Journey Home - 2017-06-19 - Fr. Bonaventure Chapman

[Music] you good evening and welcome to the journey halt my Marcus Grodi your host for this program each week we together have this opportunity hear stories of how the holy spirit has opened the hearts and minds of men and women to the beauty of our Lord Jesus Christ in His Church and often the journey of our guests found them in going to a place they had never anticipated this is a second week of privileges because you'll notice when you see tonight's guest that he's wearing a similar they went to the same have a Dasher as the guest last week and there's a story to that and so we welcome tonight father Bonaventure Chapman former Presbyterian former United Church of Christ former Episcopalian I think you may be a mentioned Lutheran was in there well you get to that or not because we only have an hour we don't have a week but father it is great to have you on the program it's great to be here thank you Father Bonaventure it's good to have you here and as I mentioned the last guest had a similar outfit the Dominicans are taking over a journey home Medina I like what's that old joke between the Dominicans in them and the Jesuits well there's this plenty of them but the one I think we remember the most is the the Dominicans were founded to get rid of the Alba Jenson's and the Cathars and the Jesuits Jesuits were founded to get rid of the Protestants and we like to boast that you very rarely see a Cathar or an Alba Jensi around at least in that name you know that's exactly right and to be fair Johannes Tetzel the the great indulgence preacher that kind of started off the Reformation he was a dominican so it was kind of our fault anyway we're gone so maybe I'm doing penance for for that as well well it's good to have you on the program it's a great pleasure let me get out of the way and invite you to take his way back let's hear your journey wonderful I'm from Buffalo New York so a Polish Catholic town but of course I wasn't Catholic nor was my family we were a Protestant family I was baptized in the Presbyterian Church at night a Presbyterian Church USA mainline respite I like to say that I came from a large Protestant family we had I had a brother and a sister so those three of us that's larger than many a twin brother actually and then an older sister and my my mother my father were Protestants as well so started off at Baptist Presbyterian Church and we attended the Presbyterian Church for a good bit but then now the Presbyterian Church is all over the board I was it a conservative that's true in full it was since I only attended and tell us about twelve or ten I don't think I really had a sense of kind of conservative although I got to know the pastor there later it was a it's Buffalo is a largely conservative place so I was more conservative than most I would say but not not an Orthodox Presbyterian Church so we went we attended there for Deerhurst Presbyterian Church for a good bit of time and and my mother was involved singing in the choir was a traditional Protestant family my father would sit in the front row and read the Bible maybe during during the service and then our pastor was he was a little more progressive not as conservative as some of the group and so he decided he was no longer going to be a Presbyterian pastor for a time so we laughed and of course he left the ministry for a time and of course in the Protestant tradition the pastor is so integral to the church itself so I think we were around that was around 10 my brother and I were 10 or 11 when we we had to go Church Church shopping because the new pastor came in and you don't really like that it's not about the church itself but about who's preaching the thirty-minute homilies so we started in Buffalo New York going around and visiting different churches as a family to look at we went to the Lutheran churches both the Missouri Synod the conservative and the more mainline Methodist churches and we and other Presbyterian churches then we stumbled on this little it's a very quaint corner church called the Kenmore United Church of Christ which was about three minute or four minute walk from from my house and that's where we decided as a family I don't know how much we kids although I do remember at a dinner conversation them saying which do you like which do you like best which is incredible to listen to the opinion of children for churches yeah but maybe the Holy Spirit was working there and so as a family we we joined the United Church of Christ which is a for those who aren't familiar it's a Congregational Church so it's a it's it's a little bit more low church even than Presbyterians you have Eucharist maybe or the Lord's Supper I should say maybe four times a year there's basically opening hymn prayer scripture readings a homily that usually involves stories from Reader's Digest you know this sort of very that kind of thing and then another hymn and then everyone leaves the average age of the congregant is probably 60 so my family was 40 years younger I think than everyone else and we were sitting the front and it has a sunday-school of course but we went my brother and I went to the sunday-school I think once and we we were just frustrated or confused by it yeah yeah we need UCC and the PC USA have many overlaps and it's because there are many overlaps in polity in the way the churches are run and that when the UCC was formed so many other congregations broke away to form the NAC CC or the the cccc and the only different different conservative if you will congregations groups and most of which they wanted the autonomy I don't want any Presbyterian stuff yes because the UCC were two Presbyterian compared to the other congregation list but they weren't Presbyterian enough to be Presbyterian but you would have theology it would be all across the board to all across the board all across the board so it wasn't it wasn't a very high theology at this place it was much more about the community and belonging liturgy no liturgy they preacher it was a very nice man he wore you wear a black robe you know lawyers robe or something and Stan pulpit but it had an effect you know it's amazing how God works into his little ways and I was because we my brother and I didn't go to Sunday school I was under and we were always late even though we were the closest probably to anyone attending that church we always showed up late so we'd be in that front row you know Protestants fill in for the back often like Catholics and so we'd be in that front row and I would just spend Sunday services looking up at the at the