Journey Home - 2018-08-13 - Dr. Barry Carey

[Music] well good evening and welcome to the journey home I'm Marcus Grodi your host for this program EWTN allows me puts up with me to have this opportunity to sit with you and hear a story of conversion to how the holy spirit has opened someone's heart to the beauty of our Lord Jesus Christ in the church and our guest tonight is dr. Barry Carey former oneness Pentecostal and Anglican and so I'm anxious to hear the story because one has been a costal and Anglicanism and Catholicism they're all kind of outfits that's welcome it's good to have you and the problem thank you very much great to be here all right and all I know about you so far is that you spent an awful lot of time sailing around the world I mean I want to hear about that maybe as part of the story okay great well then let's hear your journey of it all right I was born and raised in Atlanta Georgia I was where I'm from where my family from where my sisters still if my family was I guess nominally Christian by that I would say that my mother believed in Christ believed in the Christian teachings that she knew them but she did not make any pretense of trying to live as a Christian she was a self-professed backslidden oneness Pentecostal actually my grandfather her father was a Pentecostal preacher at one point and I think he had developed some troubles with alcohol and maybe he back slit my dear grandmother who was a great lady she remained faithful to her faith for all of her life but but my mother she did not we I don't think we ever went to church that I can remember growing up we I can remember at times my mother would talk about God one of my fondest memories of my childhood is when my mother would take an old hymnal which we would have in the house and her and my two older sisters would sing sit and harmonize and I was saying with them what I could but we were saying softly and tenderly and the old rugged cross and that was beautiful and a great time uh I guess that was about all my religious upbringing I had but that does say a lot though that your mother would with grassy too though that's touching something of it yeah it was a part of her life that maybe she missed yeah she wanted to serve God she just wasn't yeah wasn't ready to do it at that point but she was of the one that's Pentecostal she was again by professionally but that's why I remember her sitting my only conversations I remember having with her about God maybe or two one is when she was sit down and talked to me and tell me that there was no Trinity that God was only one that there were not three persons who would make up God so that's one of my earliest childhood instructions in the faith she see then that the one God was Jesus yes has most oneness would that Jesus is the name of that one that one God Jesus is the name of the Father and he's the Jesus is the name of the son and Jesus is the name of the Holy Spirit so she would talk about that and then we also have talked to me about the age of accountability because I remember thinking that I was free to do what I wanted till I was 12 years old and then at 12 I was responsible for what I did so I had history enough which actually probably had a pretty happy childhood we weren't rich we were probably more on the poor side my father was a truck driver and we had a good family good home until about age 10 when all of a sudden out of the clear blue my mother and my father divorced or we're told us that they were divorcing and that was probably a big turning point in my childhood at least from a happiness standpoint and then when I turned 10 11 I was sort of a bad guy we had some bad neighbors move in next door and I learned to cuss and swear and do all those other things but when I turned 12 I had it in my mind that then I was God was gonna hold me accountable for what I did and I turned my life around on my own a part of my habits that I had developed when I was a kid so yeah so that was my childhood we were nominally Christian in that sense never went to church when you turned yourself around age 12 to church enter into your life no I was more just a deeds thing I knew that you know I better be good all right all right so I tried to be good but as you looked back you also kind of hinted at that the breakup of your family had a big impact on you yeah my life my life from there and I wasn't as simple wasn't as happy we moved a lot my my mother was involved with a number of different men seemed like she was obviously having relationship problems and we moved from one area of Atlanta to another and sometimes to New Orleans another time to Mississippi and other time to Florida just avoiding situations and I went to lots of different schools I went to at times five different schools during one school year so we moved around quite a bit in the midst of all of that I guess I was very open I think God's hand was always in my life going back to that time with and singing those Sims at home and somehow I'm feeling like I needed to turn around at age 12 so I was thinking it was open to it and we were living in an apartment project and Forest Park Georgia suburb just to the south of the city and we were living in this apartment place and one Saturday a group of people from the oneness Apostolic Church in town came out on their bus ministry rounds and they were trying to get people to come to their church on bus ministry and so I and my sister were outside playing and we decided to sound fun they had things like taking us to Burger King afterwards and buying us whoppers on the bus and all sorts of things they were wonderful people so we told them we'd go and they said come be ready for the green and white bus that comes by tomorrow morning we'll pick you up so we were ready and we saw the green white bus go by and they didn't stop and pick us up so I'm running after them and they let us on come to find out it wasn't the right Church it was the green and white bus from a church called Phillips Drive Baptist Church in Atlanta so we went to the Baptist Church rather than the Wanda's Pentecostal Church that day and I felt God's tug on my heart that Sunday and I went down to the altar and made some kind of commitment to God unfortunately or fortunately whichever the case may be I got home and my sister did not my little sister who went with me did not like the Baptist Church so she wanted to try the other church out and my mother made me go although I didn't