Journey Home - 2012-05-07 - Former Anglican - Marcus Grodi with Dr George Harne.mp4

good evening and welcome to the journey home my name is Marcus Grodi your host for this program each week I have this wonderful privilege from EWTN to bring into your home's the men and women who are going to talk about their journey of faith following our Lord Jesus Christ and often to a church they didn't anticipate that that's where they would end up the church Christ establishing his apostles in the Catholic Church and our guest tonight dr. George horn we say former Anglican but I think there's a little bit more in that journey and he's here to share with us tonight he's the president of the college of st. Mary Magdalen and I'm sure we'll get a little bit of that in our story later but George welcome to the program dr. Horne but George is good to have you thank you here and you you come from a state that I really like I've written about in my books but good old New England is that your home no I'm originally from Northwest Florida okay and sekolah I was born there and have lived in Seattle Washington Maryland New Jersey education and I graduate school took us the number of places all right so well you've seen the journey home so you know what I my strategy is to encourage you to take a long step back and help the audience understand where you've come from to where you are now well I should begin with my grandfather was a Pentecostal minister he came from Maryland down to Florida to establish a church there and so I grew up your grandfather my grandfather that's right well I mean you and iron are very young but a grandfather would have put him in the early days of of Pentecostalism that's right that's right and in fact the what they call the revival came to the mountain in Maryland and they were part of United Brethren congregation and those who embraced the revival it changed their lives and many of them went out to to do what they believed God had called them to do and it took my my grandfather and grandmother down to the Florida but they established the Tea Street Church of God there in Pensacola and he had a radio show and then you know was very faithful there and that calling and I lived with with them for a while when I was young and so for the first 17 18 years of my life it was a shape they were shaped by by that that experience and when he's read the Flannery O'Connor stories knows the South is you know it's permeated by a sense of the presence of God yes I'm doing there you have to make a choice early on there's not a lot of Anila ground I think she called it Christ haunted South yeah and so it was very intense there there wasn't a sense that God was in the BA in a box and you lived the rest of your life separate from that everything was oriented to but I'm assuming that you're not trying to imply that your early childhood was like one of liner thankfully no no but there was a sense I mean I was you know it was not in common to be driving down the road and see signs I'm calling you to repent that hell was you know your destiny if you didn't and things of that sort so it was very intense and that worship as a Pentecostal you know you you had there was a sense when you went on Sunday morning that something miraculous could happen you know that you never really there was a sense of the spiritual gifts were very much alive an action so that's in you know obviously the Everson emphasis I mean the Bible and so as even as a kid we're always reading Bible stories and reading Scripture and but it was ultimately about making a decision for for Christ and you know which side were you going to be on which time we're going to do so and so that was very that was very formative and I must say that my grandfather's example of just a total commitment and a desire to be faithful and and also a trust now if there I was like there was a childlike trust there that God would provide well he must have been one of the almost pioneers of that movement I mean even radio he wasn't but I mean all of that are very committed sincere believer in the in the in the now presence of the power of God to change lives that's really kind of the keys of Pentecostalism absolutely wasn't just 2,000 years ago it's now you could change lives but I think that's that's um that that presence made it I think with that Pentecostal beginning made it easier for me to into the church distinction say from other evangelical more evangelicals because there was a sense that the miraculous still occurred and and so doctors like the real presence those were relatively easy in some sense to embrace because I had grown up believing that God was going to act on Sunday morning paetynn Europe again but I think this is a key point for men in the audience that even historically one of the sparks to Pentecostalism in the rediscovery of that very thing was because many of the Protestant denominations had bought into the idea that the miracles ceased with the Apostles and in many ways as a reaction against the Catholic commitment right that miracles continues so the Pentecostalism maybe unbeknownst by their leaders was really coming back in line with the Catholic commitment that miracles continue to happen well it's interesting there I'm there are you know a number levels there was Davis's son conversion but then but then we even had they had something they called prayer cloths where the they would bring them up these little white squares of cloth they'd bring them up and they would have they went anointing with oil and they would have the preacher pray over them and then they would be distributed out to people who were sick and I remember my I had asthma as a child and I remember my parents clipped one of those to the pillow i slept on so it was there was a sense of I mean God was everywhere and he was he was and he was working and then the other Catholic connection yes I was being set up even as a small child so it was it was yeah there wasn't there wasn't this sense that here it might have the rest of my life and then God is something in religion is something that's on Sunday morning it was everything it was everywhere and at all times and so yes and we did since the connection back to the early days of Pentecostalism Azusa Street and the revivals and yeah so it was it was it was very interesting so very early age