Journey Home - 2014-03-31 - Former Anglican Priest - Marcus Grodi with Fr. Dennis Garrou

good evening and welcome to the journey home I'm Marcus Grodi your host for this program what a great privilege it is every week to join you to hear stories of men and women who and their love for Jesus Christ led by the Holy Spirit were drawn to a deeper relationship with Christ through discovering the the fullness and beauty of the church and some of its it's a great privilege to welcome father Dennis Carew former Bible Anglican priest and now as you can all see Catholic priests welcome to the journey home Thank You Marcus today your good to see you again because I know that we've met a couple times at the coming home network deep in history conferences and sunshin and you were able to attend one of our retreats for men and women on the journey and so it was good though at the time you were already in the church right no I was not okay these were both before hi all right well then good well you can catch me up here on the program I'll get out of the way as soon as I can and invite you to start sharing with us your spiritual journey thank you so much and it's a pleasure to be here and I have appreciated the privilege of viewing the show many times I was born in Chicago right after World War Two in 1946 my mother had immigrated from Holland with her family and my father and was born in Chicago of Italian parents both from the Piedmont a Piedmont area of northwestern Italy of Waldensian heritage really and we'll say a bit more about that but they attended Moody Memorial Church which was kind of ground zero for the evangelical movement in Chicago and I was dedicated not baptized but dedicated there in 1947 by pastor Harry Ironsides who's kind of a well-known name in those circles we attended moody church for several years of my early childhood and then migrated to the north west side of the city and I began attending with my family the Jefferson Park Bible Church and was raised in a Bible Church environment and I will always be extremely grateful to the Lord for the knowledge of his word that was inculcated in me through those early years these variances the ecumenical document of Vatican 2 emphasizes it says lest we forget that whatever the Holy Spirit has engraved in the hearts of our separated brethren is for our spiritual renewal and so we're grateful to as you are to the the seeds that were planted in in those traditions but it might be good for our audience just for second what was unique about the Moody Bible or the Bible Church that's in many ways different than our Catholic faith and maybe even other Protestant faiths as you look back what would what would be uniquely descriptive of that tradition the independent outlook on interpretation of Scripture of accountability within the body of Christ it was all localized to that congregation and then ultimately to either the role of the pastor or even then the individual as to what things meant and and how they were applied and very much on conversion subversion was a high high priority was the highest priority and the concept of that is not unlike our Catholic faith that conversion is always an ongoing necessity in our lives what about continuing holiness and discipleship were they at once they would always save tradition or this particular church was in that respect yes that once saved always saved was was yet other evangelical groups were perhaps a little more or many in in that sense yeah often when it's the once saved always saved mentality the more that is the center of that then more often Sunday worship is just about getting someone to accept Jesus you know it's often not a lot beyond that it's once you're in your and there's a lot of Emmet's on that but but commitment to scripture commitment to surrendered to Jesus Christ as a young man had you experienced that yes I did at the age of I believe about seven I came home from school one afternoon which I think was September because it was warm but there were leaves on the on the steps and my mother met me there and we sat down together after school on the steps and she said Dennis have you ever invited Jesus into your heart and I said no and she said would you like to and I said yes and we prayed a prayer together to do that and so in my very young understanding to the best of my knowledge I invited Jesus into my life and have had the privilege of growing with him since then but that will always stick in my memory is the initial point of conversion for me I was later baptized as a high school senior and as it turns out the date was three days later in May from the date I was ordained as a Catholic priest eventually things came around in a wonderful way in the course of life in high school I began to grow and participated in in young life and some of the Christian Bible clubs and youth group at church and then in college I went to Wheaton College for my last three years my mother had just passed away but that was something she wanted she thought was important for me and I majored in Bible and found that to be a very helpful experience and you know just interrupted for audience that may not realize that you're talking about Moody Bible Church and a Bible School then Wheaton I mean you walk the steps of what for many in America is the thread of evangelicalism in America very much so very