the pastor preaching and that I think that had an effect there's some there was a some kind of calling that planted the seeds it was during that it was during the time of you as a you know a Church of Christ when I was confirmed there that started to get a sense of a calling to ministry so God writes you just write straight with crooked lines as they say sometimes yeah maybe we should make sure we crush it a little bit if we sound like we're too critical the Presbyterians you see see we do know good Christian folk their grace works still know yeah I mean there was absolutely absolutely and that's again our the mystery of our Lord and the way works you know there's the grace they're even touching you as a young man to be inspired to maybe consider serving and with your life and who knows if I if I hadn't been in that particular church in that circumstance nurtured Christ if I would be here today as a Dominican used God is unfathomable in some ways he's beyond us and it was Christ a part of your life at yet at that point he was I I think so um I was always a spiritual person I guess that's strange for me to express things but and because I was a scientist I loved the sciences it was during that time middle school I loved math and I loved I loved physics and in high school when I started especially freshman year of high school I started to read I remember one of the first books I read was brief Stephen Hawking's brief history of time I'm not convinced I understand much understood much of it other than that I loved it I loved physics and most people thought most people say well as a scientist or you know mathematically inclined or something you should not you wouldn't be a religious person but the two were always so close for me and it's not surprising because math deals with numbers and none of us ever meet 7:00 in the street we meet seven dogs or seven cars but numbers are abstract pi and all these things in mathematical you never meet a real circle every circle no matter what you draw it or whatever it's not a perfect circle but math is you in perfect circles you have this you know this perfection there and physics is the same way I mean in Newton or Einstein you're talking about atoms particles strings all these fundamental realities that you'd use in your equations for you can't see any of those things so physics and math and a love for that really well I thought was part and parcel to a view that what we see is not all there is that they met there's order there there's order it makes sense there's reason behind things and it's behind but not in them it's it's there and I saw I think before I could get a sense of Christ I there was a sense that God was really important and as since I was a Christian Jesus was obviously really important in that too yeah okay so you're underneath the preaching of this you see see my master and again I'm reading and I'm reading and when I was reading that brief history of time I remember thinking myself and you read the statement about he has a brilliant statement there or a striking statement he says is everything determined but the laws of physics is I've been determined and Stephen Hawking says yes it is but we can't know it so we act as if we have free will and I thought you know that's about right that's that's just about right the physics equations everything seems to be determined and I said but I do believe in God of course and Christianity so I need to find an expression of Christianity that can go with this logical determinism this very mathematical logical thing and that's when I found the writings of John Calvin and Calvinism and so I started to get back to my presbyterian the baptismal graces you could say it would be working and I started to read this was in high school and I started to read a lot of Calvin and get really excited about the reformed biology high schoolers read the Institute's no not many do not many and and I didn't read all of it at that time but I was certainly I'm certainly excited and I in a sense I was forced to it because my brother and I went to a Roman Catholic High School so wait a second did that happen that's right well we had a public school in our backyard but my parents for various reasons maybe because it was in our backyard and we saw the students there all the time we're not interested in sending their sons to the public school and in Buffalo it's a Catholic town so the private schools except for the very expensive very very expensive ones are Catholic so even though neither of them were Catholic they said okay well we need to send our boys to a private school Catholic schools we looked around in st. Joe's Collegiate Institute which was run by Lasallian Brothers God the Christian Brothers of De La Salle that's where we went and he was an all-boys school and it was run and you were shirts and ties and it's very ordered and as a science math kind of person I like the order but there were these men wearing black and little white collars and they were teaching they were the Christian Brothers there and that's my that was my first real experience of Catholicism when we because we go to Mass there we prayed before every class we had these brothers who I knew were special they dedicated their lives to something special and they had such just kind of started to work on me and it asked me to say well these are really wonderful the Catholic Chur is really wonderful the big brothers here really dedicated and wonderful do I have any is there anything that I'm as a Protestant what do I say to all this I think so it forced me to be reading the Institute's younger than most people probably should be too to really know that's right I believe our guest his father bottom at your Chapman were they prophet izing to use that word in a sense no I they were they were in fact it was it was quite the opposite I I knew everyone I was around 15 so my sophomore year there I felt a strong call to ministry so he I felt I wanted the Lord I want to be that guy wearing that black that black robe and preaching from that pulpit and so I knew the brothers there and I was interested in religion and so they knew that and so we talked and I was very good friends with our president brother Thomas Lackey wonderful man and we would in in our my senior year there and in college whenever I came back we would go out to lunch at a place across the street and during these times of course I would continuously try to convince him of the eras of Rome of the the things that he'd given up and they hadn't thought about and he was a very it was a smart man but he never you know just sat there