover all that and it's an absolute delight to be working for the right if the audience wants to figure out more about NCR where do they go they can go to two places ewtn religious catalogue comm wtn religious catalogue comm or they can go to NC register.com and take a look at our website we have millions of visitors there and we also have register radio with EWTN you can find that on ewtn website thank you very much for joining us on the program after your work its both ewtn and NCR thank you very much and God bless you I hope this was an encouragement to you Dan's been through a lot we all have but as he says it's the the Grace and personal commitment and love of our Lord Jesus Christ that brings us home you

Channel: EWTN

Views: 45,314

Rating: 4.868041 out of 5

Keywords: Journey, Home, 11, 07, 2011, Convert, from, Judaism, Marcus, Grodi, with, Dan, Burke, Catholic

Id: ZWfYQGIadQQ

Length: 56min 11sec (3371 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 08 2011