much some Catholics may not know the name Wheaton but evangelical Protestants know the name we didn't know that moody as well as the Bible as well as moody himself in his writings so in that sense the Lord had blessed you with a great evangelical witness during your young I think of Psalm 68 in our Liturgy of the hours and you've given me the heritage of those who know and love your name so that very much was my heritage was within my family and also within my education and upbringing and you know inspired you to study Scripture yes yes that was important to me and growing up I had a friend across the alley who was really my first exposure to the Catholic faith as a Protestant in Chicago in the 50s and 60s you we were very anti-catholic in Outlook and the Catholics conversely toward Protestants had there was a fair degree of animosity or at least in lack of respect but through him I began to become acquainted with some of the Catholic practices and and beliefs but the one thing that attracted me was there was always a sense of reverence about things Catholic and and that spoke to me personally I believe a reverence for God is hugely important and so out of that I had that inside where that was going to become a more important thing after Wheaton I sensed I should be going into the ministry and attended Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield long the same you know path and about a year and a quarter in just felt conflicted inside because while I did feel a sense of call to ministry I didn't have a clear sense of the church or other than a Sunday service what what do we do and what what is the church I had worked in college at O'Hare field for an airline part-time to help get through school and when a full-time opening came I I just felt torn I enjoyed the spiritual direction to which the Lord called me but I also enjoyed the the airline industry and I made the decision having been newly married to take the full-time job at the airport and for the next 13 years was most of that time a supervisor at in passenger service with continental airlines the conflict the conflicting stone in your shoe during Wheaton there Trinity Evangelical school is it was that kind of connected from the fact that often these fine evangelical seminaries as well as colleges like wheat the Trinity yet because they're nondenominational or interdenominational evangelical that the coursework has a very low level of ecclesiology a low level of sacramentality yes because they can't really teach it because their students are from everywhere Trinity is primarily an evangelical free church of America seminary but its students come from all over the Evangelion spectrum so but you're right as far as the concentration and focal point it's more on the local and independent level and a low Church approach to most of those things and it's something that would lead to you know what is the church you know I probably am more of an assumption of a universal Church invisible Church idea the idea of the invisible Church was very prominent in my home church for one that Christ is the lord of the church but it's not the visible Church it's those from all over who are part of his body but not necessarily in an organized way and so that concept never set completely well for me so there you are working for the airlines working for the airlines still going to church and still loving the Lord and and raising a family we spent a little time out at Willow Creek another well-known evangelical church in the megachurch family truly of the independent spirit in the sense of it has no other connections over than itself heavily seeker oriented that it was and established to reach those who had not been reached and would not come to the traditional church but we weren't there long before I was transferred to Peoria Illinois for the airline service there and that was a whole different environment from the Chicago metro area spiritually as well and after a short time we entered a very evangelical and Orthodox United Methodist congregation in downtown Peoria which again was a blessing to me and and my family and one of the things that took place while we were there was the fact that the Catholic Diocese offered an ecumenical Curcio and in 1985 or 86 my wife and I each attended the Catholic 4-cyl as one of just a handful of Protestants that were privileged to attend so this was a more intentional and more direct exposure to the Catholic faith and so there we were suddenly there was a layoff at Continental when their first bankruptcy took place and out of work and during that time one of the pastors and the Methodist staff said to me the bishop has a lay speaker school coming up where people are trained to give give homilies or give announcements or things like that you might like to come and I was out of work so sure I did that and it was about a six-week course and after that the bishop said I have two very tiny country churches neither can afford a pastor but they're willing to pay a minimal sum to someone to come in and do Sunday services would you be interested and out of work I was happy to do that and went to these two little country churches for about four or five months following the lay speaker school and then after that he called it was the annual reappointment time and he said do you have I have two slightly larger country