want to back to the one miss Pentecostal church the next Sunday okay so you you started going to the to the oneness Pentecostal now there's a bit of a difference between the Baptist Church and the one that Pentecost I doubt at that age that you saw the differences but that's where your mom one goes she didn't go with you though no no and I'm not sure in retrospect maybe she knew it was the oneness Pentecostal Church and made me change to that because of her preferences and her beliefs yeah so we started going to the oneness Pentecostal church my sister soon dropped out didn't go at all so she was the reason I was made to go and then she didn't go any longer but I met a lot of people who loved God who were happy to be Christians who served God and worshipped and and committed their lives to God and so I fell in love as God with God as well in that environment and felt a felt a passion to serve and to live for God which eventually led me to decide that I should go into ministry oh no this one I've never been personally involved with the one as Pentecostals I've known that guests one that other than the Trinity most of the rest of their faith and doctrine that every Christian in general right yeah pretty much yeah I would say that the the the positives in my mind of oneness pentecostalism and I guess when I speak of oneness pentecostalism when I'm talking about the United Pentecostal Church it's the largest of the groups and that was the group I was with yeah there are some variations among the different groups but the positives of the oneness Pentecostals are number one is that they really do believe in in personal piety and Bible reading and memorizing scripture and praying and fasting and in really committing your heart and life to God so that that's that part of it is that yeah that taught me some very valuable lessons and I guess secondarily as they believed in just very joyful emotional exuberant worship which is also I think of a very good thing and those are the things that they share in common with basically Paula Pentecostalism it's not distinctive to the oneness folks now the things that are distinctive to the oneness folks I think are less praiseworthy from a Orthodox Christian perspective and they they have again their their theology of the Trinity is they deny the Trinity they teach basically it's called modalism although it's not a word they use very frequently but it's it's that God does not exist eternally in three persons but God exists eternally in one person if they would use that who has manifested himself in three ways throughout history as father and creation a son and redemption and as the Holy Spirit and emanation or sanctification or whatever but it's the same same person there are not three separate persons and the in the Godhead so that's of course a heretical teaching that was condemned long long ago centuries and centuries ago yeah when just maybe a audience might be wondering well when you get to Matthew 28 where it says baptize the name of the Father Son the Holy Spirit how would they explain that right they would say well the name of the father is Jesus because Jesus is the father and Jesus is the Holy Spirit and so the name of the Father is Jesus the name of the son is Jesus a name of the Holy Spirit it's Jesus okay so and then of course so the so then they're their baptism is in the name of Jesus they don't use the Trinitarian titles for baptism either based on this and so this was a revelation back in 1914 you know the the Pentecostalism as a whole developed in Azusa Street in the early 20th century and in 1914 are there abouts there were a group of men among the Pentecostals who received this revelation of Jesus name baptism and the oneness and then there was a split among Pentecostals at that time so that's distinctive to oneness pentecostalism the other thing about oneness pentecostals the UPC the United Pentecostal church in particular is that they are very strong on acts 2:38 as their baptismal not baptize their salvation formula there are three steps they would totally reject the ask Jesus into your heart type of approach to salvation it's repentance which sort of encompasses belief repentance baptism in the name of Jesus Christ and receiving the baptism of the holy ghost which for them is evidenced by speaking with other tongues so those things were essential to salvation and so they felt like none of the rest of the world the Christian world were really Christians they weren't saved because they rejected well one one one or more of each of those sure sure sure because it different views of baptism right right so right you know they're their salvation army that doesn't baptize so there would be different parts of that right he had to use the name Jesus and the baptism as well so any Christian who was not baptized in Jesus name was not authentically baptized all right so there you are as a young man contemplating ministry right did you know all we just talked about was that or is that what you learned later as you study for ministry but well I understood the oneness faith okay I didn't understand all that yeah okay what dr. berry carry is our guest tonight okay so you'reyou're being drawn to ministry sure so I decided I wanted to go to Bible College and I went to Bible College in Saint Paul Minnesota apostolic Bible Institute very fine people there a couple of men teachers who influenced my life greatly it was a Bible College that did not really encourage independent thinking or thinking deeply about some of the doctrines which ones hostels taught it was more more teaching you exactly what oneness Pentecostals believed and how to defend that I remember what against everybody pretty much you know we're the true church and you know we've got we've got the truth and we need to get people to know the truth so I'm assuming I don't my detract but Catholics you weren't very friendly the Catholic no no Catholicism I mean the Catholics definitely were not Christian IRA can remember as a child and when I was in the church you know we would see these tracks we'd never hand them out where you know that the Pope is the Antichrist and the Catholic Church is the great of Babylon and and all of these things so we did not think very highly of it was strange and the second thing how did you explain the fact that 2,000 years later I mean where was this teaching during all that time yeah very interesting and remember SG Norris who had founded