and took it and and just humored me I think and I was delightful when I finally converted I said you know you you won and you didn't even have to argue so they were they were warm they were smart they were serious but they were joyful and that has such an effect on on someone to see these got these men dedicated to such a high truth that you're seeking to yeah yeah they were trusting grace so much they're praying this too will pass that's right that's right yeah yeah that's right so there you are reading Calvin's Institute's hearing a call to exactly here Nicole Street going to ministry finishing high school trying to decide it was always obvious okay well I need to go to college that and go to seminary that be that the track and I'm an ordered orderly person so you just decide set these things out and so I just looked for I at that point I'd consider myself Presbyterian I was attending again Presbyterian Church near our nearer house I would also go to unite rejoice as well and I was getting more involved with the Presbyterian Church and so I wanted to go to a Presbyterian College and somewhere where they would have both science and and theology so I went to Grove City College in Pennsylvania or very nice a very wonderful school is small about 2400 students but excellent academics and a really wonderful Christian atmosphere the people there were amazing and so I went to study physics and theology two degrees there and first got there it was already it was a different I've met many kinds of Christianity but even there right away even by that time I hadn't seen it all by any stretch of imagination I member showing up and they had this worship service the first weekend and the students were were singing with no hymnals in front of them and I thought wow these are exceptional Christians because they've memorized all the notes I was a clarinet I'm a clarinet player so I breeding music is easy and I thought there this is impressive they I'm not as dedicated as they are yet but I will be and then you realize after the repeating refrain that there does any praise and worship songs and it's a different kind of singing yeah so that was a much more evangelical and charismatic experience Christianity there in a way so they kind of balanced out it was a tension between the collage achill aspects of Calvinism you know that very very tight reasoning formal systems and then the kind of evangelical warming of the heart you could save in a Wesleyan sense the warming of the heart and the emotions being involved so that that started at Grove City College okay and there you're bumping elbows with people from a lot of different faiths lots of your faiths including Catholics including Catholics and it's interesting I feel like this won't surprise anyone are you especially is that God knows where the story ends even though you don't and if I look back when I look back on I can see the Tut the strains being tugged because the first weave mandatory Chapel there during the week but the Sundays of course you were to go to Presbyterian or Methodist or Baptist or wherever you want to go to and almost all the students of course did go to some one of these churches and my first Sunday there I was trying to decide where I would go where would go and of course now it makes sense I found myself with the Catholics by the flagpole ready to walk to Catholic Mass and I was I was in Catholic I was a Calvinist the calmest of Calvinists and but it seemed right and just so to do to go to this Catholic Catholic Mass and be there because it felt felt home and that's why would I be do you know yes why that has felt that way that's right and I do because of that sense of mystery and my love of the invisible that this world is not all there is that what we see is is permeated by something beyond that supernatural the Catholic Church always seemed to me right the sacraments the mystery the liturgy if God wanted to be worshipped he wanted to be worshipped in a special way and so the liturgy and the sacraments of Catholicism and its moral teachings will always seem to me right I never doubted any of the moral teachings humanity vitae any of that seemed to be perfectly right let alone that Luther and Calvin thought the same but the liturgy itself the sacraments the vestments all this that high form just attracted me and that seemed and so it that I was already drawn there that seemed like the right thing and through my college there even though I was attending and sometimes preaching at Presbyterian churches I would still Saturday night I'd almost always go to the Catholic vigil and it never struck me that this was strange because you were seeing the Catholic Church as just one of many right he was a different tradition differently one of many although there is a although maybe maybe in Eastern Orthodox analogy about the first amount equals because I think people and maybe people aren't converts don't sense the asymmetry between Protestantism and the Catholic Church and they think oh it's just another denomination and that's how I must see it but I don't think most Protestants see it that way Rome is always there there's this center of gravity I like to explain it in people go to museums you know they're those little coin those little coin funnels that you put in the coin runs around until it goes spins down the bottom and I like think that the Catholic Church is that bottom that center of gravity that it's all waving towards and the other churches are the cut are rims on it and you find yourself or you could say maybe that the reasons not temperature knocked into the church are the rims that like if you put a little ledge in there that a coin would always keep spinning around but it wants to go in there feels drawn to that and in a lot of ways my conversion wasn't an active seeking out the Catholic Church but the hindrance is being removed so that the coin could just fall straight there and that's that's how I came at the church wasn't what made me do this incense my searching but more in the sense of as things were slowly fading away objections I realized one morning this comes a little bit later I had no more reason not to be Catholic and for a real Protestant for a real Protestant who's protesting something when you have nothing else to protest you must become Catholic yeah one of the areas that can keep Protestants from going down and getting them to the bottom and at the bottom but yeah arriving home the source the source is kind of an underlying as something sumption that a question as to whether the church really makes a difference at all or not as long as I've