churches would you be interested so we did that and at that point it began thinking seriously is the Lord again perhaps tapping me on the shoulder to consider ordained ministry our guest tonight is father Dennis goro I'm thinking some Catholics probably don't understand the Methodist system I mean you're not an ordained pastor but you here you already Natalie doing small churches but now the bishop the Methodist bishop is assigning you to be a pastor of a couple other church yes it's called a license for local pastors you're you're licensed but not ordained by the bishop too as a layperson and so in the Methodist polity that process provides for the many small congregations that might not otherwise be able to have clergy of their own which speaks to the different understanding of ordination right belongs the Methodist world as compared to the Catholic priesthood so there you are I mean there I am you're like did your wife like him to be almost a pastor's wife she had huge responsibilities with our three three children and she was has been just absolutely wonderful in terms of her care for our family but there was the question should I return to seminary and and I'm thinking it's been 15 years now since I've been in seminary and I'm three hours away from the school down in Peoria from Trinity could and I'm broke because I've been unemployed for nine months how would this and I just I couldn't see it but I said I said Lord if you want this to happen you're gonna you're gonna make it happen so I went back to the school the Trinity and they were willing to leave my one year's worth of credits alive toward the three-year master divinity program and at that point so there's there's one hurdle down that would really shorten up my time two of the churches I'd been involved with one I served and one that which was my home church offered scholarship assistance to me and my father offered residence with him during the week Roman board basically if I wanted to commute up to school so the Lord really opened the doors at that point so I returned to Trinity in early 85 and resumed my MD with a long hiatus in between and was able to complete the work by the fall of 86 and get my master Divinity degree while proceeding toward the United Methodist organ ordination and so there we were at a real juncture point you know so your did did what you after that 15 or so year hiatus did your experience at seminary challenge some of your views that you had had matured or meld during the 15 years of the church yes one particular course on worship struck to some of the founding ideas remember one book in particular United Methodist altars was the name of it and the idea was that the table of the Lord is not simply a flower stand or something like that but it it took for a Methodist understanding a much more sacramental approach and that impacted me significantly we understood then as well some of the political aspects of contemporary American churches and in the United Methodist Church in particular and because I was an evangelical and that conversion was strong in my blood the bishop was ready to make an appointment was going to send us out to what I just come from two very small country churches where the gospel was not going to have a large impact on many people and there were some problems in the one church where I was assisting that the district superintendent chose not to address and we felt like if we're gonna have to move let's move somewhere where we would like to be and my wife's mother and her brother we're living in Tulsa Oklahoma and so we left the United Methodist Church in 1989 and moved to Tulsa and in Tulsa everything is in the vortex if you will of the charismatic movement but we found an Episcopal Church which seemed to be very Orthodox and and very vital in in a good conservative way and we affiliated there we were confirmed in the Episcopal Church and a wonderful godly man Bishop Cox confirmed us into the church and we had a number of wonderful years there so at this time you you have your MDM degree I would but I'm not ordained right it's you know 1990 by now and we decided to seek ordination as an Episcopal priest and so time to go to school again because they required one year of Anglican Studies and the bishop chooses the seminary that an applicant is a candidate is assigned to and he chose Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria so I had to do an eight month diploma in Anglican Studies and went there and again commuted about once a month by air to see my family but did complete that and in 1984 was ordained as an Episcopal priest 94 94 yes okay yes they're in Tulsa in Tulsa I was assisting at our local church and then in 96 there was an opening for director at st. