Journey Home - Former United Methodist Minister - Marcus Grodi with Joshua Johnson - 04-25-2011

good evening and welcome to the journey home my name is Marcus Grodi your host for this program every week EWTN gives me this privilege of introducing to you men and women who because of their their love for Jesus Christ the working of the Holy Spirit and their hearts find themselves drawn to the Catholic Church and often that's the last place they probably thought they would end up and that's probably true for our guest this evening Joshua Johnson former United Methodist minister Joshua welcome to the journey home it's good to see you again you and I've met before when we had a retreat once of clergy converts trying to figure out what we're gonna do now that we're Catholic right I mean yes and I had a wife that was about seven or eight months pregnant with twins so we were really that's right I mean it's a big decision that you make and I think especially it be interesting to talk about to our audience later is this there is an interesting parallel between the United Methodist understanding of ordination and care for the clergy and their families it's it's similar to the Catholic understanding ordination to a certain extent and different though than other protestant churches and this might be a good part point to talk about later because you get yourself thinking when you're on your way to follow the call of God to become a minister you also get thinking well god is going to be taking care of myself my family and all and then when the wrench of conversion to the Catholic Church is thrown into the mix it can really undercut a lot of presumptions about the future absolutely and especially because when you are becoming Catholic a lot of Methodists you know they go to seminary first and then they wait to have kids you become Catholic there's this openness to life thing and at the same time that there's not this guaranteed employment that you have in the Methodist Church so yeah and that's inter secular I think there'll be people in the audience what do you mean guaranteed employment almost so you've got 500,000 whoa that's exactly that's not exactly the case and we'll talk about that but Josh let's let's take a step back okay and for our audience and give them a bit of a glimpse on your on the beginning of your spiritual journey sure sure right I was not raised United Methodist fact never really even knew what a Methodist was growing up I was raised in an evangelical protestant household we attended a Independent Baptist Church and growing up I was not baptized as a youngster I was I was dedicated the little church in Mississippi and grew up in a very wonderful Bible believing Church a lot of serious Christians loved Jesus very much my parents were very very dedicated to the church and they introduced me to our Lord at a very young age I had a conversion experience when I was relatively young I believe I was about five years old when my my mother would ask me if I wanted to ask Jesus into my heart and get saved and nice and now five more days it was it was just the number back then five years old five five more days and you know I had not been taking it seriously but then one evening I did start to think about that I would like this this gift of eternal life in my heart right now and so I went to my parents and went into their bed and we prayed the prayer of sinner's prayer and accepted Jesus into my heart and there really was some kind of conversion then I I don't remember much about it when my parents tell me that that there was a change in my life and in looking back even of that young childhood I do remember the joy of Jesus in my heart I believe aged seven and I was baptized in order to get baptized I had to go before the Deacons at the church and tell them my testimony and and I guess it was pretty convincing because they allowed me to be baptized at age seven they were very they would accept people that young but they wanted to really make sure that it was a personal decision there is no infant baptism so or no baptism unless somebody really knew what they were doing and so I was baptized and looking back that was I didn't you know the Lord he does so many things for us when we don't even know and don't even expect it sure and at that that moment of baptism the Lord conferred on me so many graces that I only now beginning to discover and well that would have been to a certain extent different though than the theology of that Baptist Church right I didn't know at the time that our Lord was incorporating me into his body I didn't know that he was making it was putting a seal on my heart and I wouldn't know for years to come right from that from the BAP Independent Baptist perspective that was mainly a public testimony testimony a sign a public sign of your faith in Jesus Christ right and in fact it was a very intimidating one for many people because in our particular church you had to actually get up in front of the congregation and tell them how you came to know our Lord and I'm sure for many people that was intimidating I happened to have the gift of gab and didn't mind that so much so you know they're even there were seeds to call to preaching in ministry and it was very sincere is a very beautiful moment and particularly because I have a still to this day of a great deal of respect for the pastor who baptized me he still laugh at that church and my life from then I was was very joyous in Jesus I did love him very much I I threw that church was introduced to Scripture we had a wonderful Wednesday night program where we would memorize verses every week and earn rewards kind of like awana and I grew up you know loving Jesus and I was introduced to song I loved to sing I was introduced to serious teaching we used to go to church Sunday morning Sunday night Wednesday night and I remember some Sunday nights you know as we have to go to church again but our our pastor was such a wonderful teacher that I remember always being glad that I went afterwards even if I came there not wanting to go cuz I might have been a football game on or something I wanted to see so I was introduced to some you know - taking scripture very seriously - good at yeah they call it expository preaching and really opening up the word it was introduced to a very good moral system and the fact that that they really believed there was a right and a wrong that that truth isn't just whatever you make it up to be it there is a truth out there and that's stuck with me throughout throughout my life and there was a great love for Jesus Christ many people were were changed through through the ministry of that church and so I was wondering in that time period was your pastors preaching and teaching primarily focused on the gospel and Jesus or was there also a comparative sense with the other non Baptist churches out there not just Protestant but Catholic well the