the religion was just a key part of your whole life it was and and so there was this constant called a conversion and we were always you know I was telling Bible stories I would I would be told Bible stories and then be asked to repeat them back and then tell them back and in those you know and so the idea of modeling your life on characters for the Bible you know it can be extended of course to the community of saints and so a lot of the forms and structures were there at an early age so did you at what point in your life did you do you remember having what we would have called a personal relationship with Christ I mean was it it became more than a mere mental it was as a part of your very early upbringing to have a very intimate walk with our Lord yes it did happen very early and what is you know the and it comes out of the the Great Awakenings and the revivals the the altar call they attended at the end you have to you have to make a decision you have to get up and you have to walk down to the front and it takes different forms of different denominations but the way I grew up you you know there would be a passionate appeal usually at the end of a sermon and there would be music and I'm you you you would commend me would pray and in it's a Pentecostal this happened at the end of every service you know Sunday morning Sunday night Wednesday night and this this was a regular occurrence and so I would say in the age of four the age of five you know this this process began you know and it does the positive side is that it really you're constantly reexamining where you stand in relation to God but if this this is this is a good a good beginning but if there's no real structure for discipleship and growth beyond that then you repeat that process again and again right and so what I saw growing up was a kind of you know you do you can in some places can grow hardened to this process and that's kind of the dangers so as a Protestant you know baptism is simply a symbol and so interestingly the I was baptized at a very young age and this is this is horrifying to a Catholic but I was baptized again later later because I guess the first time didn't take and then a third time so because each time you you you sort of recommit your life to God you go through that process again and so so yes it was very very formative yeah I mean it's bull so that it becomes both a a public expression of your commitment that's why you're being baptized in that as well as the ritual of but the whole ritual of it is a signed sealed expression of okay this is at this time it's good yeah it's gonna take this time this is that so yes and so yeah that was that that those kinds of things happened you know you know once a month people would be baptized and it was it was a public commitment yeah that's an interesting expression of if you don't have an understanding of that the sacrament really does change you a person then you can't also build on the graces that you are there right but also that it's interesting that you know that's coming forward for the altar call is an expression of one's desire to grow well that's what are coming forward to receive our Lord in the sacrament so it's supposed to be now sometimes we can get used to just coming forward it's what we do every Sunday you don't think anything about it people receive our Lord and then move off to play golf or and it's just it can lose its intent to write but in Pentecostalism it's interesting how many efforts were trying to recapture that which we had been lost but without the full catechin to know what it was why they were coming forward very deceive our Lord in the sacrament which I don't know did you receive the sacrament it was it was a it was a quarterly one and which was common I think it not a lot of Protestant groups and yeah I saw what was there but it was it was seen simply as a you know as a symbol growing up how did your grandfather and your parents and yourself have any thoughts about the Catholic faith oh it was very much a anti-catholic environment my grandfather never never spoke of Catholicism and I live with him when I was you know four or five years old but as I as I grew up I encountered the typical anti-catholic materials the Chick tracts and things of that sort and I remember working to try to bring my my friends who were Catholic out of Catholicism and into a biblical home of Christianity and I remember thinking if they would just read the Bible would be obvious you know where the where they've gone wrong and you know I shudder now and I think about about those days but never I think I went to one Catholic wedding growing up it just it wasn't it wasn't part of the spiritual horizon and even the even other forms of Christianity other Protestant forms weren't what didn't figure very prominently either I mean it was a large Pentecostal church I attended ultimately for about ten years and it was a world in and of itself yeah I'm very self-sufficient so well the the gifts the wonders the signs were taken as this is the true church because the signs and wonders are are being happened here they're not out there so right they got to come in here and experience the reality of God's yeah there was a sense that we had it we had it we ended up we we understood it it was here and then you add that to that the dimension of you know an expectation of the imminent return that raises everything to a to another level so it's a very very intense rapture folk yeah yeah yeah the pennant again our audience has probably heard more about that over the last 10-15 years there's still people waiting for the rapture to happen is right now but that was a guiding motive live a holy life it was you never knew you never you never knew when it was going to take place and so that that added a level of anticipated for conversion and we had lots of sermons on the book of Revelation it's but yeah it was I mean ultimately we will be called to give an account for our lives if you think that's going to happen next week and then it adds a heads level of intensity yeah well we live like academia I'm saying but it's also what we're expecting is gonna happen when that is a little different theology in those early years as a committed young Pentecostal did you ever anticipate the possibility or think about following your grandfather's footsteps