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Cortez Colorado our daughter had been living in Durango which was about an hour east of there so we thought that would be nice to be able to be near our daughter and grandchildren so we moved to Cortez in 96 at the beginning of Advent you've gone from moody to a Bible Church to the Methodist system and then there to that church so we're moving liturgically and sacramentally was there sense you felt that you had come home in that Episcopal through the ordination and your assignment at that point yes there was and interestingly though even in central Illinois in the Peoria area and Mattoon where I had served briefly and then in Tulsa there was if I'd be driving to a meeting or something like that I found myself dropping into Catholic churches during the week for just a few minutes to pray because they were open and they were empty but something was drawing me which I now of course recognizes the sacrament of our Lord's presence and yet there was something there drawing me that there was more within the the Episcopal Anglican Communion you can have a high church understanding of of the Eucharist the presence of our but there's also the evangelical right charismatic as well as more of a nominal anglicanism so you have a great breadth of place to find yourself that was one thing about it that was both appealing and learning that there was that breath at liberality of focus but on the other hand it could go could evaporate in any particular environment as well yeah what allowed you as a passenger to move the people in the direction you felt the Lord was and calling you it was in Cortez that I presented a what I believed was a biblical ministry and my preaching and teaching and ministry and one of the people on the vestry said to me we ought to have the freedom to question or reject the Bible and when that was said by this person on the leadership group I realized this isn't going to work and it was soon after that that the Anglican mission in America was formed and through John Rogers explained yeah what what is that the Anglican mission in America was formed as a response to orthodoxy by episcopal x' Episcopalians in the united states who were anglican to want to be faithful to the teachings of the scriptures into traditional orthodoxy we're at a time the where the Episcopal Church was moving to the left in some very liberal ways right and so the Anglican mission was kind of a lifeboat if you will for many of us piss Kop alien clergy who were seeking an Orthodox Haven and so I was received and served in the AMIA from 2000 to mid 2008 was there any I'm sure that when you were at Moody when you're at the Bible at college or a Bible Church or even in the Methodist Church there was rarely any thinking about do we reunite with Rome I doubt if that was ever an issue in any of those two you're right it wasn't I think there was a sense of distant kinship but but there was never any sense of how can we put things together but what about in the mission the Anglican mission that you were part of the Anglican mission sought to unite with other Anglican bodies around the world there are 39 provinces of the Anglican Communion of which the Episcopal Church in the USA is one but the AMIA united under the bishops of Rwanda and so that Union was the tie for accountability for the AMIA movement and so we were tied tied to Rwanda would you and your and your parishioners have have thought about do we consider reuniting with Rome or would would it be like the other churches you were part of you know no we left that still not still not in fact if you read the thirty-nine articles of religion in the Book of Common Prayer there's some very anti-catholic statements things that are Pope ish are to be rejected and anything relating to the real presence including the Eucharist right and that the the Lord's body and blood are not by any proper way carried about when you think of a procession or things of that sort or benediction so those things were there for a long time then but you were in that group then quite a long time yes the AMA I the AMIA for 2000 to 2008 so my total Anglican time was from 1989 to 2008 so that was that was a lengthy portion of my life your wife is bounced around - was she happy with the angle good mission she was our time particularly in Tulsa was one of the most memorable and moving times for her and she engaged in a significant prayer ministry and that was a time the music was great there there was wonderful music at in our church in Tulsa Church of the Holy Spirit no it had you also then I know this is gonna come up later but you had you begun your prison ministry during that no oh that's later however in cortes we took a step in that direction we there had been a killing of three fugitives by three fugitives of a couple of law enforcement officers and in the ensuing months there was a need by the Montezuma County Sheriff's Office for some chaplain volunteers and another fellow and I were were recruited to serve and we would do ride-alongs with the sheriff's deputies and things of that sort so that was my kind of introduction our law enforcement why we pause there father grew and will we'll come back in a little bit we'll leave father still as an anglican priest involved in as you set up a rescue boat amongst the Anglicans to try and hold on to the original orthodoxy and biblical foundations of Anglicanism as we'll come back to that in just a moment you welcome back to the journey home on Marcus Grodi your host our guest is father Denis guru he's a former Bible Church Booty Bible Methodist and then we've kind of paused in the middle of his journey where he is serving had been serving for about eight years as an Anglican priest right correct correct so having lived in Cortes we moved in 2003 to the Front Range to the Evergreen area just outside of Denver where by now our daughter had moved and our youngest son was also living in the Denver area