Journey Home - 2012-01-08 - Former Mormon - Marcus Grodi with Albert Holder

[Music] [Music] [Music] good evening and welcome to the journey home program my name is Marcus Grodi your host for this program and each week I have this well this is a new year an opportunity to share with you the the journeys of men and women who who drawn by their faith and the the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ awakened by the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit to the fullness of the faith in the Catholic Church and they're here to share their journeys and Albert holder who's our guest for tonight is a former reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day saints member and he's going to explain the difference between all the different Mormon groups so that I know we get many questions from viewers who enjoy hearing the stories of Mormons who've come home to the church because invariably we get those folk knocking at our door and we not sure how to answer them so Albert wonderful to have you on the journey on program it's been a number of years since since you and I met it's began it's been like almost 20 years right I'm going to think of it it is 20 years this year that's right and so it means you and I are both been in the church about that about that long and the Lord's brought us both on on different avenues of service so good to have you join us on the program I mentioned as you heard in the opening that I may have to have you to find the different Mormon groups but I'll let you do that in the context of your story but as I normally do in the program I invite you to take a big step back and start the beginning okay so the audience knows where you come from spiritually sure sure well I'm was raised in the what Marcus said is the reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day saints I grew up in that church and that church is a and I was the son of a minister in that church and what they call a 70 which is an ordained missionary to go out and do mission work so my father was in Honduras he was in Brazil he was in Mexico and him and some of those trips occurred even before I was born my sister and brother were both born in Brazil while he was there setting up a mission for that church this is back in the late 60s early 70s just before I was born relocated back to the States to the headquarters of the church which is an Independence Missouri totally separate from what we think of as the more exactly I know I'll kind of outline that in just a moment and so they so he he did all that missionary work when we think of Mormon missionaries the two guys in their suits that knock at our doors once in a while is what your father doing the next step up from that so yes because a Mormon missionary typically does that for a two-year period of time what the office of 70 is which is an office of priesthood of the elders all those folks that you see knocking injured or our elders but there are deigned in the Mormon Church at 16 or 17 years old before they do their mission my dad did some missionary work when he was a young man but then right after he was he left to pee right after he finished in the Peace Corps he was in the Peace Corps when he was first married he entered the sort of being a missionary as a career a professional career on behalf of their organized Larry Singh church and just to guess a step back for a moment a minute the difference between the two churches the the church that was that is what we call the Mormon Church or the LDS for latter-day Saint Church which is primarily based out of Utah shares a common history with our church in that of course we all that both branches believe Joseph Smith was the founder of a new church in fact of a Church of Jesus Christ that had long since gone into apostasy and then it was through these prophetic and these miraculous experiences that he had that restored the true Church to the earth and and in that process restored the priesthood they had that had been destinated had gone away and so Joseph Smith was the common founder and then the difference begins if you follow the Mormon history that was up in New York of course he was given a whole new revelation of Jesus a new testament for a new world so the whole idea that Jesus Christ visited the new world and there was a group of Jews who had migrated over during no one is exactly sure during the Diaspora of the Jews or whatnot but preaching the gospel to the Lost Tribes of Israel and the new world and they they and then they had this whole era of Christianity the Golden Age douchy anity here in the new world somewhere which was then supplanted by it you know that that church went into apostasy and then there was you know rampant paganism that took over with the pagan religions that you see and some of the the Aztecs and the Mayans and so forth they started that church Joseph Smith did up in New York and as you follow that history they were involved in a variety of skirmishes with various state and local groups and there's there are some connections with as they would move west one of the biggest scandals early on was the the naboo bank scandal in illinois where they attempted to live in common as a new as the acts that the Apostle says and put all their money in the church and then the church was going to divvy it up according to everyone's need and of course as we all know human beings being human although that's a wonderful idea there was a great scandal that occurred and they were run out of town the bank was closed so as they moved west they finally got as far as Missouri and it was in Missouri where Joseph Smith they had had a number of skirmishes with the local militia in Missouri and if it's a fascinating history and I don't want to go too long on it but just to say that as this group would move into a small frontier town they would literally take over sort of ownership and so from a local political standpoint there was instability when the Mormons or this group would come into town because they would vote and block and pretty soon they would own the town and so they would do