there was a certain amount of expectation yeah and the is as a young person I remember praying and asking if that might be what I needed to do but I wasn't naturally I wasn't given to public speaking naturally and so I was more bookish and and preferred to be you know somewhere reading so that I never seemed to be a natural natural extension of things though I you know I I do hope that I've been able to honor my my grandfather's memory and his his commitment just in my own own way in fact even before we move on with your journey as you look back my assumption is you're still eternally grateful to the formation you got from your grandfather in that community absolutely I am father Richard John new house as his spoken eloquently of the ways in which all the good things that were part of his life before he became Catholic words and brought forward and I said would say to that is certainly the case in fact not only for Mike what I learned from my grandfather and my upbringing but even the later stages it's an integral part of the Catholic that I am right right the plan of God absolutely all along in your life one other thing you ended up in academic but that isn't always the encouragement in some of those Pentecostal it was that an issue growing up I think it was there was a sense in which we needed to be kept away from you know dangerous cultural influences and at that at that point I know when I was - it was time to go to college I was encouraged to go to a Pentecostal college or university it didn't work out from usually I think it was primarily for financial reasons but yeah so I didn't I didn't follow that that course and there was a period of time where I after I left home where when I I worked in various forms of work trying to work to save money for college and it was at that point that I began to interact with other Protestant evangelicals and that began to broaden my awareness of the community of believers and I began to understand that there were different views of Scripture and different understandings of different things and I got involved with the group called the navigators oh sure and it was involved in some Bible study groups with him and their emphasis on scripture study and begin internalizing scripture through memorization and I'm also meditation and those were those were very very helpful but my sense of what the church was and you know what it meant to be a Christian in the world begin to take on a much broader understanding and I think at that point I wasn't I was happy not to be affiliated with any particular group described as a kind of free free agent evangelicalism and I would go wherever Island I would go to whatever you know church would you know had good music or good preaching it seemed solid and biblical and it was also at that point that I realized the importance of relationships in evangelization and it really you know Christ called you know he's 12 informed them through relationships and spending time with him and that's part of the essence of what the navigators do is they they really it's the person-to-person discipleship and you know I think in when I was in college I ended up attending a Presbyterian Church and there was a the pastor of that church was a phenomenal homilist and he would we've not only good exegesis of Scripture but also elements of church history into this and to his sermons and I really also witnessed here for the first time really using beautiful music there was an organ in the church and beautiful stained glass windows and I'm seeing all of these things done for the glory of God and ordered in a way to to building up the faithful they're very conscious and so the structure was a bit different from my Pentecostal upbringing but it also it spoke to me intellectually as well spiritually whereas my upbringing was very intense and very visceral there wasn't a lot there from my mind and so it was a as a presbyterian that I began to to find those things then interestingly I mean in college also there was a a gentleman who was um he was an associate campus minister with the Presbyterian group who described himself as a press companion so he was a miss Kalman distance theology but he was quite he appreciated the Anglican forms of worship and one evening at our our campus group he introduced a little book of Advent readings he prepared I had never heard of admin at that point and it was meant to have it was readings and hymns for to be used at home with an advocate and so we began doing that and the next thing you know when spring came around the interview something called lint and did invited some of us to participate in a an ecumenical service on campus that was um it was based on the Book of Common Prayer and that was the beginning of the Anglican jury yeah in a certain sense I'm guessing that his introduction of these things is not so much that they were Anglican they were certainly not renders as Catholic right but that this was ancient traditional and solely the heritage of Christianity that for one reason or another had been set aside and lost and so rediscovering this great heritage absolutely it was it was seen as part of the great tradition and yeah and there was I think there was a desire having having as intense as my brain had been in as grateful as I was for that desire I think on my part to to connect with that larger that larger tradition I think I had I had read some CS Lewis at that point and it's I and there was an awareness that there were there was a lot the world of Christian it was much larger than I had ever imagined and so so yeah I think the beginning that that beginning with you know those those services based on the Book of Common Prayer daddy of reading I began to realize that I though I had praying on my life there was a depth to these prayers there was a depth to this tradition I mean that I never never expected I know that I made my move out of seminary and was ordained eventually Presbyterian one of my reasons I went Presbyterian was because there was in the Presbyterian there's a sense of history there's a sense of the wisdom the collected wisdom of Christians all these years and so that's a were delving into versus the individualism that can reign in so many these other traditions and I'm wondering at this point brought up Pentecostal now at least going to some evangelical