and we planted a second Anglican Church there and began serving in that community by now I'm starting to think beyond where we are because I recognized that the Anglican mission was a splinter of a splinter and there's that nagging going on inside of is this really what the Lord wants I at that same time was interested in my family heritage and was seeking to find out what some of our origins were I knew my family my father's side was either from France or Italy and wasn't sure and sent a bunch of letters out to people I could find with our name and I got a response from one individual and it turns out he is a cousin several times removed whose mother had the name guru and they lived in northwestern Italy in the Turin Torino area and over several months of correspondence he very graciously did an investigation into our lineage and records are very good over there and I discovered that our family history is Waldensian and we were able to track the family back to the mid 1600s and it would say someone so born of baptized by Waldensian pastor so-and-so on such and such a date and I saw wow we are while dense Ian's and had actually done some study on that movement back in seminary for a church history paper and now here it was coming yeah I can't remember myself I remember the study but they were a break away from where and win for our D in 1170 Pierre Valdez and Leon France asked the bishop for permission to preach he had gone in to see his parish priest and said what must they do to be saved he says go sell all that you have give it to the poor and follow me so we put his wife and daughters in a convent and sold the family business and gave out bread to the poor people of Lyon and he also did itinerant preaching he asked the bishop for permission to continue this and he was refused for reasons that only lie in the fog of history we don't know but he then went to the Pope and was told he could do this if his bishop approved now this was about the Saint same time as Saint Francis of Assisi who did a very similar thing but within the confines of the church but for whatever reason Valdez's request was denied and he rebelled and he said I'm gonna do it anyway and here's a real Protestant response but this was some three hundred and fifty years prior to the Protestant Reformation so they took a group of people that he'd gathered and moved east into the cadion Alps but that border france and italy which is the area where my family emerged from and so the Waldensians were formed but there was always this pushback from Italian and French armies and papal forces and a lot of killing and a lot of fighting over the centuries which was most unfortunate they still exist as a very small movement and it's the all day since have merged in Italy at least with the Italian Methodist Church but there they're very small and what a neat here today Jimmy yeah yeah but that that sense of presenting the gospel and the importance of it was was there and so in 2006 my wife and I took a journey to Italy and we landed in Milan we're then we're going to go over to Turin to find our relatives and while in Milan we went to the Duomo the Cathedral and it's a beautiful old cathedral by but by European standards pretty typical 14 1500s and as we were getting ready to leave we saw stairway at the front a little narrow stairway and downstairs you can go into the basement it's a partially excavated archaeological site and I had a powerful experience there the baptismal pool which is like a large children's pool you might find in a park it was a good size was there and that is the baptismal font in which st. Ambrose baptized Saint Agustin and I had something happened to me there spiritually God touched me through his spirit and I said I have to be a part of this body that has that continuity through the centuries not just 50 or 100 years old or 300 years old but that goes all the way back to our Lord and that really accelerated my and clarified for me the role of the Catholic Church we got over to Turin and then saw my cousin and spend some time there we went up to the little village which is only about eight miles from the French border where my grandfather lived we found his old abandoned stone house but he was raised and all that Wow and there's one Waldensian Church and one Catholic Church in that community and I thought how sad in this little tiny place that this needed to be divided and that there was that Protestant legacy of the and splintering and fragmentation and it's that that spoke a lot to me and so at that point I think it was shortly after coming home from that trip I was able to go to one of the deep in Scripture deep in history conferences here and now I was on the journey in a serious way into the Catholic faith because it's not enough just to say I'm just satisfied with this church we had one of the Protestant denominations there needs to be a positive reason to come into the Catholic faith it would seem to me that there probably were Episcopalians or Anglicans that would have said wall you know angled Ambrose and Agustin are ours too you know the words they would have said the first seven councils is what the Episcopalians would have said so they might have challenged you said well we have that continuity we're connected Ambrose of them are connected to Augustine were connected with the early councils