Apostolic Bible Institute and was a great man one of the things he taught us he may just write it in the front page of our Bibles sort of our to remember we had a little teaching session he called seven steps back to Pentecost and so we would draw this map where you'd be up here on the level that was the early church Pentecost and then there was a precipitous drop and then there were these little stair steps getting back to Pentecost and so throughout the Reformation people would come closer and closer to approximating what the earlier church taught culminating of course when Jesus named baptism was revealed in 1914 that was finally the restoration of the of the early church so so to them the church just went apostate basically after the Apostles died there wasn't better relief he went off the rails quickly pretty Mia they would teach that there were still true believers present throughout all of history but they were small groups persecuted groups and I guess the argument would be that the reason they were able to survive with not just because they were strong but because the Holy Spirit Jesus kept it alive reserving reserving exactly a remnant okay so you're at seminary yes so we're there one of the most important things that happened when I was at in Bible College was I met my beautiful wife Cindy who has now we've got three children all older and gone and a first grandchild recently she's been my lifelong companion through all the changes that have inspired when she married me after our Bible college education was over she assumed she would be a oneness Pentecostal so she was well then yeah she's actually fourth generation oneness Pentecostal all faithful to that tradition well still are and so it's been a more of a challenge for her than it has be been for me to make this journey yeah Wow fourth generation that takes her right back to the beginning of the movement though yeah pretty much family yeah yeah her family yeah okay yep so yes so we graduated from Bible College and and I got married in October after that last year and in November we moved to superior Wisconsin where I was a an assistant / youth mat pastor and a oneness Pentecostal Church there for about three years I didn't wanted to get back south so we went back to Georgia and I was a principal in a Christian school and also a youth pastor there probably the worst most difficult year of our marriage was that year in Georgia when we had went back the other distinctive of the yuccas is you're at a Christian school which is the really Abbess taluk not not really it was a it was the other distinctive of the United Pentecostal Church is a strong emphasis on holiness and by holiness we don't necessarily mean the thing that we mean when we say holiness - an on oneness Pentecostal it's it's a strict adherence to external standards such as dress women are not to wear anything but dresses and most of those are most most of the places they'd say they need be below the knee sleeves below the elbow men cannot wear shorts they have to wear long pants men aren't hard to keep their hair cut short women are to never cut the hair even the trim it remove it off there's a very distinctive I heard very very long hair sometimes placed up on the head yeah no no television in the home you know watching television area so they're very strong in that respect as well so you have a distinctive so yeah so we so it says it that's part of the problem we were in Georgia because of this emphasis on holiness there is a tendency among some to be very legalistic be very judgmental and also to be very hypocritical these people are good people who love God but it's it's a system where there's an emphasis on external standards like that where where you know you just yeah it's easy to judge and start picking apart other people's life I yeah I got called into the pastor's office because I was discussing a baseball game after church and and in the and the I also it was and that was the kind of thing that made it very difficult and ended up leaving after a year very sad I can't imagine living in Georgia not being go to wear shorts once in a while yeah I know well for most of my adult life I played tennis a lot and I'd play in tournaments and I was out there in 90 plus degree heat and in long sweatpants and people would come up don't you say why are you wearing oh it's not bad you know I just don't know I was used to it so I had to do it so I had no other choice that was just what I did so yes so we were there in Georgia didn't go very well we were looking to get out and so we moved to Pennsylvania at that point where we spent most of my adult ministry we took a very small home missions Church in a place called Grampian Pennsylvania outside of Clearfield and d-boy and we spent three years there and then we moved to Berwick our Burak as the locals say Burak Pennsylvania which is up in northeastern Pennsylvania and I was the senior pastor of a church there for a number of years as well and that's when the wheels started to fall off the oneness pentecostalism we were in we were in Burak of that how do we start here what's it well in 92 93 sometime in that range there was this this resolution controversy among the United Pentecostal church where there was an effort to get rid of the compromisers and the false prophets false teachers in the church and so there was an affirmation that was voted on at the General Conference saying that you had to affirm that you would preach teach practice believe and embrace the the holiness standard in particular and I had no trouble preaching and teaching it and that much trouble practicing and I really did try to live according to the standards the best I could but when they asked me to believe and embrace it there were some of those things I didn't believe were really necessary for salvation there are a group of people they lost a lot of a lot of folks hunter laminate but there lost a lot in Pennsylvania and left over that subsequently I find out I've read a book called Christianity without the cross which was written by a former oneness pentecostals and apparently there was this wasn't about the holiness standards it was about the essentiality of acts 2:38 for salvation supposedly back in the 40s when there was a merger of two Pentecostal bodies the PCI and the PA JC there were differences on whether or not baptism and the infilling of the Holy Spirit were essential for salvation and these two currents