nondenominational interdenominational ministries like Navs and would you say looking back that though your understanding of you in relationship with God was as an individual in relationship to Jesus regardless of church the church really wasn't an essential ingredient to your faith well absolutely I mean I think the when I was involved in the those home Bible study groups some of the members of that group of that group were they did attend church on Sundays but it wasn't essential to who they were and other members of group didn't go at all in the home group substituted for that it wasn't oriented toward worship it was very much oriented in I think I think in a very good way toward evangelism and in having a proper understanding of one's own faith but church was optional was it accessory and it's what was important was an individual relationship with Jesus church community sacraments doctrine any of that right we're secondary at best right and I think I think that you know like what I might call it creeping ecclesiology was on the horizon yeah in my association with the Presbyterians because we were reading the campus bench they where the chemist minister was and just introduced introduced us to a book called was at putting amazing back into grace and it was a very popular introduction to reformed theology and I that I began to think begin to think more historically at that point and he through conversations with this gentleman who I respect a great deal he's gone on to become a chaplain military chaplain he began to distinguish the reformed tradition from other more individualistic American traditions and one of the reasons knowing he would say that the reformed tradition didn't extend his strongly across America was that there was a Mormon emphasis on education you couldn't just sort of train someone and then send them out you know as a circuit writer you that you had to go and receive formation so I think thinking in those terms begin to open me up to what what does it mean to be a church or to have a church and also the Missis on in reformed theology on God's working with groups you know you know redeeming groups and cultures and families the introduction to infant baptism there and the question of God and relating to families also was important now to other areas that I know you've mentioned in our brief time that we talked before the show number one music has been a big important part of your life as well as the the great books experience were those the two that kind of kept you at college or that it had beforehand I think I think they were I think they were in college and then in the non through graduate school you know as we talked before you know music and had an enormous leap powerful role in one's spiritual life and both within the liturgy and outside and it was through the study of music and being trained as a music historian of the Middle Ages that I begin to music exist in the Middle Ages within the context of the liturgy at least that's what are the historical records we have for based music and it was a my study of the medieval music coincided with my finally aligning myself with an Anglican tradition and going to an Episcopal Church and I began to try to work out the parallels between my own Sunday morning worship the liturgy at the Episcopal Church with what I understood had the medieval Mass and there are all of these interesting parallels and that also coincided with a desire to to really be more historical in my understanding of the church and of the faith and I you know there were a lot of streams that were just coming coming together in one place and but then also you say I think reading you know going to college then going on to graduate school and studying the great books in reading people like st. Thomas st. Agustin not just as historical authors and press images but also what I might learn from them excuse me about the faith and I remember going and when I was at st. John's College going to a group that they were gonna be some of the church fathers and so we read you're sitting neisha s-- some of the other early epistles and remember being struck by the absence of Sola scriptura Sola gratia how the Catholic these authors sounded and so in making not going back to those in those groups because this was quite unsettling because it really wasn't an openness at this point in your life to think in Catholic at all I mean you were old but you really go to Methodists and Presbyterians sure an Episcopalian but there was a bright a bright line and you know I remember I would work very early in the morning on my own my dissertation I part of that was working on Latin and learning Latin and I would also because I was interested in the liturgical year as an Anglican I would in fact translate some of the text for that day from the medieval energy whenever were telling you Fenna for breakfast what I was doing and he said well are you on the Rome on the road to Rome and I said absolutely not and like Peter I swore but you know this is definitely not and and so this was this was something that I never thought that would happen well we're gonna take a break in a little bit so we'll leave that your interest in Rome to the other side of the break but I want to make so at this point your journey you've have you officially made the entrance into anglicanism while you were in grad school is that when they I began going to an Episcopal Church I never never never confirmed but this was a I mean this was became my home and it was uh that's where we worshipped yes I forget who self-identifies name okay was it a a Calvo Anglican or what did the reformed - Anglican as you know he was just it was it was just that this the regular it was he him we had to purchase okay in town and make this was one of them okay but one of the main draws was really the historicity the the music the liturgy the worship yes and I think it graduate school had been at a very challenging time in a lot of levels and what I found was that I not even when I didn't feel sort of the internal impulse to our didn't know how to pray I could I could open my Book of Common Prayer and I could find the words there to pray and I was being taken up into a larger body and it wasn't as individualistic it was since there was another level what about your Pentecostalism was that having