got the faith right it's really matter where I'm at I mean you could be a solid 15-point Calvinist in the UCC Church yes yes you know so does it really matter and get to that point it sometimes it does matter but were you at that stage yet I think I'd always there was always a sense that Christianity has to be bigger than just you it can't just be me and my Bible Jesus says in John 17 which I pray that they all be one I took that very seriously so there's a sense in which the physical union of the church has to be has to be real it can't just be we're in our isolated components our little compartments our cubicles of religion and and then we all ascribe that we're sick we have similar things but we're really by ourselves it's just me and my Bible that never struck me as a satisfying expression of what Christianity what Jesus seemed to call people to was always a visible union so there you were a flaming Calvinist I had a license idled my license plate at college was John Calvin I called it highway evangelism so I was in a Grove City which is a very cognitive school it is but going to Mass us with the Catholics that's right and lead going to Newman Club and praying rosaries and I remember I was a I was an RA Resident Assistant it was direct there you get a hall freshman as your junior and you're in your job of course the lead Bible studies with them which is great and I had you know God works is I had four Catholics on my hall at your year and and I remember people would start to challenge them and I would always jump in and and defend and attack any of the Protestants that were attacking the Catholics against against supporting them and not yeah we because you had any sense of leaning towards the Catholic Church or you saw yourself as just very charitably ecumenical not a chance in the charitably ecumenical I knew I'll put this way I knew the Catholic Church was right but I thought there might be something just a little better I knew they were right about the moral teachings I knew they're right about the sacraments and the liturgy I knew they're right about so many of these things and I just thought but wouldn't it be great to have not just the sacraments and the moral teaching stuff but also the doctrine something that was also right couldn't I have a Calvinist Catholicism that's what I was shooting for you know so I defended them against all of the others because I thought there they just don't they're missing both but the Catholics if there's just something a little better just something and that was the search I think from United Christ to Presbyterian looking I was always looking for to see if there was something Catholics are right but is there something just a little better and that's that little better was the Brit objections that were whittled away in my search okay did you end up going to protestant seminary then I did so I I was involved in the Presbyterian Church and I was involved in the chapel staff but even by my junior year I knew I was I want to be a minister I told right away even though studying physics so I'm going to go to seminary but I I knew that Presbyterians just weren't enough they were really enough they had the the doctrine the Calvinism was great logically satisfying but they're missing the liturgy and sacraments and the moral teachings that come strength so I started that there well let's look around a bit and so I started with my junior year I started looking at Lutheranism because Lutheran's look a lot like Catholics in some ways they're Catholics with longer homilies so I worked in the summer I interned at a Lutheran Church and was preaching and teaching and working alongside the pastor in in Buffalo New York and getting a sense of Lutheranism and while I was on that time I was in that we would meet weekly with pastors an area and I remember seeing these men wearing black shirts like the men I was taught by with white collars and they were priests they called themselves Father but they were Protestants and I thought who are these strange men and they were of course Episcopalian priests and so I met them as when I was looking at a Lutheran Church and something struck me it said you know that's it they look like Catholics they practice the religion like Catholics but they've got Protestant theology I must have to be an Episcopalian I must have to be an angle again that must be that that's that Catholic Plus that I was looking for so started to talk to read the the Anglicans read Cranmer talked to them spend time worshiping within my senior year committed to saying yeah I'm I don't think I'm going to end up being a presbyterian I think I have to go to Anglican Seminary and it was interesting because I was applying to a few few places mostly as a presbyterian but the seminar I got into which my religion chairman my chair village department was from Oxford and he said well you're an evangelical protestant Calvinists like me so you should apply to Oxford and go to Wickliffe to the one of the best Anglican seminaries and I didn't think I'd have a chance getting in but they must have mixed up my resume then I remember getting getting in there and saying okay that's it God wants me to be an Anglican priest and I'm going to that's when moving up moving up the candle gone from United to Christ con gation 'el to Presbyterian and then to look the Lutheran a little bit and now I'm finally settled on it the Catholic thing I was going Mass on Saturdays and then processors but now I only have to go to one thing a week you know now I've got both the doctrine and the liturgy together so the ankle jerk seemed like the perfect fit seemed like the stopping point not only you're going angle good but you're going to the source you're going to Oxford that's look that's exactly right that's right and so if I was going to be Anglican why not go to Church of England the center of it and and get that experience there that's awesome all right well let's pause there father Bonaventure we'll come back and I'm anxious to hear about your experience over there in Oxford that's great back to spit you [Music] you [Music] welcome back to the journey home I'm your host Marcus Grodi and our guest tonight is father Bonaventure Chapman he's been through a Presbyterian United Church of Christ then back to Presbyterian very staunch Presbyterian even more Calvinist than most Presbyterians more Calvinist than Calvin himself and then looked at Lutheran and then now you're you're going across the pond as an Anglican are you an anglican yet you're going to die ever so I've been accepted to two Wickliffe to study there as a