existed uneasily I guess all the way up until that time and so there was an effort to to get rid of some folks who didn't believe like majority believed and so at that point I felt I couldn't sign that resolution and I left the United Pentecostal Church I was a youth minute I was the youth president for the state of Pennsylvania I had been involved in the UPC for a while but I couldn't I couldn't do it that's a tough standard because we struggled on all of a struggle inside with beliefs you know we accept them it's not that we're being hypocritical about a book just that the you know like that the prayer in Scripture you know I believe how my unbelief yeah I mean the reality of that so that's what you were being caught on doing it's the reality what's going on here yeah you can you can hide it from the pulpit right but doesn't mean you're being hypocritical about it's just you you can recognize the Lord I don't understand it completely yet I'm on a journey you try your best to live as you're told you need to live or should live I know okay all right so there you are I mean did you have to just turned in the church key the neck and one day you're out doing whatever well shortly before I resigned as a pastor Mike gave turned in my ordination my license with the UPC I had merged our UPC church with a charismatic Church in town with the blessings of the board of the Pennsylvania State you know United Pentecostal church oneness Pentecostals charismatics didn't go very well so I continued to Pastor for I don't know maybe a year after I left the unit in a coastal church and when the attempted merger trying to bring these two very different congregations together fell apart at that point I had a I was at a crossroads and had to decide what I was going to do and at that point I decided that for a number of different reasons doctrinally personal financial I felt that I needed to do something different so at that point I decided to just quit pastoring go back to school and go into medicine Wow something had been on your mind all along maybe a little sure something I thought about since you know getting out of high school huh so it was something that was always there but never really thought I would ever pursue it again until that point I was I was about 34 or 35 at that time okay all right so medical school I mean it's quite demanding that when your life got family I had to go back and redo my undergraduate first because the tribal college I went to is unaccredited so none of those credits helped me it also went to Wilkes University which is not far from Berk and did my undergraduate degree and I loved it because another thing about Pentecostalism in general but also you know Pentecostal church is that they're very anti intellectual they don't want you to think don't want you to question beliefs don't want you to study because there's a risk that you might be drawn away from the the one true church if you do that so it's very Anton so to be able to to learn in a study history and real iterator one of the biggest books that had an impact on my left at that time was the narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass the slave who really that the thesis of the book and the way they would keep slaves slaves is by not allowing them to think not allowing them to learn to read because if they learned to read they'll learn to think and once they learn to think then they will realize their position their condition and so I sort of viewed my life of course it's nothing like I never experienced anything like slavery however I felt like I was learning to think and I was I was seeing light and freedom that I'd never seen before so it was a wonderful thing you know I've met and interviewed others from backgrounds like that where on the one hand you're awakened to the freedom of this but there's still that knowing voice inside that makes you wonder are you struggling with that because you've been one it's Pentecostal for a long long time are you being drawn away are you being yeah you do worry about that and some people worry about that probably more than I did okay some people eyes are very it's very difficult to leave oneness pentecostalism because you're taught to fear you know you don't want dis compromise you don't want to be drawn away from the truth the devils and so you fear ever listening to anything that's we find that today when we try to talk to other oneness pentecostals about the differences in what we believe now and they you they really don't want to hear or listen to it says if they're you know they don't want to give any opportunity for anything that would cause them to you were given a grace then absolutely yeah looking back that help that affirmation controversy was was God allowing me to be Catholic today even well yeah so undergraduate and then medical schools a long time yeah so I hung custom window treatments draperies in New Jersey for the most part while I was learning while I was an undergraduate and the first bit of med school as well and then I went to medical school at Penn State University College of Medicine in Hershey Pennsylvania a great place to have I had three kids at that time so a great place to be in school and have kids a wonderful city and while I was there well actually back when I was at Wilks sort of in turning from oneness pentecostalism one of the first books that impacted me was JP Moreland wrote a book he's a well-known philosopher apologist among the clausten circles wrote a book I love the Lord your God with all your mind and I read this and it gave me freedom this is you know all Christians are allowed to actually think actually said not that you're allowed us a good thing to use your mind your intellect to serve God to study so that was a powerful thing and then when I was in medical school I think I was studying for exams I just I must have needed a break I was looking through the bookshelves and all of a sudden I ran across a book in the medical school library by CS Lewis called miracles so that was my introduction to CS Lewis it wasn't mere christianity it wasn't the Chronicles of Narnia it was miracles and I read that book and basically it's a book in refutation of naturalism and the materialistic world view that the supernet we have good reason to believe that there's supernatural that there's a God that miracles are possible so that blew my mind that there were these great intellectual thinking Christians out there and