to be set aside or was that becoming a part of the bigger picture there of the you know within Papillion ISM there's a charismatic sure no III never consciously set it aside but I see more as in a historical moment in my upbringing I mean I was aware of these movements within within you know the fiscal denomination but and even within Catholicism but I I think that the piece that really moved forward was in a sense that that God works continue continue to work here and now in ways that we can't explain all right so all right sure I'll pause there and come back just a moment and we're guest tonight is dr. George Hardy's the president of colleges st. Mary Magdalene and would back just a moment with the continuation history welcome back to the journey home my name is Marcus Grodi your host for this program we're right in the middle of dr. George horns journey pentecostal really was as major upbringing and that was in many ways discovering the beauty of of the importance of being a part of a worshiping family as you move towards Episcopalian ISM through evangelicalism and into the Episcopal Church and so I suppose we paused in your journey right where you're in grad school you're are you majoring in music in grad school is it I was um I did two years at st. John's College which was a great books program so I wasn't doing music there but my other my other degrees in grad school were were music history so I was studying music yes and I think at the same time while I was studying music there was there was a large emphasis in in school on thinking historically being sensitive to the way history shapes how we understand music and without realizing it at the time I was also thinking in similar ways about my faith and the importance of living out one's faith historically and and so I begin to explore the roots of Anglicanism and liturgically and otherwise and reading about Newman and also becoming more just more liturgically minded in our practice you know using the Book of Common Prayer at home there's even a book of 4/4 Saints days called the lesser feasts and fasts and yes could they have colics there are colleagues in there for the Saints days and interesting and if you don't address the Saints directly you address you address them as in the third person is if they're sitting in the room with you but you're not actually talking to them back and and so there's this confluence of liturgy and history I think it was it was critical and and then the musical role in that and so I began to read about the history of Havana Lincoln ISM and I began to ask myself at some level why why does English doesn't exist why is this separate is this really an historical accident or are there essential differences they need to be maintained and I began reading some of the documents at the time initially enough back the Second Vatican Council the dialogue between Anglicans and Catholics looking being surprised at how similar the positions were in many cases and I began to find myself longing for a reunion of sorts and little did I realize that many events had taken place that would make that almost impossible down the road but but I that that desire for Christian unity like I used to imagine that unity would take place outside of any kind of formal body but I began to long for that with a note within with an more structured group so that combination and then I ever at Newman and I have been warned not to do so and I said I wouldn't but he was having the same long yeah and I and I began I began meeting Newman and in that that really brought things to a to a point of decision what will I do around that time you know I'm Mitch and I had been comparing my own liturgical worship as an Anglican with the medieval energy a friend of mine and I traveled down to Philadelphia we were New Jersey at a time and attended a Corpus Christi service which for those who are familiar with Anglicanism know that those kinds of things should not take place according to the Articles from the Reformation which is a very high anglo-catholic parish and it was up to that point of my life it was the most beautiful liturgy I had ever experienced it clarification for those that especially don't come from a liturgical background like the the point of a Corpus Christi worship or mass is a devotion to the body of Christ in other words of an adoration of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist that's the point of it so that's why you would not have it exactly according to any other denomination either right but still not your traditional Anglican Piscopo would not have it no no and again I was very interested in like the possible similarities and here I saw they were really pushing the envelope in terms of what could be done but it was a beautiful church they sang Gregorian chant from the grad Wali's and the entire the homily was it was about the real presence and then there was a Eucharistic procession afterwards it can't be rose petals and the beauty of the music in the beauty of the liturgy I came to believe in the real presence and I and I when I when I when I sort of allowed that that belief to emerge and find root little did I know what was going was going to follow and but it was it was in some sense the beautiful that won the day it wasn't a theological argument about the real presence yeah it wasn't and in knowing and at the time I was unaware of the status of Anglican orders I was not aware that they even declared null and void and that then Anglicans paducah angle Catholics had sought to remedy that by bringing in other lines of ordination it's a mess but what what matters is that that evening and when I left I really did believe you knew yes and and so at that point the question of you know well they're like dominoes because if you're going to have the Eucharist then you need you priesthood you don't if I have priests you need to have bishops and you never have a Selleck succession so and and they don't have apostolic succession you're essentially buying you you have a church that food and then if that church has historical authority guided by the Holy Spirit then the game has changed everything is different and that is a key point because apart from that episode succession bishops priesthood the Eucharist apart from that is George I tell you what unites let's just start a church