presbyterian although I knew I would be turning to Bank and I was but I was young so they asked we you know for the master's program with masters in theology they said would you wait a year before going over and I said sure and I needed because I needed to get this angle can things sorted out so I moved down to Florida Orlando Florida I had some friends down there and I had some connections with the Reformed Theological Seminary down there and they hooked me up with the Cathedral of st. Luke's which was the Diocese of Central Florida the Episcopalian diocese there I taught at a small Baptist school for a year teaching physics and and math and do you even think about not a chance God love Baptist but I I guess infant baptism struck me as such a natural thing that I thought that's just too far so that's one of the few in the United Methodist I guess I didn't I tried to get everyone else though so I was teaching down a Baptist Baptists school with a friend who also was going over to England who was also Protestant we were both ankle khun's or becoming Anglicans he was reformed as well it was we entered the cathedral together in in in Orlando so I was going through the process there while teaching that year also going through the process of becoming not only becoming an Episcopalian but also being sent overseas to study so usually you become a Episcopalian and then you wait for a while to see if you're called to the ministry or something but I had showed up to the Episcopal Diocese with with a spot at Wickliffe in Oxford and I remember that I remember when I went through the process I remember you meet with the bishop at some point at deterring the ordination the sort of the process of selection to be ordained and you go in he talks about where he wants to send you or something it was a strange conversation me because I wanted the bishop and he said well have you to have any desires about what bisque Italian seminary and it said well I've got this letter of acceptance to Oxford you can tell me to go wherever you'd like but I do have a place there in three months and he said Oh that'll be fine that'll be fine so I that year I was 2005 believe I became an Episcopalian and was commissioned by the diocese to go over as one of the seminarians from Central Florida diocese to study in Oxford and and it was an experience I mean Oxford although I have to say people people I knew said and even my chairman of religion department at Grove Cities and now don't go becoming a Catholic you're going to go over there and you're going to see things and it's going to be England you're going to hear John Henry Newman and just remember don't become a Catholic Episcopalian or Anglican is as far as you go as far as you go and I said of course this I'm done because I've got the sacraments and the liturgy and the moral teachings maybe maybe not in the moral teachings but I've got the liturgy in the sacraments and I've got the Calvinist theology I could be a Calvinist Catholic and that's what I want you know so I got over there and it was an incredible experience Oxford with the dreaming spires and almost immediately you are confronted with John Henry Newman and the Oxford movement in the early in the in the late in the 19th century when encantar ting to decide what it is so almost melee I was attracted because the liturgy to the high high church Anglicans we'd call it I used to interject for our American audience that even before you were confronted by the Newman you would have been confronted by a history that predates anglicanism mm-hmm you only mean the structures of Oxford of course that long predates Anglicanism itself Oxford University and 1200s the oldest universities in the world and of course the Reformation doesn't happen till 1560s in in England so all those great colleges are are Catholic you know in the a strong Catholic and of course the cat the many Anglicans considered the solve still well they're just English Catholics and I thought at the time that was yeah I was remember I was looking to be a Calvinist Catholic so that seemed that seemed to fit right with it but it was interesting because most Episcopalians in the States are what we'd call high church and they look like Roman Catholics the smells and the bells and all that it's only the doctrine that's that's different sometimes sometimes it's very similar I know in our Cathedral in Orlando we had represents a Cremant we all genuflect did our Dean of our Cathedral would pound from the pulpit we are not Protestants we're Catholics so in America you get this sense of very Catholic Anglicanism but in England I was at the seminary they were most of my seminarians were more like Baptists we had I remember I was with two other Americans we were all training for thee for the priesthood Anglican priesthood and we would be sitting in a seminar talking about about service and we want to call it the mass and they wouldn't okay fine you know communion service what-have-you and I remember a number of the the British were training there for the Anglican Church the heart of the Anglican Church we're making comments and they were saying well I don't know if I'll celebrate the Eucharist more than a couple times a year because I don't want to take away from from the preaching I would want to take away from the preaching and this just sounded so bizarre to us because to be an Episcopalian meant of course you have the preaching but of course you have the Eucharist and the sacraments why would you become Episcopalian if not that so is this jolt this reality starting to seep in that actually Anglicanism that as experienced in the States this kind of Catholic version was not Anglicanism that was a I do sink Radek view of it and that as an Anglican you could believe basically anything you wanted there was no authority there was no the thirty-nine articles not even something that's their credo statement that people subscribe to so you had no there was no sense of a Catholic unified Church I had no idea I didn't realize that I mean I know the Brits had a civil war over the idea of being too Catholic that's right and that was that big battle but I I guess I'm assuming that there was a rise of anglo-catholics it's Yoon England there are angle Catholics there they're also the middle road broad church and they're the evangelicals and I would have to go to felt like being College again I would have to go to two to three services a weekend to get in a sense my Catholic fill I would go to an evangelical church to get the homily right the doctrine and that would go to a annual Catholic Church in the morning or a