well it was interesting coming back I remember sitting in a Deanery meeting probably late 2007 or early 2008 of other Episcopal priests and an Anglican mission priests rather and I looked around the room and it relative to the doctrine of the real presence I realized that as many people as we're sitting there probably reflected different understandings of the nature of the Eucharist that for some it would be purely memorial for some it would represent a kind of a con substantial Lutheran spiritual presence and for a few maybe a real presence but at essence that wasn't the common understanding and for me that was kind of a final closing of the Anglican book and it's centered around the Eucharist and it's centered around the nature of the church those were the two primary factors for me that motivated my conversion going back to your time there at Trinity when you have a group of seminarians like your little group of ministers there that have different views on the church and different views on the sacraments so you end up not talking about them right is if they're not important you set the sacraments or just therefore nuts we don't want this to divide us right so the so you take these great treasures and you bury them and and so there you are and the crypt of that Cathedral in which I've been to end in Milan and and this represents that baptism isn't merely something you push aside it changes us you know that whole sacrament of baptism what was happening between kambrose and Agustin I mean it's not something to push aside it's a central what changes to celebrate yeah yeah so after Easter in 2008 I contacted archbishop Chaput in Denver and he very graciously gave me almost an hour of his time to visit with him about Here I am an Anglican clergy is there a way into the Catholic faith for me is ordination a possibility and he was very forthright and very gracious and very loving and he said well first you need to become Catholic you need to be he says we don't make any guarantees but you need to be sure that you want to be Catholic at all with the understanding that you may or may not have an opportunity to become a priest through the pastoral provision for former Anglican clergy which john paul ii had instituted in 1980 so i knew there was a path but I also knew that his words were right that I I needed to be sure of who I was as a Catholic not conditional upon ordination I know there are people who've been on the journey particularly from the Anglican Church who wanted guarantees upfront and he was very again forthright but also gracious in how he presented it that we can't offer you that guarantee I remember when I was a Presbyterian pastor on my way into the church and my local priest took me to the bishop and that question came up even though I was an Anglican that because of the pastor provision it is possible for married Protestant ministers who have never been Catholic to be considered by their local bishop as a possible candidate for priesthood but however I'm telling me same advice you've got first you got to become Catholic and then and he's kind of a joking so you got to be the best dang blame and you can be and then we'll talk right it really is about accepting the priesthood of the laity first before you can be open to the priesthood your deign priesthood sorry that's what you've got come in slightly and I had my grocery list just like probably every Protestant in the Catholic Church of items and what about this and what about this and what about this and the the interesting thing about that that needs to be said is that and I've heard you say this numerous times but I I knew in my heart the point at which I was a Catholic inside before I was one outside and it was like I can't go back I'm not going back on that bridge in in the Protestant directions and and I'm afraid to go forward but I have to and that's that's where I know God has brought me and so I remember sharing that with my wife and this because it was obvious to her now it was beyond just idle curiosity on my part it was now this was serious and again she was very gracious in giving me the freedom to consider this and we'd been on quite a journey by now in terms of numbers of church affiliations that we she wasn't as quite as ready it was not she had not been prepared in the same way or experientially the as the Lord prepared me but she was very kind to give me that latitude - what was your biggest hurdle Marion doctrines of course would be one purgatory was another you know I would say the typical assortment of Protestant concerns the real presence just how did we understand that and I think I got about halfway through my list between reading some of the Scott Hahn books and some of the other Catholic apologists and watching your program and such and in my own independent study and reading the Catechism which is a tremendous tremendous teaching source and finally I got to the point where I had to say if the Churches of God the Catholic Church and and this is his vehicle his vessel for us it has to be trustworthy and I then relegated the remainder of my concerns to not that there's something wrong with them but there's something lacking in my understanding of them but that it they're essentially trustworthy and so I was able to deal with with some of those issues in in that way that it was a matter of trust and