right now I'll ordain you you ordain me let's declare that this is the body of Christ I mean we could apart from I have select accession was to stop that trajectory of every who's who's got the authority to ordain someone who's got the authority to say that is the body of Christ or it isn't or the de sacrament it's a individualism again I mean that's what you're dealing with that was the point yeah it is okay you know you believe this is it but but wait a second how is that Jesus what's interesting is at that moment I was both very close to being Catholic but very very far away because I had not made a decision based on excuse me the teaching of the church it was really a still private judgment and I said I'm still people that to be an Anglican it's it's you're very very close on the ground to being Catholic but there's often a very very high wall separating you yeah and it is because the individual remains the final arbiter of what is to be believed oh you know isn't England can I have the option to believe it in the Immaculate Conception or not you know and if I would be more Catholic I'll take it on board if not but the center of judgment is still within the individual and at that point we started our family and we we left New Jersey went to the Midwest so that's right you were you were married by this time was was she interested in this this journey you were going on at all or she was she was deathly afraid of it excuse me she Adam she was a very good and holy woman who'd grown up on the other side of potus's and she'd grown up in the Church of Christ and interesting for her the they had weekly communion and that would that's central to housing worship her and so she brought in brought in some seats herself along along the way and she'd been with me through this and was happy I think to be a to be Episcopal and we had a nice parish we had a good good priest but those who followed these things know that the denomination has been melting down for some time now and so if the parasol was very very good but at the levels of leadership it was things were coming apart at the seams and so I at that point we left New Jersey moved to the Midwest we started a family an Episcopalian friend of mine who was also involved in our varsity asked me too if I was interested in reading the Catechism he had been part of an ecumenical group there in graduate school with some Catholics and they've been reading some the church file there's and some other things and so this this was this seemed seemed very it was like a almost like a game you know let's just sort of flirt with in see with what the Catholics really think and believe and so I ordered a catechism and he started reading it I first read all the passages on Mary pastors on purgatory and indulgences and sort of skipped around and was shocked because what I found was either I didn't know what the church really taught so I had been had been ascribing a teaching to the church that was wrong so I was wrong or I understood what the church taught and it had a very long pedigree historically so it emerged in the second or third century I'm thinking of the communion of saints and the you know veneration of saints so was I going to stand in opposition to this you know who you know so this was um this raised issues and then I turned back to the beginning of the Catechism and you start greeting and and interesting I would sit down at evening but my wife she'd be busy doing some work and I called it her evening penance I would sit down and I would read her from the Catechism so I think she had a sense that we were moving we're moving along and I was you know had some very real concerns that you know jumping around the Catechism is one thing because like you said you'll die I thought Church taught this I guess it didn't but I think there's great power in reading that catechism friend that begins slowly to the end because the the process of of the way it's written rate builds and helps you understand the foundations for scripture and tradition and the church and the Magisterium within the creed I mean would you say that was a big part of bringing you along slowly - absolutely I mean it I think it's um the idea of you could you get the whole picture yeah that's the positive faith and you see I mean I was talking to someone the other day about some some contested Catholic teachings and I can answer questions about those specific teachings and in but ultimately they're not going to make sense until they're seen in as parts with a larger hole and I think when you take them out you tend to emphasize the more but when you put them in you see okay this is important but it's part of a larger larger thing yes I read the Catechism and at that point I think the desire to be Catholic became stronger than ever I wanted to be a part of this church that has such a beautiful complete presentation and whether there were still arguments that could be entertained against petit or Catholic teachings again there was the force of some sense of so much I already believed and I found it my my concerns were more at the level of you know visceral concerns and intellectual ones because uncontested issues that were you could argue one way for against it but you could also they're also good arguments for it and so that's that I think that's where it ended and then and then I moved from there to reading the Vatican to documents and interesting lis in the Navigator Bible study that I had been in many many years earlier there was a Catholic couple and they they had come and they were doing Bible study there I remember seeing on their shelf the blue volumes of the documents from the Second Vatican Council and that had stuck in my mind and said I've got to find those books and so I did and I think there's a the volume that has the documents and there's the post come conciliar documents I just read them those from beginning to end as well and as I was reading that I think the pastoral nature and love of the church for the people just came through and it became it became a very strong desire and some of my wife at that point I think since that this was this might be something was going to really happen and and so we didn't know any Catholics at the time so I found the yellow pages and looked up Catholic Church and what you see the pastor to find out what what