Catholic Church one of the when the Catholic Church is in Oxford black friars or wherever to get the liturgy stuff so it'd still be going piecemeal again coins different places and I thought I was done with that so that started to raise questions and say you know maybe this isn't Catholic plus maybe the good parts of this are just the Catholic parts and the parts I don't like are just the other parts and that there isn't something higher than Catholic Plus and I started to read and think more about this whole Catholic thing and various experiences but one i'm Banamine sure is my religious name and he's important even though he's a Franciscan and I'm a Dominican I think he was the first Catholic theologian that I read seriously and thought huh that sounds pretty good I was studying for I was writing a doctrine paper on testimony of the Holy Spirit and the Scriptures the Protestant doctrine of that Holy Spirit enlightening the reader as he studies or he or she studies the scripture and I was in the Radcliffe kam the live theological library and sending these books and I was looking doing a little prehistory before Calvin for the 15 I was looking at where this pets come up before inez this book called the Breville opium a shortened short book and it was by this man named st. Bonaventure a Catholic and I remember reading this sitting in that in that that big reading room beautiful Oxford near Reading Room's and thinking you know he sounds pretty Calvinist and Protestant maybe these this guy isn't so bad maybe the Catholic Church isn't as strange as I thought was in the thinking I knew it was right in the sacraments and all that but the doctrines stuff so he's I think bottom ensure planted the seed so I take him as an as a patron because he he knew how to bring me along he was there when my mind was finally ready for conversion my heart my soul and sense had been but my mind was now finally ready to look into the Catholic Church so I started reading him I started reading other Jesuits energy luboc answers and Balthazar Cardinal Dan Alou Bernhard Lonergan I was deep in myself john paul ii Ratzinger and these all these men were writing as catholics in a orthodox and traditional way and their theology was basically what i thought was right my theology my theology was conforming to theirs and so we talked about the analogy of the the coin spinning down these ledges were slowly being worn away until one morning as my second year of studies there they do three years of studies and second year of studies middle of that I remember waking up one morning in my in my room and realizing that I couldn't tell you why I wasn't Catholic I couldn't give a reason someone asked me why aren't you Catholic now I had no reason and I sat up and I said Lord this is a strange journey we've been on but apparently this ends in Catholicism you know everyone my president at Saint Joe's and Buffalo my mother had secret suspicions she was Catholic by this at this point they're all right I'm going I'm going to be Catholic now you had mentioned the great faithful Fathers of Vatican to a great team of wonderful that's right theologians theologians of Vatican two but there you were in the backyard of Newman had he had a place to play in that or you had avoided them in obedience to your warnings you well you know I try to be an obedient person but I by the second year I think it was starting to fade a little bit and I always tell people don't give someone Neumann until they're ready but once they're ready for him you'll never turn back he is the final you give if you give an angle ken who asked questions about I I want to be processed I want to be Catholic I like some these leanings but I have some doubts about the doctrines or something if you give him the apology at probita sua games over games over and I read that I read that my second year and an Newman story from evangelical to two angle Ken to Catholic was my story and I just like so many I think I felt there so his shadow was cast long over Oxford where I was and I felt that he is arguments for Catholicism that Angoon ism was not a Via Media it was not a stopping point that it was either protestant or catholic catholicism and there and I knew Protestantism was it wasn't enough it wasn't enough so that Catholicism was was the only option and you were experiencing the reality of that your class were these Inc suppose it Anglicans were becoming Protestant it was all leaning that way and it just seemed in America we were going through in the Episcopal Church was going through a difficult time with homosexual bishops and such and we were questioning that people questioned all the reasoning and answers seemed to be Protestant so I could see from across the pond that was it was indeed that my Dean wasn't right we weren't Catholic we were Protestants there was only one Catholic Church and so I tendered my resignation and the diocese was wonderful they were very they're very they're very kind and they and they respected my decision so I resigned from Holy Orders in the Episcopal Church as still knowing that I had 15 I was called to be minister and this just meant I guess I would had to be a Catholic so no wife which maybe because of my my nerdy desires and such that was okay the Lord had kept me from from in tango engagements on that I suppose and I said I want to well I want to be a Catholic and a priest so what does that mean what kind of priest and all my reading we went through that litany of of Vatican two fathers they're all Jesuits my mother always said my mother always said you know we make michalak you're going to be a Jesuit and she became a Catholic in 2002 so she been this was 2007 when I was received in the Catholic Church sort of suspect she'd been praying for quite quite a time and so I said okay I I guess I guess I'll be a Jesuit so I came back to the States after finishing the degree in Oxford and went on a Jesuit vocation weekend a time where you get to kind of experience meet with the with Jesuits and talk and other vocations guests and there's just was something not right it wasn't the Jesuits were wrong he just you you get this it's like a via negativa I knew that I wasn't supposed to be judgement it was a shock to me because I had assumed when I became a Catholic I would become a Jesuit because I love the teaching intellectual life the community life that's that sort of thing and I was there and I that weekend I knew I'm not supposed to be a Jesuit it was a strong feeling very strong and I was a little bit of loss is that oh what am i what am I to do I don't think I'll be a diocese and