I realized too as I read there's no such thing as cafeteria Catholicism you can't I'll take this all out of this place of none of that not so much here it's it's an all or none but one of those entrees was Peter was that a struggle for you no it wasn't I began to see some wonderful scriptures the passage in John 21 where Jesus commits the care of the church to him in matthew 16 where he gives him the keys and says he'll found his church upon him so that was not discovered acts 15 24 where the Apostles told the new believers at Antioch that they some have gone out without our mandate or without our Authority well there is Authority okay and and that clarified there were many verses of Scripture that I had not either recognized or given full value and wait to plus you were living in the splinters of what happens when you turn from Peter right right there you were you know and you know thority is it is it me you know ultimately that's the Adamic statement you know I'll be the final authority yeah I remember when effect the second guest on the journey home was the former Bishop of London Graham Leonard God rest his soul and and that was the issue was that he was facing all these decisions as these churches were going through these Anglican churches gone through these decisions and challenges and all that and Heath civilan himself struck wait a second he's a bishop he's one of where's the authority you know is it generally a democratic group that gathers at Lambeth every year or is truth truth and that was what challenged him him - are you doing this while you're also getting in the pulpit every Sunday yes and that became increasingly difficult but thankfully the small church that I had planted by early 2008 was looking for a full-time person and I had begun working at the Jefferson County Detention Center through the Sheriff's Office in early 2005 so that basically supported me because my pastoral work was only part-time at best and so at the jail as an Anglican priest at that point I was working full time and then serving the church on the weekend and so the church decided to look for a full-time pastor to replace me and basically my suggestion as well that they needed someone full-time and I could no longer give that amount of time and so we moved ahead with that and transitioned the full-time person in and thanks be to God he's this individual has since given some consideration for the Catholic faith but the work at the jail then sustained me through through this time and the sheriff's office was wonderful in terms of allowing me to serve there and then to transition into the Catholic Church so the pastoral provision process began a year after I entered the church in 2009 and I had had been received at that point in late 2008 as a Catholic layman and then a year later could apply for the pastoral provision did so did a year of study and took all the exams and things of that sort and the mentoring and by God's grace was ordained a deacon in late 2010 and then in May of 2011 was ordained as a priest let's see why so much I'd love to throw your way questions one of is is is now as a Catholic priest looking back on understanding of of the church through your long thread of things moody and the independent Bible of them your the evangelical seminary and College and Seminary and then the Methodist Church in the Episcopal Church and then now we look at today in America how many different groups there are talk about as you look at that your wonderful opportunity as a priest the church the necessity of the church pillar and bulwark of truth have you come to see the necessity of that for our lives I see it at the jail in this respect we offer several RCIA classes for our inmates and we have everything from lapsed Catholics who are baptized as babies have never been back to church that we use the class to reinvigorate them in their faith last year we had twenty five inmates confirmed and nine of them baptized the Lord has been working in a wonderful way so lapsed catholics protestants of other denominations who just want to know more about the catholic faith and people of no faith at all so we use the classes as a teaching opportunity each week for our inmates and the question comes to me what are we going to do when this person is ready to leave the jail where do they go and for many who we run fifty-two programs a week and we have Alan volunteers over 125 but from the Protestant group someone can say yes I raised my hand I want to believe in Jesus but when you're ready to walk out the front door of the jail where do you go who do you belong to and we're able to say that in the Catholic Church you have a home worldwide you can go anywhere you belong and you're welcome at the altar and it connects back to that pool in the crypt at Milan historically where Ambrose changed the life of Augustan by he's no longer the old has gone the new has come he's a new creature he's a child of God he's received the divine life of God through the Holy Spirit that's a baptism does those men in that prison who've accepted Christ and have been baptized they're different people and they're a member of a mystical body of Christ but unlike just like a newborn infant from a hospital if you set that baby at the curb rather than send them home with a family to feed and clothe and care for them they're not going to survive