that through connections with the Masonic lodges that were being formed in these you know small town they moved west was a direct Masonic connection there certainly is if you look at model if you look at the Nauvoo temple that was built which is actually in the in the ownership of the reorganized levitation Church in in Naboo Illinois and you go into that that temple there are very characteristic Masonic symbols that you can just see in the artwork and the architecture so it's an interesting connection there but I don't think anyone's they wouldn't they would not own it as such that the connection was there but I think they looked for they were looking for rituals to express certain things that they were doing in the temple and so they borrowed for someone they borrowed some of those rituals from the Masonic lodges that that they got in contact some other members had been members of exactly they became part of broth so why did we get the Missouri we get to Missouri and there's a lot of skirmishes going on with the state militia there was people being tarred and feathered and of course all this is you know for the sake of Jesus Christ and seen as martyrdom and persecution and so much so that finally Joseph Smith is imprisoned and he gets word that the governor is going to there's a mob basically gathering to to overtake the jail and the governor's basically had it he's had it with this group so he decides to leave only a couple of guards on the jail knowing of course that the mob is going to overwhelm it so that word gets into Joseph Smith some of his friends on the outside smuggle a couple of pistols into him and him and one of his colleagues were in the jail and they tried to bust out of the jail to escape and he shot in the window a 2-story jail and he fell to his death when that happened and I will remember the exact year was in the early 1800s I think it was 1823 but I have to go back to my but when that happened he created a void of authority at the leadership of the organization Brigham Young was one of the what they called the apostles of the quorum of 12 which was the next rung down of leadership below the the profit which was what Joseph Smith claimed to be so when Joe Smith was killed there was sort of this group had no leader and so Brigham Young stepped into the void to take take over that leadership position and then and decided with most people's approval because they were being persecuted whether they were let's move west the only problem was is that Joseph Smith before he was killed had ordained his son through a prophetic utterance that this would be the next leader of this church this movement in fact the whole notion of a prophet and that whole very sort of sort of akin to the Old Testament and that the prophetic powers would pass down through Joseph Smith's bloodline so it's very interesting and so Joseph Smith's family is from his wife Emma and his members of his family did not go west his son was only 14 at the time so he wasn't in a position to take over but when he was 26 years old 12 years later he reinstituted or reorganized the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day saints which was the church that which was the church I grew up in so when we see the word reorganized in the long title of the church that's the connection that's that's the connection so basically we took we take followship we follow joseph smith son you could say and then the the Mormons follow Brigham Young and we both have a common heritage in Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon so that's kind of how the history breaks down now there's a lot of them securely Mormon doctrines of polygamy the atom god darius people call it the there's two books of scripture that that the Mormons have that they reorganized letters letter discern church never recognized as authoritative the Book of Moses and the pearl of great price are two books that Joseph Smith received and the position of the church I grew up in was that those were private revelations he never as public revelation for the church when he went when the church went west those were adopted and so you were camp the Mormons in Utah they have what's called a quad which is their four books of Scripture and we have three so you have the the Bible the Book of Mormon and then they and then the Doctrine and Covenants which is this idea of open Canon of Scripture which means in every three or four years that the prophet leader the church has a divine utterance or prophetic utterance and it's very unique because they have this utterance this revelation which gets added to the public revelation of Scripture but you vote on it every four years so it's an interesting combination of sort of Americanism and democracy and consent rule and sort of the idea you know is that with both churches or just yours I believe that's how they also do it in the Utah trip except they they both have an open canon and every the prophet of each church is receiving a revelation every every four years that they convene the council the Assemblies convene and it representatives from all over the world come and here they hear the the new revelation and then vote on it and then it gets added to that third book but see the moments have that fourth book which is the pearl of great price which is supposed revelation that Moses was given on the mountain which which because the people weren't prepared to receive it was never presented and buddy Joseph Smith's claims that that was part of what God had always intended and so it's in those places that you find some of these this notion of what's called the atom God Gary we must become girls become gods we all get our own planet even some of the notions and spiritual polygamy and marry more marry more than one woman in this life so that you have a greater prosperity in the next what about the idea that not that really we don't see Christ that Jesus has the Divine Son of God but as one of many sons right right is that more of them that's more the Mormons I I would I would it it's a little bit in this skits sinces just sort of very technical