so that sort of led me in toward a love of Christian apologetics at that point as well which was a field I was totally unaware existed yeah in the in your background that wouldn't have been thought necessary or even desirable no dangerous dangerous yeah all right well let's pause there dr. Kerry and we'll come back in just a moment come back a little bit and hear about this doctor and how he discovered even more of the fullness right [Music] [Music] [Music] welcome back to the journey home I'm your host Marcus Grodi our guest is dr. Barry Carey and we've interrupted you and paused you in the middle of you're in medical school and your readings yes Lewis yes and other apologetics you're discovering the beauty of apologetics and it still amazes me that you've come from an anti intellectualism background almost a fear of an election becoming a doctor at that State University I mean that in itself is an amazing work of God's grace yeah I was like I was set free again it was like that's that being that slave who was now free to think and I loved it I've I could have been a full-time student for the rest of my life basically I felt and probably still feel that way so you're supporting yourself by hanging draperies and stuff but we're still going to oneness pentecostals on the weekend so yeah so good question after we left the after I resigned from pastoring I spent basically I think 20 years I would describe it sort of wandering in the wilderness we attended various churches never because we thought that was the church but just because it was a safe place my faith in God never wavered think think the good Lord that was never a question the the truth of Christianity never never was a question in my mind but I really didn't have have any clue how to figure out whether one church was better than another so we thought he was with you in this journey yes Cindy as well again it was much more all of this that was easier on me was much more difficult for her because of her family yeah so we first started attending a little an assembly actually first we start attending a fellow oneness Pentecostal gentleman who also left the UPC when I did he had a church about 50 miles away we would drive there and it in that church for a while then we started attending a local Assemblies of God Church and in Berwick we were told we couldn't really do anything in the church because I wouldn't sign the Trinity affirmation and so we weren't fit to be in leadership of any kind which was okay and we understood that but at that time I could not I still was very strongly a oneness I never questioned the modalism didn't question the acts 2:38 stuff very much the holiness stuff got my attention earlier so we went to the heads and we've got for a while and then when I went to medical school we attended a wonderful church called the Hershey free evangelical church and great preaching great Christians there and I guess in between that also we started we went to a charismatic church for a while in Harrisburg which is not far from Hershey and that was not a good thing either because I guess I was on my way out of Pentecostalism and the kind of charismatic worship that was practiced there I thought was was over the top the prophecies and the things that would go on I didn't think they were really of God so I had I had trouble there but Hershey free was great we moved to Orlando Florida where I did residency we I would always been looking to get back to the south for a long time and that was my chance to get south so we went to did my residency in emergency medicine and in Orlando when we were there we attended primarily at a megachurch they're called Northland Church distributed again a very nice place so the worship we sort of gravitated toward larger churches because it was sort of place we could just hide I could I could worship God and just sort of just sort of hide and so we we would hide there all of my wife would get involved much more than I wish she taught Sunday School and at Northland and I think she got involved in some of the other churches much more than I did as well part of that was I had a pretty low full load on my hand with medicine and and working as well so yes we went from church to church after I finished my residency in Orlando we moved to Lakeland Florida a little bit further south where I practiced medicine full-time for about 12 years perhaps and when we moved to Lakeland we ended up going to a church of the Nazarene again not because I was convinced that the Church of the Nazarene was any better than any other Church but it was a local it was about a mile from our house our daughter went to Vacation Bible School during the summer we liked it and we went and again it was a wonderful church I have nothing negative to say about it we we we felt very comfortable there for a while this love of Christian apologetics that I had did not die and actually while I was an emergency physician in Lakeland I rien rolled and I went to I took classes at Biola University out in California again JP Moreland teaches there William Lane Craig a lot of great Protestant Christian apologists teach there I got my master's degree in Christian apologetics while I was at so I loved I love Christian apologetics my son and I actually ran a website for awhile called with all your mind where we would talk about apologetic issues and so that's where it was I started teaching a apologetics class in my home that we kept going for several years mainly folks from the Nazarene Church would come out and we would have Christian apologetics classes there for a while in in your case apologetics meetings the reality of God the reality of Christ yeah it was a very mere christianity right apologetics yeah so we so we didn't defend any distinctive any particular church we talked about those things you know about Calvinism versus Arminianism we but we it was very very mere Christian so so we're sort of starting to get where I'm gonna turn it toward Catholicism at this point through my studies at Biola of course we take church history we learn about more than just actually most Protestants learn about church history back through the Reformation at least four or five hundred years as the oneness pentecostals accenture of church history dating back to the beginning of the 20th century so a lot of that was brand new to me of course I started reading the Church Fathers as so many people who end up Catholic do it's a very dangerous