priests and I remember asking one of the other candidates one of the other men visiting the Jesuits I said we're all so well have you looked at anywhere else and he said oh I was just up at the Dominicans with the Dominicans and I said Dominicans really and then a little spark went off in my head because I remembered from studying the history of theology that in the 1500s 15 1600s there was a controversy great controversy between the Jesuits and Dominicans and the Jesuits were accused one only one a big one but then from then on the Jesuits were Dominicans were accusing Jesuits of being Pelagians these free will people and the Jesuits were constantly criticized the Dominicans as being Calvinists they were just Calvinists now I remember hearing him say that and Dominica went off I remember Calvinists and I thought you know huh that's well maybe that's maybe that's right maybe that maybe I'm supposed to be there so you can see all these links in the chain developing so I I went online and looked up province of st. Joseph the from Provence Dominicans and I got in touch with vocation director and one on weekend there and it just seemed like it fit like a glove you know but I wouldn't have found out found about them I don't think I would have found the Dominicans if I hadn't been on vocations weekend and I wouldn't have wanted to try them more I guess if I hadn't been a Calvinist you know so it all started to coalesce together did you find a parallel there in Dominican theology and Calvinism I think so I mean Thomas Aquinas Dominicans we saw Franciscans emphasize a lot of the heart the will and the desires and Dominicans emphasized a lot of the intellect it's a very it's not rationalistic but st. Thomas has a strong belief in the power of the mind and the ability for us to grasp truth of course Protestants a traditional Protestant thing is that the fullness of human nature and therefore the following 'no son as well but catholic tradition has always been a both hand kind of thing it's not faith versus reason but it's faith and reason together and st. Thomas st. Thomas Aquinas of course in his brilliant synthesis put these two together and had a real strong sense of the intellect even though fallen was still able to know things and once grace showed up was able to know even more so tome ISM and st. Thomas the dominican tradition have a strong intellectual component to them and of course that tied in very nicely with the Calvinism which is a large I mean I guess some people are Calvinists for emotional reasons but I've yet to meet them it's a very intellectual kind of pure system and tome ISM is like that so I think there were strong ties in that way mmm your journey Presbyterian originally but then UCC and then a very committed Calvinist Lutheran Episcopalian you were drawn all this way partially because the liturgy you liked the liturgy you liked the the order of the reading the beauty mystery and I want to talk about the mystery there side of things because it's one thing to for people I think outside the church when they think of liturgy they often thinking it's still in horizontal terms and other things you do an ordered way of doing things they don't often see I don't know the real thing is the mystery behind it the reality of what that sacrament does how you're changed by that or how the elements are changed but talk about that because that wasn't a part of the journey until you were Catholic that's right the reality of that mystery yes I think I remember when I was when I was in England and talking with other Americans there and we were talking about our struggles with this realization one one of the seminarians that I knew was a Catholic could become an Anglican and he said to me you know what I've always respected about the Catholic Church we've always thought was really important was the word mystery that there's just something deeper behind reality and that anything physical is gesturing towards that I think we have a sense of this as being in sold bodies animated bodies that we are not just our mere matter but that are our bodies our faces our gestures these indicate something of our spiritual reality to John Paul the second of course the theology of the body and talked about that language of the body that through in and through and by the body do you touch on the soul I think in the same way the liturgy the rituals all that it's not window dressing it's not merely horizontal it's our way of engaging with the supernatural which is in this life veiled and comes through these sacred signs and comes through these motions these gestures so all the standing the sitting the kneeling the hands receiving the Eucharist get elements it's a very physical thing but Catholicism is ultimately a supernatural thing and it's through those those those pointers you know the signs that actually contain the reality just like if you want to ask me where is my soul I have to point to my body my soul isn't my body but that's the only way I know it I think it was just recently reading something by Richard Newhouse and he said that when Catholic use the word mystery they're not mystery doesn't mean a question mark that's not what mystery means mystery means that we're talking about a vertical dimension of our spirituality a dirt of our reality as human beings in Christ that baptism really made us a different person the ordination father made you a different person changed you even the sacrament of the Eucharist were not merely remembering something that happened 2,000 years ago that and at this real sense we are there I mean we're connected it's being represented the reality of our of even in the mystery of the body of Christ it isn't just Christ on the cross were there with him he's our head you know that that part of things isn't a part of all that other part of your background no product and process maybe it's scared of especially maybe Calvinism is although not entirely but scared of mystery it likes to have things under control and that's I think Protestant Magento has this desire to control things and keep it safe they talk it's it's one of those paradoxes of Protestant Catholicism Protestant faith alone but Protestants are so busy with works whereas Catholics talk about faith and works and yet they rely entirely on grace what is confessional they're relying on grace and I think the same thing Protestants talk a lot about God and not about the physical material things they say that's Catholics they are involved in all these traditions the rosaries and all these physical things and we're real spiritually worship God in spirit and truth