theology I was actually in Rome studying after I was a Catholic and they met with the Roman rota secretary who came in when it was right before the Roman rota came out and declared Mormon baptism invalid and so we had conversations when I was there about trying to understand what it what does it mean to be baptized and why is it that an in extreme in extraordinary circumstances even in a non-believer can baptize provided he intends to do what the church intends by the sacrament but the problem with the Mormon baptism is that there's a there's an alternative alternative intent in that baptism it's not that they intend what the church intends they intend what Jesus has revealed to Joseph Smith intends by the sacrament and so because because of that and because the notion of the Godhead is barriers not Trinitarian those reasons they they said it wasn't valid so but the church I was in was it was the way I like to describe it is as the larger church which was the Mormon Church was much larger they developed a theology faculty they they've spent now almost 200 years reflecting on their writings there has been an attempt to put some rational reason and development of this thought within a system the church I was in always remained very grassroots because of its size and you know so it wasn't any other very much still tied to the sources and so while we so we believed in the New Testament and certainly Jesus says go out and baptize and they were father son and spirit you know it wasn't as clearly those doctrines were never adopted as they were because as you might imagine there's there's quite a there was quite an animosity animosity between those sects and so they certainly we didn't we would never look to Utah to understand the revelation that we think we have from Joseph Smith and so it was it's all at least bull I was in it it always remains somewhat undeveloped and undefined some ministers would say yes we believe in the Trinity in my church some would say no it years would be more like many of the non Catholic Christian traditions in America that are small in more independent guided by their local pastors maybe by a very charismatic local pastor that has a big influence on more than just a local church on lots of churches in this Association of churches somewhat but we did have a you know we did have a leadership and there was there was but they were you know had more than just the Bible right but Union had and you had the the leadership of this church and keep in mind Joseph Smith went on record before he became received these revelations as early on he said mine is a Creed --less faith so he took a very mighty very because of the context and grew up and he took a very anti-catholic position on Creed's yeah now many of the the other right traditions that started during that same time period America were similar right and so I so but there was Authority there was a mechanism for silencing the priesthood if they did things or you know so it wasn't just your local pastor he did report to the leader of that region who then reported a leader of that nation and you know so there was you know the mechanisms were there and then they had a national an international assembly where they would review the revelation but a big emphasis on a reestablishment of the Levitical priesthood from the Old Testament was a big part of the yes yes and the Melchizedek Priesthood actually was even more of both both branches of the priesthood or restored or soon under joseph under you know the port earlier story yeah I think I was going to ask you that I would say most non Catholic Christian traditions see themselves their existence not speak very generally see their selves in existence often over opposed to another group yes I was brought up Lutheranism we existed because of Martin Luther's rebellion or not we wouldn't call rebellion course but correction of the word the direction of church back would have been against against Rome though later I was a Congregationalist we saw ourselves different from the other Protestant church as we didn't see ourselves anymore talking against Rome we were talking about the other Protestant churches you're brought up was your group versus the Mormon Mormons you tell yes in fact every time in a conversation someone asked me where I went to church I would say and they say oh you're Mormon and say no I'm not Mormon and then then they would start this 10-minute description of how we were and and so forth which I don't know if this is the point free to talk about it but it's even a bit more confusing because your church changes name right even yes we can yack back in I think in 2000 I'm not exactly sure because I've been a Catholic now almost 20 years they have they have distanced themselves from their sort of their Joseph Smith roots taking removing the latter-day Saint reference from their name and now I'll call the Church of Christ the Church of the Community Church of Christ but they kept the they have a seal that they use they did keep the symbol of the church but but did they set aside some other Adventist ideas because the the turn of the century didn't mean the end of the world you know because a lot of people were cashing a lot eggs in to the end of the I well we'll get into that what I think I think to answer it shortly I think yes or no okay I think they they're yeah let's get back to your story I'm sorry has it been fascinating thank you for the Beck well hopefully that's helpful to the viewers I think you're very different I guess I could say it is when you're in it you're very sure you're not Mormon but now that I'm Catholic it the you know the similarities are certainly there they're great and but you know it is you saw yourself as a young man you weren't a Mormon and you certainly weren't a Catholic that's right that's right now so my father getting back to sort of how we move along on this story my father was did it did all this missionary work overseas and then across the southwest we were in Texas Oklahoma and Louisiana primarily moving about every two years because this organization was pretty