thing if you don't want to become Catholic to read the church father so I started reading those and I began it became aware some there were some pretty awesome men pretty smart men who lived for centuries who weren't Protestant they embraced a faith that was foreign to anything I had ever experienced and so I became aware of that and then maybe the thing more than anything that made me softened my heart toward Catholicism as well was now that I was a physician I had a little bit of resources to do some traveling so my wife and I started traveling to Europe our first trip was to Italy and we started visiting these beautiful churches every village has a beautiful church but there are some more beautiful than others and when we would go to the Duomo in Florence and the Duomo in Milan and we would go to Saint Peters and San Marco and Venice and we were able to go to the highest Sofia and and Istanbul and you go to these great chinch of churches and France you know Notre Dame and San Chapelle you know you walk into San Chapelle and the beauty of the light that floods through those almost walls of solid stained glass is just amazing and and I thought this is this would be wonderful you know this this church that produced this kind of beauty you know it was amazing and so that and then we would visit museums I would go to the U my first major art museum went to was you feat C and Florence and to see these great works of art of course the first 1500 years other than ancient Greece and Rome of art is Catholic art and so I would meet these wonderful painters who painted these beautiful pictures and you know what I would became interested in music and I would learn about all these composers who compose these beautiful beautiful pieces who were Catholic and just the beauty of the Catholic Church overwhelmed me and it may mean although I did not even had all entertained the thought of becoming Catholic and made me want to be Catholic so beauty beauty overwhelmed my senses and prepared me so yeah so we I loved everything about it I loved all of that but I certainly wasn't ready yet still for me Catholicism was something else it's a grace because I could imagine a every fundamentalist one is Pentecostal you know every moment by moment every time they saw that there'd be a negative no negative no no where the rejection of rejection rejection of rejection never allowing themselves to you can be open to the beauty that yeah grace was awaking you to be able to see sure the beauty of that sure I mean what a gift that was absolutely yeah it was grace and this was a long process I mean this was maybe 10 15 years after we left oneness pentecostalism and and so my first step out of oneness pentecostals a slow process where I began first of all I thought well I can see where the oneness folks are coming from I can see that there's scriptural authority for the Trinity so I think probably you know you can see it either way it's not real clear and I think the Trinitarians and the oneness they're all okay and so that was the sort of that first stage that I was at and it wasn't actually until I studied Christian apologetics at Biola i sat in a like a 16 hour class over two days with Fred Sanders who is a well-known Trinitarian scholar who taught us about the Trinity for two days straight and it's like the lights clicked he's like I realized that you know I I see it clearly and and this is this is it's very hard as the oneness Pentecostal you're taught a certain thing you're taught to interpret scripture through that particular lens and it's so hard to see it any other way than that and and they have their answers you know that you that you learn to defend yourself from any intrusive thoughts from the opposition that you just you just throw that up but finally I was able to to understand the Trinity you know and so that was the big step which leaves you in a little disconcerting position because you come from a position where you you've you have a set arsenal of answers for every one of them the Trinitarian position you have your answers but it's still mystery right I mean you still you have to accept the reality of the midst of the mystery as one God but there's three persons and it's it's still a mystery because tomorrow you in president with perspective we really can't fully understand it but we accept it on the authority of our Lord as well as the church in the mysteries beautiful and again most heresies developed because they don't they they feel uncomfortable with the mystery so they tried to make it black and white and clear and and so doing they distort what the Scriptures teach because sometimes the scriptures can't be fit into that little nugget of understanding so so there by Allah open your heart to that yes definitely when I first went about a lot couldn't say I was Trinitarian when I left my hola can say that I was and so that was I was very good so through my studies and through our travels I began to think that there's got to be some some church that is more authentic than other churches and about the same time that I was dealing with this my son was dealing with this my son is now a philosopher teaches SCN a university and upstate New York but we did the Christian apologetics things together and about the same time I was dealing with these issues of what's you know what church should I be a part of up to this time I just sort of floated along at any church but you come to a point where you've got to say you know it's there one church more than the other and the first thing I guess that I came to realize was was to think about well it became apparent to me that the church has always worship worshipped according to a liturgy I through my studies the liturgy became important to me an apostolic succession became important to me that it became obvious that there was a group of early apostles who passed on the faith to their followers who they ordained to be ministers and bishops and that was passed down so at one point I decided I need to hook up with a liturgical church and so our two choices were a Presbyterian Church in town which was very strong and Christian apologetics and the Anglican Church in town the Episcopal Church I said one time saying I was Episcopal because of the negative connotations they don't let Episcopalian ISM so I call myself anglich and it was an Episcopal Church and we we attended both and you know the I felt that the Anglican Church was a more close