and inmates who have a conversion to Christ in jail who have nowhere to go and have no sense of belonging or identity spiritually speaking no connection to the body of Christ they're not going to survive either in the spiritual sense that reminds me of and I won't get the data right but I remember years ago when I did some work with with the Billy Graham Association in the Crusades I think it was at the buffalo years ago and had the experience of being prepared for that by lady Ford and of course we recognized the great things that that the Crusades do in changing lives of course we do I remember remember the the Cardinal of Boston once saying Bravo Billy when when he brought so many people forward but I remember Leighton Ford saying that follow-up is the most important thing because of all those people that come forward six months later less than 30% of those people are active in their faith where do they go they have a changed life in Christ but where do they go of course that's that's what the home of the churches is about all the the graces that we even the sacraments we see that as it's very important in our work at the jail and that people need to have a sense of a home where they belong confirmation one of the things we teach is it gives you a sense of identity and belonging among the other things that the Holy Spirit gives to us right I've got an email from Delaware Paul writes I am a lifelong evangelical Christian and I'm deeply committed to Jesus these last few years I've had some dissatisfaction and frustration with things I've seen in the evangelical world especially how much disunity there is and how it's so hard to know what is true the thought has crossed my mind that maybe Catholics have something we don't but I'm skeptical about Catholicism after all I've heard about it in my evangelical upbringing I think that represents some of my past as well where what we've heard is hearsay information we've not heard it from Catholics we've heard it from other Protestants or people who have an antipathy toward the Catholic faith and so the first thing might be to work find out where are you getting your information do you have first-hand sources or second or third-hand sources and I think that's where for me in my own preparation to enter the church a study of the Catechism was a very valuable thing my mentoring priest and I worked through the Catechism cover to cover for my preparation for my confirmation and I would suggest to any Protestant looking on that's a wonderful place to start and with that of course you can then open your Bible and and see the connection between the Holy Tradition as the Magisterium has passed it on and the Word of God written with its mutual understanding yeah it's too bad there's some up given the Catechism a bad name by saying it was only for the the bishops or the teachers and that therefore making it sound like it's too challenging of a book but it is a great gift to us it is for our jail our CIA program we use leaflet missiles outlines of the Catholic faith which is an outline of the Catechism and when our inmates come ten times we give them a catechism as an incentive so we want to put that in people's hands you also make another good point which is I mean how many non Catholics only know about the Catholic Church through the witness of non Catholics as opposed to listening to Catholics they wouldn't do that if they were a Baptist want to know what a Presbyterian they'd want to Presbyterian to tell them not a Mormon or a Java witness they would want from the words of a person that lives that faith obvious example the idea of the communion of the saints well you pray to Saints or you pray to Mary Earth and the idea is no that's the great cloud of witnesses and Jesus said I am the god of the living not of the dead and when he spoke of Abraham Isaac and Jacob and so the communion of saints doctrine has a very clear understanding if you're Catholic and can appeal there rather than misinformation from other sources father Dennis thank you first of all so much for your you're sharing your story and what you continue to do in the prison ministry and I'm wondering as we close if if I could ask you invite you to extend a blessing to our audience who's listening and watching the program most certainly the Lord bless you and keep you the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you the Lord lift his countenance upon you and give you peace in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit amen thank you Father it's good to hear that erotic blessing I ever and heard that not a long time thank you very much that allows you to be with and thank you for joining us on the journey home and for your work not only as a pastor but with the men in prison because that's indeed who our Lord has called us to never forget but for the grace of God go high right amen that's right thank you and thank you for joining us on this episode of the journey home I I pray that that father Dennis's journey all through the way the Lord was guy on into the church and in the priesthood is an encouragement to you god bless you see you next week

Channel: EWTN

Views: 13,292

Rating: 4.6363635 out of 5

Keywords: Catholic, EWTN, Christian, television, JHT01427

Id: J9QQ0Hhcj7w

Length: 56min 11sec (3371 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 01 2014