small so everywhere we go we were basically setting up a mission a mission church sometime in 1985 and I don't know exactly that would have been only a teenager actually before that my father before that he would say he had real reservations about the Mormon gospel so and if anyone had followed my father's preaching because every Sunday he would get up and preach sometime in the mid to late 70s he stopped preaching so much from these other books and he would primarily preach from the Bible now there's a whole nother layer there because the reorganized Church also has a Rhian spired Bible that Joseph Smith sat down to Rhian spire because and this is interesting because he if you read the foreword to it he quotes Jerome and of course Jerome is complaining about the poor translations right and so Jerome's one who got the Vulgate but he went back to the original sources and gave us a better translation than well then what was being circulated at the time well Joseph Smith somehow read about that and took that as fodder for the need to have a direct new inspiration for the Bible he didn't finish it he started at the beginning so he started in Genesis and he started in Matthew and he told there's a lot of changes in both of those books but then elsewhere in the Bible it's reads like the King James the Mormon Church never adopted that as a Canon so if you look at a Mormon Bible they will have the King James English and in the footnotes they'll have Joseph Smith's any more joes have changed it they'll have the footnote we adopted it so ours is or they are they're all Deus Church did and ours is a thien's they call it the inspired version which I looking back on it now is somewhat offensive to the rest of the Christian world but anyway because it would suggest that any other versions not inspired right so but he began preaching primarily from the Bible inspired version right but even even that he there were there were places where the rien spiration didn't make a lot of sense so as an example when Jesus is talking in the Sermon on the Mount about if someone asks you to give you his cloak give you his cave give him your cloak if you ask you to go a mile go with go with him to so it's going that extra mile that phrase it's so common well it gets reinstall go a mile someone asked you to go two miles go two miles and and so the whole notion of going the extra mile is just lost in that translation but there are other types but that's one of the ones it was always thought of so your dad was opting up for the traditional translation and my dad was a big reader of Louis CS Lewis well and and so he he was never really I think very early on in his ministry he was never quite sure about this claim that this great apostasy had occurred and of course no one knew exactly when you know was it when Constantine marched his army through the water and that was baptism is that you know a terrible thing like sort of a sign that the church had entered apostasy was it I mean no one could actually put their finger on an exact date but nonetheless we had the Dark Ages everybody knew that we had the Dark Ages so we knew at some point the light went out and so the light went out and we needed a light to come back on and that was the whole purpose of Mormonism was to bring the light the gospel back to the earth and it took the digging up of another witness that had been buried for such gifts with God's providence he had buried a second witness of Jesus coming to another place so that when the first thing didn't work out he had it in his back pocket to restore the church again it's just never sir that heard that angle gamage's again re-emphasize the fact that often these new movements are based on a straw man yes how many idea the light went out in the Dark Ages isn't true right so you start with a false assumption and then you have a whole new movement based on a false assumption things good so he so he began preaching and reading louis lewis's books and as a kid my dad read us the Narnia chronicles of narnia he also started reading Tolkien's books so in some way his mind was being formed through the through Lewis and Tolkien in a very Catholic manner I think I'm the notes to him at the time and in the in the early night in the early 80s we were in we were on mission to Brazil to set up we had been called down to some Paulo to set up a mission when we got there about a year later the institutional Church had a rope there was a revelation that came from the from the new prophet and that revelation says he is - should mean the Mormons I mean the reorganized Latter day Saints your institution our institutional church a separate prophet why we had the descendant of Joseph Smith is our leader okay you know seven generations now well and this will get into what happened to them they as they moved away from those historical roots they that that requirement for the leadership was removed that connection that physical bloodline connection so anyway the revelation was that women were to be members of the priesthood there was also revelation that we should open our communion to other Christians actually to anyone of good goodwill anyone that would come to our service we should have opened communion so you talked before before we started the program a little bit about sort of a liberal sort of maybe a false acute is amore a sense of trying to bring us all together and so I think there was real that there was a leader there was a movement in the leadership of that church that was moving towards trying to be like everyone else and so these were at these are these are things that other churches were doing well my father couldn't square that with the New Testament and he had done enough reading at this point to know that this wasn't a new issue that there had these are things that were discussed even in the early church and had been discussed in Anglican Church and I don't know exactly how but he began to correspond I think he stumbled across an article a man named Sheldon van Walken and Sheldon van Hagen has a wonderful conversion story he's since passed away grief grief