approximation to the early church and so we be conserving the liturgical preserving the liturgy the apostolic secession which which Presbyterians don't claim Anglicans of course claim apostolic succession and-and-and the liturgy and the liturgy was beautiful the church that we went to was very I would say they're more on the high church and of Anglicanism although they had a very Protestant flair they had evangelical I say that an evangelical emphasis on on personal Bible reading the things that we loved about evangelicalism was present in that sort of High Church Anglican worship so we learned to love the liturgy we read about this time Thomas Howard's book evangelical is not enough yeah which was very influential and helped us to love the liturgy even more eye-opening as to what the liturgy consists of and so we worship there at All Saints for a number of years and about the time I became Anglican my son became Orthodox so he had reached the same conclusions I had and he rather than taking historical church light like I did with anglicanism he had he decided between Catholicism and orthodoxy and he felt orthodoxy was the the true profession of the faith he needed to join so he was baptized Orthodox I think in 2013 okay so we worshipped in the church there I was able to teach classes on the history of Christian art which I loved and which again reinforced my love for for the great Catholic artists of throughout the centuries history of Christian music which I was able to teach as well class on Christian apologetics and so I was able to do those things which all of that was drawing me closer to the Catholic faith as well so were you drawn by your son's move in his direction at all when I when I finally decided to make the move I had to decide between Catholic or Orthodox now that was still a little bit down the once I once I decided to make that move I had to decide between the two um I still hadn't quite made that mood yet move yet but I was I was getting there the moral instability and theological instability of the Episcopal Church was troublesome to me it was obviously they were becoming more and more liberal and from moral issues and also on theological issues I mean you could be an atheist in an Episcopal minister so although our church was sort of an oasis in the middle of all of that it was a very rich conservative Anglican Church but you know who's to say that wouldn't change someday as well so so so we were there and eventually I realized that I wasn't really worshiping in the full expression of Christ's Church that this was this was not the church Christ founded and so then again I then I came to that stand point where I had to decide whether it's going to be Orthodox or or Catholic and I weighed this for some time maybe a year or two and the things that made me decide Catholicism was the way number one is I'm a westerner and the Catholic Church is the Western expression of the original church so it's my home of course being an Anglican again our Anglican liturgy was almost identical to what I experienced these days and the Catholic churches and then I felt that the unity of the Catholic Church was even more pronounced in the unity of the Orthodox Church and orthodox churches are divided into you know a Serbian group and an Ethiopian group and Russian group and all of this and and so that bothered me a little bit ultimately I decided to become Catholic and that was brought about by a number of things as well actually the journey home came in sort of after I had made the decision help my wife a lot more than I did because I died sort of made the decision but but reaffirming my decision Holly Ordway who has been on this program yes yes she was my classmate at Biola for a while okay and so I I followed her journey with earnestness from Anglicanism to Catholicism Francis Beckwith who's been here as well he was the president of the evangelical theological Society when I was heavy into philosophy and apologetics and theology and I would go to the annual meetings he became Catholic of course and so these conversion stories had their influence on my life Deacon Rick who's a deacon at our church who actually sort of hooked us together here he was very friendly to the cat he's not Catholic I'm not sure quite why but he loves Catholicism and he would make statements in the church in our classes he taught our confirmation class in the Anglican Church about how that you know it's a shame the Reformation so fast forwarding a little bit to get to when we actually became Catholic at some point we we sold our home we bought a sailboat I got tired of the rat race and the high expenses of living we lived on a sailboat for five years sailed around the Caribbean during this time I was wrestling with those Catholic stuff now pretty much already decided I want to be Catholic but we were selling on a sailboat were in a local church so how was I going to do that eventually we sold the sailboat bought an RV which were actually living on right now so we don't live in a home we're still homeless and we were traveling through New Orleans and when we were in New Orleans around October of last year I attended st. Patrick's Church in New Orleans a wonderful church and I decided to attend the high Latin sung Mass and I walk into the church and of course the chanting is beautiful the choir is beautiful the church is beautiful and the church begins with the priest comes out with this with sprinkling and they start singing Latin a spare just may sprinkle me Laveau bees may watch me and Miserere may have mercy on me and just all of a sudden the floodgates open I almost want to cry right now the tears just began to flow is as if God Himself was there you know sprinkling me and cleansing me and washing away my sins and so I'm at that point you know I'd already pretty much decided but I didn't have the opportunity I said you know I got to do this my wife wasn't with me she had flown back to Ohio so after church I went up instead the author hoping someone come up and talk to me and unfortunately one of the guys in the church did and I said so how does one go about becoming Catholic around here and now this was a problem because we were still traveling full-time and he hooked me up with Robert Ramirez Bobby Ramirez who was doing the RCIA and he said well I'll let you do it from a distance and so he sent us DVDs of the RCIA we began to read Peter Criss Book Catholic Christianity which is a great