we would need to do so it was it's been often that as a problem after you've drawn to the church on paper and then you actually make this step across the street or down though down the block to visit the first Catholic was that a positive experience for you and your wife it was it was very positive in fact the pastor was very gracious and he had he had just been loaned a book by Scott Hahn called Rome sweet home he'd finished it the night before I can you see him he'd been loaned it had been longer to him by that the couple that would be our sponsors and we knew them from a distance it was a small community their their children and our children which the same preschool but he loaned that book to me and it's an excellent book and it I think it helped us navigate as a husband and wife some of the challenges coming into the church and how to you know when to slow down I'm going to be patient and when I went to move ahead but unbeknownst to me I mean I didn't really know what it meant to be a priest and to bear the burden of a large parish there was only one parish in the town he came to our home I think was probably once a week for three or four months instead of our dinner table and we went through a catechism together it was only later that I realized what a sacrifice that was and I think him sitting there talking to my wife I was expecting this very heady intellectual exposition of doctrine he gave us the teachings but he did it in such a pastoral and personal way that when my wife over here was he was a very kind gentle very approachable form of Catholicism that I think she knew that in July faregates both pro and con but I think what she needed was to see it embodied and so that was that we entered you know that parish and it was very a very positive experience what was the what would you say was the hardest hurdle to get over for you and your wife or did you both have different hurdles to get over I think um I think growing up Protestant and then even as an Anglican the teach the teachings on on marriage in the family and this is becoming even more of an issue you know contemporary cultural debates those those questions were interesting and difficult and challenging and we both read Humanae Vitae and I we were struck by the by again by the pastoral tone that it has and I think I think that was that was a that was a central a central challenge so we we ended up in our in our diocese there was there was no natural family planning course that was taught and so we sought that out because we knew we're gonna going to become Catholic we didn't want to become cafeteria Catholics so we were in who's gonna be the whole thing and so we ended up driving an hour to another diocese and taking these courses and I think it was through them that my wife's view of these issues and then what the church meant by marriage really began to be transformed and I think that's one of the greatest gifts that we received as Catholics it was an unexpected gift to to to discover the Church's teaching on marriage and the family and then John Paul the second teaching on the theology of the body it just really transformed and elevated to what it means to be a married couple and also to be a family so it's it's it's been it's been something very thankful for well on all these issues and your previous traditions it was up to individual decision either it was up to individual decision or in some Calvinist perspectives it really doesn't make a difference because you've already been saved right you're eternally saved and so it really doesn't affect your salvation right so that can influence your individual decision as to whether you do it or not but part of becoming a Catholic is trusting in accepting the Church's authority guided by the Holy Spirit right the mmm we enjoyed the church on Christ the King Sunday and when I would describe what we were we were doing I described it as an act of submission we were submitting to the Bishop of Rome and it was a loving grateful some but there was a recognition that I was no longer the final arbiter and in the months and years that followed many of my Protestant friends and I still have many of them and I'm very grateful for those friendships they would call me I was now that I was now that one Catholic they knew and so they would call me and they would say so went to you what do you believe about this when you believe about you know this question of that and I very quickly realized that I didn't have to answer those questions out of my own head or my own interpretations of Scripture that I could I could find out what the Church teaches on this then I could I could provide that and it doesn't mean that I've stopped thinking or stopped and wrestling with with things but I'm I don't make the final call and I'm wondering in this time that we live right now with this the contraception issue being such a political issue all of a sudden and this year whether our friends understand the significance there that that it's we hold our views on contraception not just because the church says all right but because the church says so because they're holding to what is true and we can't just change what is true right out of a political pressure that's right I mean yet it's unlike other religions where you know the will of God is our to some sense arbitrary and there were strains in the middle ages that seem to indicate that that might be the case there's their belief is that the church can teach something it does teach something because the Holy Spirit is guiding this and and in the Catholic understanding between grace in nature it's also very very important and the role of natural law as you say yeah the church doesn't just teach something arbitrarily it's grounded in reality it's grounded in both spiritual and natural reality and all that does come together and yeah I'm not sure I think this is a this is a very important woman and it's a wonderful opportunity I think for our bishops to teach and to really clearly articulate because I think for a lot of Catholics these issues were just have long been long forgotten and now they're at the center and they have everyone's attention and it's it's we could we could all benefit from a clear exposition of where the church stands and when why and when you've ended up in a position I'm sure you didn't expect to