appear severe mercy reverse under the mercy yes that's reserved it was Nam that's right he was a student of Lewis as an atheist and then through through the death of his wife was brought to the faith and so he calls that a severe mercy because as he saw it it took her death to bring him to Jesus Christ he became an Anglican but then when the Anglican Church ordain women I'm not exactly sure when that was but I think it was sometime in the 80s and there he became a Catholic so he wrote a number of articles on this whole issue and somehow my father I don't know if it's because he knew Louis but somehow I mean even lost his writings he found the articles and so he wrote to Vatican and he said you know I'm in this church I'm in Brazil I saw this article being any other sources you have so very very early on in my father's journey into Rome he's reading des lieux Bach in boo yay was French Jesuits yeah about the mail you know the the priesthood and the beauty of the priesthood and why what would what was Jesus intent in reserving into an all-male priesthood and what did all that mean and right and so he writes this tract you know and publishes it for for what now becomes another group within this smaller Mormon Church sort of the conservative Orthodox what we see Orthodox group quoting you know des lieux Bach and boo yay and you know just SJ after their name and I remember after I had become a Catholic looking back at this track thinking what what did people think when they read you know and that of course had the same kind of thing when I looked read the foreword of the of the Bible and saw quote some change in Rome thinking you know it's just so out of context you think what are they who do they think these people were you know they're you know they're the of Babylon you know it says they would say but so in and this is getting to one I think the first steps into my own conversion but so we were in in wrong we were in Brazil doing missionary work my dad was of course having great misgivings with the leadership of the church really searching getting more information from wanaka and I don't correspondent a few times via the mail and and one of the last correspondence and that opens correspondences receiver always on a little postcard but he would type them you know so they were always like you know at the end of the letter to my dad after he I don't know gave him some more sources to look at he said why not come home to mother church and that was like one of those moments you know where you know the blinders in the scales from my dad's eyes just sort of you know fell off and it was it was breathtaking and he thought yeah why not come home your mother Church now that was 80 85 84 83 and he didn't come into the church until 89 so it took a few more years but it did that event I think did help him move out of what we call he was a really a career missionary well and stopped working you know for the church professionally you know as a career he left appointment and moved back to the states and he could you leave before he became godly yes okay yes so now he was out of a job and looking for work the point being that he made that difficult decision out of conviction yeah he couldn't follow the leadership anymore because what they were doing and he became convinced that he wasn't sure you know he it was a shot across the bow those words from God walking you know and not not maliciously I mean van Aachen was basically saying this was my answer to my problem I became Catholic um he says and I don't remember this I was 13 at the time and I was the youngest of four he says he came to me because I was the youngest you know we had been a missionary family our identity was wrapped up in his church all of our friends all of them men and my dad had been missionaries with we called uncle I mean he says he wanted to see how I would take it you know what would happen if dad became Catholic you know what would that do to my sort of worldview he says I just broke down and cried and I don't even I don't to this day I don't remember the the event so it was pretty traumatizing to a 13 year old boy who basically looked up to his father for everything but we came back to the states and my dad became a school teacher and I'll just share one more experience of his of his story because I think it leads into one thing break and you do the first time we'll take a break Oh weekend okay I just want to take break no good time now I'd be fine okay let's do this pause at this moment it's that time in the program take a break we'll come back a little bit and hear the rest of Albert holders journey to the church see if it [Music] [Music] welcome back to the journey home our guest tonight is Albert holder and I've been getting him off track with all this great background information about the different warming traditions and I told you during the break you know you what's your father the conviction that he took a stand on is very honorable and to me a very deep sign of the work of God in his life to recognize you know that I'm not gonna be in the pulpit anymore I shouldn't be there and he made that decision which shares his 13 year old was tough right yes very tough so we come back to the states and my dad becomes a school teacher and actually start skinning a goes back to graduate school and does a master's degree in English and to the course of his study he begins to read Catholic writers and he's becoming more and more intellectually convicted about the truths of Catholicism just brief background the church that I was in was now in a lot of turmoil because of you might say these two groups those that were sort of vine to keep the historical traditions alive and the sort of orthodox in the sense of true to the teaching that had come down from Joseph Smith versus those that were more liberalizing that tradition in trying to sort of find common ground with other Christian denominations so right away when we come when we came back that church split in half and the institutional Church when its own way and then we were part of this really almost like a Protestant