companion exposition of the Catechism and my wife and I together studied and we were just received into the church three months ago now we're very new Catholics there in st. Patrick's we flew back into st. Patrick's and and we're baptized and we're confirmed and I have begun our our Catholic walk and still learning like welcome home I mean that's on cue but I could and I can think of dozens of of radically different things that you now accept and believe as a Catholic than you would have as well as a one as Pentecostal thing where do we begin because even the sacraments Ross in general right I mean yeah it was a long process it didn't happen overnight especially with the sacraments for me the thing that made me get beautii drew me in the thing that made me decide I must be Catholic number one is the real presence it became obvious to me I think it's obvious to anyone it should be obvious to anyone that this was what the church believed from the very beginning that this is the body and blood of Christ and so I had to be in a church that that taught and believed that I was Catholic Orthodox so that's what drew me in and then when I then that the thing that made me absolutely decide was when I realized that the church is the deposit and store of the truth it's not the Scriptures it's the church and once I realized the church had the authority I had no choice but to join that church no matter what they taught pretty much and once you make that like for example of doctrines like purgatory which was it's a big thing for most Protestants to me purgatory was not explicitly non scriptural and so if the church taught it it's good enough for me I believe it well we've got first Corinthians 3 where talks about wood hay and stubble or golden but sure there's a perching going on there yet he saved through it meat so at least there's a foundation for reality exactly now I see that there is ripped or support but at that point I wasn't aware of all that and I thought well and of course es lewis' i believed it edward elgar I had seen his - teaching the history of Christian music class I'd come across his work called the dream of Doron Tia's work which is about a journey of life after death through purgatory which also opened my heart to it so yeah so I did all that my wife again had a few more obstacles to overcome than I did and she she has thankfully followed me all along the way we would read together we would read Peter Kreeft book together we did our cie together and she has overcome all those obstacles you know the Mary and the Fergus there are ladies praying to Saints sure you know and there although we don't have time to go in or there there are great reasons to believe all those things yeah or even the authority of a man over there and a big seed in Rome yeah I mean that would have been a tough one for for y'all coming from that background sure it would be again which is part of the part of the Orthodox Catholic struggler me at that time I wasn't fully convinced of the of Peter being the Pope and having authority over the church but again you know your your story makes me think about something I never really thought about this way before because a lot of our non Catholic Christian brothers and sisters believe at some point the church was fine and then it it took off it went south right a lot of them say after Constantine or later but if you're at all aware of the early church fathers and their acceptance of the real presence in the Eucharist and the authority of bishops priests then that's why you have to almost say immediately before any of these things happened or you have to examine those yeah we Church Fathers yeah exactly and I guess the oneness folks have worded all that by just saying immediately it dropped off you know which is you know Jesus did a pretty lousy job if that's the case you know he came to establish this church and all of a sudden it was reduced to just double yeah and where's the Holy Spirit and and all of that but so I've got to ask you know there are traveling around with with boats and caravans I mean talk about that life living it out and your Christian faith when you're really more of a nomad than the rest of us are used to it's difficult we still miss the community of being in a local church and I long for that and one of these days we'll be doing that no I can't wait till that happens but we also love the freedom and the closeness to nature we have especially on the sailboat throughout that time although we weren't hooked in with the congregation we would always unless it was physically impossible to go to church we'd go to church we'd find a church to worship in and over the last little while was always a Catholic Church and our travels and our r.v we were thankfully thank God were able to attend Mass every week and we did that before we became Catholic so we would we would find place and we would have personal devotions at home as well but yeah we miss that community so there's a trade-off for sure but then we love being with God and creation and seeing the great world God's made well and I that's a very important part of our Catholic tradition too is recognizing the as Bonaventure would say the vestiges of God and creation recognizing when you see the wind blowing yeah that's God I mean that he his church you know I mean in in the call of a bird or in all aspects of nature were seeing that the joy of his own artwork sure is withdrawing you to the church it was the beauty of that are the sunsets the Dolphins that play up up beside your your boat yeah oh well dr. Carrie thank you for joining us on the journey hall thank you so very much and pleasure being here and welcome home you and Cindy it's great we love it thank you for your witness and and thank you for watching this episode of the journey home you know the I mean it I'm interested about the doctor carries in Cindy's nomadism because there's a call of that in our life to be detached to be detached from though this world and to be investing in the next I mean that's really what our call is all right my guess is we had more time we could talk more about that aspect of what it really means to be a Catholic which is living the simplicity of our Lord Jesus Christ god bless you see you next [Music]

Channel: EWTN

Views: 18,341

Rating: 4.6747966 out of 5

Keywords: ytsync-en, jht, jht01622

Id: eTQQjZABd-I

Length: 56min 10sec (3370 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 13 2018