but you can't worship a spirit without going through the body and Catholics recognize this and behind all of that other stuff and only accessible through it is the supernatural reality is God coming to us in the Incarnation let alone the continuous revelation of the experience of him say in his church through his body his blood dominicans because their connection with st. Thomas are we used to think about the intellect and philosophy and all that but we can't get away from Our Lady the Dominicans have a long history of Our Lady and the Rose read well and this is um I remember when I was meeting with a Dominican my spiritual director before inching the order and he looked at me one day and said how's your should with marry well I think she's I get the I get the knack of conception and the assumption I understand then is that you've got to have a little more marry in your life so we I had to start praying the rosary more I had to wear a rack is metal and it was funny because my mother was always big Mary in person and I'll tell it very short very short story when she converted in 2002 I was not happy Calvinist your mother and I said to were you okay as if I mattered as if she cared you can convert to Catholicism okay I let you I said you put a Mary statue out in the garden I will smash it I was banished you will not will not have adultery in this in this household that's a bit like a mouse telling off and what not to do but as she kept that so uh when I became a Dominican after my not my novice year you spent a year in Cincinnati learned how to wear robes and pray and all this you get you get to four days to visit your family you haven't seen them in a year okay if it's your family you get a little small stipend or something I knew exactly what I was going to spend that money on and so I went home and I went to a some store and I found a Mary statue and I went to went to the home went to my home and after mass I told the priest I need you to come and bless a statue for me and we won't tell anyone so I had it I set him up there Mother's the kitchen and I call my mother out the priest Oh father's here Oh Joe wonder what he here for let's go find out and went and I uncover and I said mom I told you I will not let you put a Mary statue in your garden and I'm holding to that I will put the Mary statue in your garden and so I I came around to marry later but she has been crucial absolutely crucial and dominicans life we depend on Mary and her intercession and big fans of the Rosary sadly how would you describe to any UCC viewers about praying the rosary well the rosary it's it's it's a it's a chance it's a chance of opening a space for meditation for communion with God anywhere you are it's often you don't always get a chance to to be in a chapel or to be somewhere else but when you start praying the rosary the mind goes from the outside world on your the beads they're very helpful to bring raise your mind up to the mysteries of heaven and in the rosary you're praying through the life of Jesus the mysteries of Jesus it's not a it's it's Mary's prayer in a sense reflected over jesus's life so it's not a it's not a prayer to Mary but for Jesus and it creates that space where you can think about him and pray to him and ask him things all right let's see if we get one email in Dale from Arkansas writes why do you now believe that the Church of Rome has the supreme authority and not the individual to follow what he believes God is telling him I like a lot of things about Catholicism especially liturgical worship but can't wrap my head around the idea of why Catholics always have to agree with what the Pope or the Catechism says that's a great question and my favorite answer to that is I went to look this quote up again but John Calvin himself when told about the priesthood of all believers that idea that everyone these kind of direct revelation and ability to interpret Scripture he said oh great so now instead of one Pope I have 10,000 I have to deal with and that's when it comes down to it you initially think why I don't were Americans we don't like to listen to other people you know don't tread on me but if you have to listen to experts at some point and to say that that I myself because of my English translation of the Bible I'm the sole arbiter and determiner and they I have the ability to read this and understand perfectly what it is as opposed to 2,000 years of tradition people who spend all their time on their knees praying not just thinking but praying for answers that they are not better judges of this than I am it becomes a bit hubristic and I think Calvin's right you can't have this many he just want to be the authority the one Authority and Protestants we all want to be it ourselves but I think once you start asking once you start questioning what to do with that you realize that's that's not sufficient in your experience in that class that Oxford in itself I mean the trajectory of where they've ended in that class every you could you could believe in infant baptism or not you could believe the Eucharist was priceless present Eucharist or not you could believe that women can be ordained or not how can you call that a unified religion or Church there just wasn't there you have unity you have to unity baguettes unity so you have to have unity and it has to be outside yourself if you're going to have more than yourself in it yeah I mean even the most basic theologies get thrown up for grabs the divinity of Christ and in this direction Protestants traditionally knew this the Westminster Confession of faith which is a beautiful document put together by the Westminster Divine's in the 1600s that dictates what they should believe that's where you go when you ask questions about standards so they have an authority but you need to have a living authority to really work things father could ask you quickly to close us with the blessing in the name of the Father and the Son the Holy Spirit and then the Lord bless all of us here the viewers those who are in the Catholic Church and those who are seeking to know Jesus Christ and His Church more truly and ask this blessing name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit amen thank thanks very much for joining my pleasure hall that's great pleasure to have you with us and thank you for joining us I do pray that father Bonaventure's journey is an encouragement to you god bless you see the head [Music]

Channel: EWTN

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Id: 0PeSdBHwke8

Length: 56min 10sec (3370 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 19 2017