you know a sect of this sect of Mormonism so we were meeting church in our house that sells small we were at this point we were about sixty families and we were in South Texas where we had lived once before and my dad was out one one night this we would set up church every Sunday morning pull out all the couches we had like a ranch-style home put in folding chairs we had even had a sound system and we would have Sunday service one of these weekends my dad was with a friend who was probably one of our closest his closest friend and someone that I called uncle very very close and at this point they had been ministers for you know 30-plus years together and they were sharing against very personal things and having a kind of a heart-to-heart because at this point I think I mentioned it to you before there was all sorts of religious experiences were going around to sort of substantiate the existence of this broken group because now we had no tie to the institutional church and so we're trying to sort of verify or you know find validity for why we're broken away and so there were various people who had you know supposed inspirations of the spirit saying this is now the three days of darkness and revelations or the churches in hiding it's going to be three years and you know and so this was this three year period of time where my dad I think you talked about him having the courage he certainly did have the courage but it did take him a few more years I think he was wondering whether I as the youngest could take this my brother my brother was six years older than me he's the oldest and then till there were six years there so in part I think he was waiting but and also I think he was still wondering whether this was going to work out you know was Jesus going to come back and reread store the church for the third time nobody knew so he's out having this conversation and they're sharing very I guess very personal things and his friend turns to him and says what you want is for someone to say to absolve oh he said it in Latin and he said and of course that means that's what the priest would say to you in the old right you know in confession you are absolved and I I think I really think and my dad has said this if if that had not happen I think my dad could have thought about being Catholic for another ten years but it was a real conviction and he left that encounter and sought out a priest because he realized that if the power to forgive sins was really available in this world so the power of a sacrament I want it I need it and so that was 88 and in 89 he he comes into the church during that short period of time I was a sophomore in high school my mother had been raised a Catholic and it had some rather unique experiences when she was leaving the Catholic Church to marry my dad she had a very powerful went on a woman's retreat with a group of these ladies that were in this church and she had an experience that basically told her that it would be okay with to marry my father that's all it said to her well because it was a retreat and religious experience my dad had always interpreted that experience for her as this with validity that this was the true Church of Jesus Christ that Christ had established in the latter days so he really thought she was going to have a real problem you know his exposure okay and of course when he finally got the courage to tell her she was delighted to say the least and and he said well wait a minute I mean what about you know this you had this experience it told you that this was the true church and that your Catholic Church was you know the horrible on and and she's anointed and I never had that experience and so all of a sudden you know what to people it was her experience he wasn't even there but what he hadn't relied on wasn't wasn't beta drip into her experience out of what he not wanted to but just assumed that extent were soon Wow so she comes back to the church makes confession and they both enter the church together on Easter Vigil of 1989 so this is where I at this point I'm a senior in high school my brother is out of college in graduate school so this was big news I mean this was like catastrophic news and as you might imagine as a young man I was trying to be an adult and then still very hurt as a son you know that he would he would betray me like this he would disown me like this in fact when we were still meeting we still had church on her house while he was an RCA we had Church up until he must have been two months before he entered the church so he would leave to go to RCA in Mass and then my mom and I would set up church and 60 people would show up and so it was very a very difficult time two questions I don't want to delay it because of time but number one were you religious young man yes yes so you believed I believed I went to church every Sunday I was convinced that this is you know this was know now I had experienced this rift at you know when we left Brazil and I knew we were now part of this other group so but you can imagine your identity is even more kind of untenable you know and so more and more of the preaching in this little group was all about our identity and while we were right we were right we were right and we were right and everyone else was wrong and and so your your view of God and did in God's sovereignty and his power for the world for the sake of the world just was continually shrinking you know because it was already pretty small right once we moved from the world to Mormonism and then you move from Mormonism to just Joseph Smith's version that we followed and then we broke away from that so we were even now in this even smaller group so I had my own as whatever level of faith I had a teenager I had my own wonderings but it didn't help to have those doubts and see what my dad had done because it caused a lot of pain and a lot of sorrow for people that were very close to us and we were we were basically disowned in fact during that first year while my dad was going into the church you know he was in our CIA people told us that my mother should divorce him