be at how did that happen well I had been Catholic about a year year and a half and I was finishing up my PhD and I had the choice of going to a more research type University and where my primary work would be scholarship in some teaching or more of a great books the Pilar it's kind of approach and my experts at st. John's was very positive though they're interesting enough I realized that the need for some sort of authority an interpretation of text we have all these great books but they have radically different views of what it means to be human being and and so it's it's especially if if you're all doing approaching from a deconstruction a standpoint that you don't you don't take the obvious that that the writer was intending it has to be something bizarre sure sure well and even if even if you even are more conserved I mean if you can read Aristotle never soul has a view of what it means to be human and Hobbes has another view what it means to be human in the air reconcilable and I mean they're both judged to be great so who's gonna decide so so I decided to ever see the magazine in the mail and it had a listing of Catholic colleges and I thought wow I should should take a look what maybe they have openings and as a musicologist most of these schools on there and something called the newman guide they don't offer music they don't have news ecology as part of their course offering so there was a really good fit if you're at the illusion or an historian or philosopher it's easier to to enter into those schools but one school did call and so I thought well this would be great off of a very quiet life of my family at this small Catholic College and community place for my kids to grow up we can worship with a beautiful energy and then I've been there about a year and there was a need for for some administrative work to be done and so I was asked to do that I said no and I was asked again I said no and the third time I acquiesced and I did it and that began to move so I think was I did that for about a year year and a half and then there was another need at the college and there was a need for someone to step into the presidency and so I did that and I've been there for the last year little over a year and it's a wonderful opportunity because in many ways all the things that brought me to Catholicism are their present there's a beautiful energy and beautiful music and one of the emphases of the college has always been the lay person's hearing the call of God and living out their vocation in the world and and also you know we're reading the great texts we're reading the great books and there's an integration of faith and reason and so in many ways that Pentecostal beginning of you must make a decision for Christ now is made evident in a in a context that is that is thoroughly Catholic we have a three basic goals as an institution one is to know the truth one is to love the faith and wanted to transform the world and those all build on each other and and so that's it's it's a wonderful opportunity to be able to to be at the college well right now we're very grateful that our bishops have taken a public stand on issues but but the truth is that that realm that they're speaking in is the realm of the layperson absolutely so I mean a college like yours is training these lay men and women to recognize they're the ones that have to have the voice it's to take a stand on these issues we can't just leave it to our bishops but really it's the lay person standing as a faithful Catholic in the midst of this culture right if I have students I should students take four years of theology it's based on the Catechism and in the church documents and they spend an entire semester on the doctrine of the marriage in the family and so they're reading the primary document of the church and yeah when these students go out and they're not only living their faith but they can also articulate it as lay people you know in the public square it's gonna be very very powerful so that's that's the goal let's assume that we've got an angle Pisco palin or even a Pentecostal watching our show right now what would you like to say to them to encourage them to make the same journey home that you've you your wife of me yeah I think I would say to nurture their love for Christ and to follow them where that love leads them because whether they're Pentecostal or Anglican I believe that if they if they nurture that love and they don't let fears or you know preconceived notions about history or doctrine standing in the way that love will carry them forward to where they need to be and if they've got questions about what the church really teaches do you recommend the Catechism I do I do in the Catechism has great footnotes you can go back to reference the teachings of the Church Fathers and other sources and it's a very very rich document in case the audience wants to know more about Mary Magdalene College was your website yes Magdalene ddu is the website and it's we're always welcoming to visitors and prospective students just a couple seconds yeah we didn't get as much chance about music but quickly why don't we appreciate music like we ought to in the midst of liturgy I mean there's such a different opinions about it where do we go to understand that the truth on the place of music in the liturgy we know that it's interesting the church has been very clear I think if you go back to and look at the the document on the liturgy from the Second Vatican Council not so much the documents that have followed but what did the council say about music it's very clear and it's it's it says that chance should have pride a place and music that conforms to chant is is to be second and it's not so much about what you like and what I like it's about what the church has asked us to do that doesn't mean we can't enjoy other kinds of sacred music outside of the liturgy and we all have different tastes in different likes all right George sounds like a topic for another program because they you very minty dr. Hart speak and thank you for joining us on this episode of journey home

Channel: EWTN

Views: 6,195

Rating: 4.9344263 out of 5

Keywords: EWTN, Marcus Grodi, Dr. George Harne, Former Anglican, Journey Home, Catholic, JHT01354

Id: SqHcSMwLP8Y

Length: 56min 11sec (3371 seconds)

Published: Thu May 10 2012