and that we should shun him as a way of sort of spiritually trying to wake him back up sure and so much so much so that people yet people were telling us he is he's under the influence of an evil spirit and I remember thinking as angry as I was at my dad I remember I remember looking at him and when I would talk to him and I said you know I don't agree with what he's doing but I don't see a man that's possessed by an evil spirit and I couldn't square that with the experience I was having with my father but I also couldn't simply follow like follow along and you did my own experience about what was happening to be able to say that the Catholic Church was really sure Jesus Christ had found it and that would take another three years so I left I graduated high school early and went and sought solace with my older brothers thinking we'll become you know we'll have everything will be everything will return to the way it was you know with my two older brothers well in six months time my oldest brother is in our CIA and he's becoming a Catholic so I was like well that doesn't work out too well and then my other brother a year later an intercept search so at this point I just sort of like everyone's abandoning me you know and I and so at this point I make the decision that God is bigger than all religion no one religion is right all religions have something good so the best approach to this whole subject is to just not be a member of any Church and sort of pick and choose from things I read that I like and that would be I'd be sort of enlightened and and live a happy life but I wasn't happy because as we all know happiness comes and giving your life to God so I had put up some training with this point I was I put up this sort of wall you know God could get only so close to me because I had sort of been burned previously so this goes on for a couple of years and I'm my brother and I used to kid because my brother always thought that taking philosophy courses you had to be mature and so I'd always wanted to take a philosophy course or a or a literature class I mean I was a math and engineering student okay but I had one more humanities course that I had to take and at this point I'm at Kansas University my brothers in graduate school he's Catholic and I'm there I'm like gosh Donna I'm just going to take my humanities you could you know I could have taken anything but I'm going to take this and I took it on the survey of medieval poetry actually was just actually just called survey poetry and there's like nineteen sections of it in the kayuu catalog and you pick one it works in your schedule and you pick it from taught by staff well as God would have it his Providence I picked the class that was taught by David Whelan who was a professor and a Catholic with six children doing his dissertation on Cardinal Newman so you can only imagine the type of poets that we read in his class most of them all Catholic if not Catholic most of them Catholic thinking poets even if they weren't Catholic and so that course in poetry from John Donne who to draw manley hopkins to there are many others but that course was was like a door to grace because it wasn't apologetics it wasn't overtly trying to convince me of Catholicism but it was opening my mind again to the beauty and the goodness and the truth of God in a way that I don't think I would have heard it any other way because at this point I'd had three years of battling with my dad you know over you know Mary ology over you know you name it I mean I would just pick fight for them you know and different Catholic sort of standard Catholic topics and of course he would just come back you know because he would say oh yeah I used to think that too you know that you know Mary ology was a medieval invention or the mass was a medieval invention and of course as you go back and look at the sources all of a sudden you find you know the prayer of Hippolytus the priests from the second century or justin martyrs you know liturgy from all of a sudden the masses is ancient ritual of how how has always been so I didn't I didn't like having those conversations my dad he lost so so you know that's kind of where it was and but that class was a real opening in my heart and I finished that class and professor Whelan and I came somewhat close and he told me goes what if you're really interested in studying medieval thought or philosophy and even theologies you need to go to a liberal arts a small liberal arts school where they still appreciate the sources because if you stay here you can study Aquinas here you can study the medievals but what you're going to end up studying is is studying them through a lens so through the feminist lens or through a deconstructionist lens or did did did did Aquinas really write this you know and looking at you know which you know there's some value in some of those studies but it they sometimes lose sight of the source you know and what is the source really trying to say to you so he's the one that made the the suggestion that I go to another school so when I tell my dad is and of course in my mind I had decided well there's only really two choices it's still there going to be a Protestant liberal arts college or it's going to be a Catholic liberal arts college I'm going to get an appreciation of the sources I couldn't see myself knowing and this just begs my own ignorance but my own my thought my own experience of Protestants were they would just beat me to death to try to make me convert me because I'm not saved or something you know as I hate this don't put up with that Catholics are more laid back they'll leave me alone I can be whatever I want so I right away I had to find a you know you know you know remove one whole set of schools so I told my dad that I would be interested in going to a small private Catholic liberal arts school and he was like you know amazed and of course he at this time is doing a catechetical degree in Notre Dame Institute so he meets some people from Franciscan University and they're like oh like this great school for your son you'll love it so he calls me up says you should go to Franciscan University and Steubenville I'm like where like never heard of it you know and and so to make a long story short I went and visited in the middle of the summer nobody was around and my dad had read some of dr. Scott Hans books and knew he was a professor there and we were meeting with one of the persons in admissions and and it in my dad's I'm real life was can we meet some of the professors in theology or philosophy nobody was nobody was around it was like August right before school so everybody's on vacation he said well I think Scott Hahn is in town mine okay I never heard of Scott Hahn at this time you know my dad had heard that I'd be great let's see if we can be handled like okay so it was very funny because they had me call him and just a little blue what I call up at his house and in typical Scotland fashion he tells me to come in 19 minutes and I have 14 minutes or something I mean it was very like yes you can come at 7:19 and like okay so we go over there and immediately my dad and him start talking and he's he's reading a book on the Melchizedek Priesthood or something so they're going at it theology and all this and I'm like wait a minute you know supposed to be about me and so so I finally brought the conversation back to myself and I see and I was like yeah no actually no professor Hahn turned and said so what's your story what's what's going on are you going to come or not and I said at this point I'm feeling very intimidated by the whole idea of coming to a school to sort of because I was very attracted to it I'd spent the whole day on campus and not going a lot of details it was very attracted to the school and he I said I can make it on my own why man I can make it I'm doing fine and he just turned to me and said yeah you you'll probably make it where you're at but if you come here you're going to thrive and it's again one of those experiences you have or someone you don't even know says something and sort of a light goes on I didn't know what that was going to mean thrive but I knew I wanted to find out and so I made the decision to come and when I was at this point I had fairly familiar with math I had helped my brother basically support and become Catholic when I was living with him even though I didn't accept what he was doing like a good brother you know I was trying to support him so I was very familiar with the math and so I at one experience which I'll end with this because this is really what brought me into the church sitting in the tent a large outdoor setting mass on the feast of st. Francis October the 4th 1992 and lots of questions swirling in my mind at this point you know I mean now had been it Steubenville taking theology philosophy courses a lot of things are not adding up and I'm sitting there in mass and I say to myself just one of those times where you realize God is here it just it became so clear to me God was present and I and I could ask one question and get one answer so I was like what do I need an answer to and of course I looked up and I saw the Lord the Blessed Sacrament distributed at communion I said I said Jesus is that really you and it was in my heart a real conviction that this was the Lord so I at that point made the decision that I wanted to be Catholic that was in entered RCA and it was received in the spring of 1993 the Lord guides our lives as you look back was your experience in that's mormon sect preparing you for the catholic church yes in a lot of ways one of the things that I don't know how I think my dad's willingness to follow the truth wherever it would lead him yeah was it very powerful when you know I go I didn't like where I led him it's like but but as I said the I could not accept the notion that he was you know possessed you know maybe he was wrong but the idea that he was that that was what was going on never said so certainly that that experience of church was very formative in my life mm-hmm but the Lord had worked with you even all along he bring you a young man of faith though that was kind of the trajectory towards the church but it wasn't the truth yet did you meet your wife at Franciscan her I didn't I left Franciscan and then went on for graduate studies in Rome as a layman and when I arrived she was there studying also graduate school and we met in the first week and after two years got married and stayed two more years in Rome both finishing up our degrees and so you ever met her better there let's assume we've got somebody watching maybe in this last minute that's right now where you were why should they consider the fullness of the Catholic faith you know in your life you you it's it's it's a it's it's a decision that has defined Who I am one of the things that I remember very clearly is the realization that I don't own the truth I owned we owned the truth in my other church you know as always anyways ever-shrinking a amount of truth and every Shrinking members who even thought like you did and while I understood that when I became Catholic I was embracing the fullness of that truth I was embracing it I was serving the truth because the truth is incarnated in Jesus Christ it's not it's not something I put in my back pocket to whip out and and kind of beat them over the head with but it's ever challenging me in my own life to better conform to it so I would say that was one of the big sea changes am I thinking about even who God is and how he relates to us alright thanks for summarizing and not only a real journey but all the the interesting differences between the different Mormon churches that we run into out there in our world so thanks a lot Albert and you work and thank you for joining us on this episode of the journey home I hope Albert's journey was an encouragement to you god bless you see you next week [Music] you [Music] [Music] [Music] Oh [Music]

Channel: EWTN

Views: 65,342

Rating: 4.7249999 out of 5

Keywords: EWTN, Marcus Grodi, Albert Holder, Journey Home, Catholic, JHT01341

Id: Myqx0Iy4cLY

Length: 56min 12sec (3372 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 12 2012