the comparison between our theology and those of other churches meant came mainly in testimony time or because you know within the Protestant world there very there are some conversions from complete unbelief to belief but many of them are I was Lutheran and now I found something then yeah the truth you know or and there was some Catholics too and and we had moved from Mississippi to Pennsylvania when I was very young and in that part of Pennsylvania there weren't many Catholics unlike a lot of parts of Pennsylvania was mostly Lutheran your town was either Lutheran or Congregationalist and then there's a lot of evangelical Protestants that came out of that in the last few decades but the the preaching he it was very much in times is very focused on studying the end times and there was many different parts of the Bible that were studied it's hard to remember all of it because you know it's so young but there was not it was not a very venomous anti-catholicism that was preached by our pastor when I remember hearing about the Catholic Church it was more from missionaries that would come in you know like to Mexico hi yeah I remember seeing a slide of a shrine there where we were told that people pay money to get their relatives out of out of purgatory and those kind of things of course now I know what that's all about misrepresent is misrepresented in all sincerity of the course and but I actually did not even grow up knowing any Catholics there we did share a bus with the Catholic school the Protestant school that I went to and that was the only exposure I had and it wasn't exactly the best exposure so which sat in the back of the bus there's a Catholic Saturday so they I didn't know any Catholics growing up really so it's interesting my family history my my grandparents grew up Lutheran and became Baptist so that was probably the closest thing I knew to to the Catholic Church all right so you had her high school then on fire for Jesus not exactly as I as I grew up I that young love I had for Jesus kind of slowly dissipated just out of that peer pressure went to a Christian school very good academic thing there are lots of good people there but it wasn't cool to to be on fire for Jesus and there are other things that were cool so you know middle school God became less important friends became the most important thing and then as I reached high school that I really started to have this really wanting some recognition some of my I have ego started coming out and I also became very ambitious as a as a high school student got involved in politics and not too many teenagers get involved in politics so I was kind of a rarity and was able to meet a lot of people really quick and have a great deal of success really and in the political world for a good cause but I'm not sure my motives were all that pure you know always pro-life candidates but being around politicians and that's what I thought I wanted to do for the rest of my life was to go into politics so after the 2000 presidential campaign which I participated in I got a really good job working in direct mail and also was accepted and got a scholarship to Liberty University in Lynchburg Virginia and my parents wanted me to go there and it was it was a great price yeah you might want to explain the audience that for to some people they would know Liberty I had a political arm right I mean very much yes very much it was really fit very well with what I was doing at the time it was very politically conservative and across the board pro-life was only one part of the pie for them and it was very very the late dr. Jerry fall was very outspoken a lot of II it was one of those guys that you either really liked or you really didn't like and it was a great opportunity for me I went for a degree in government and before I finished got an offer to come work in Washington to do some political fundraising and I took it and I got a you know kind of was very career-focused how quickly can I climb to the top of this ladder now back at liberty of maybe rewind a little bit and tell you more about my spiritual journey at that point when I first got to Liberty the it was just overwhelming it was very big and there is so many students there and it was one of those colleges everybody goes to to get married so it was very exciting in that respect to in my second semester I met now who now is my wife my wife of six years and but spiritually when when I got there the I had been mentored in a sense through some leadership conferences I was involved in as a teenager by a guy who was a lawyer who kind of left practicing law to be a youth minister and he happened to be United Methodist he had been talking to me about Methodism and as I as I had grown into high school the some of some of the beliefs of the church too that grown up and I found I started questioning them and I wasn't getting intellectually satisfied with the answers anything particular there were several things I'm one was the music the church our church believed that you you should not listen to contemporary Christian music or incorporate that into your worship you should only use the hymns and it would be a certain select group of hymns not just hymns in general right but you know what that came an understanding of sacred music which interestingly I've come to see that there was some elements of truth and what they were teaching there about the difference between sacred music and secular but the view is more that only this kind of music and you can't enjoy that other kind too so that was one of the things as a teenager you really want praise and worship music and they're telling you know you know I can't use good can't use drums and things like that so when I went to Liberty it was like concert style worship I mean it was exciting and everybody was emotional and that was great at first but after a few months I started like thinking in what way is there's got to be something more here I noticed that some kids were leaving for the preaching they would come for the praise and worship and they leave for it in the even the preaching wasn't what I was used to it just wasn't as deep it was a little bit more shallow I guess you could say if they had different speakers right but it just wasn't I knew there was something deeper and I've been introduced to Methodism the ideas some of the ideas that they had about salvation when I was a young person I struggled with knowing if I was saved or not because it was always preached about and it was preached that you would know if you had Jesus in your heart and I had many doubts sometimes and so I pray the prayer for salvation every night before I went to bed out of fear that I'd go to hell and when I was introduced in this idea of Methodism that although there is an initial conversion your heart is strangely warmed that this is an ongoing process of conversion of holiness and I read a little bit of John Wesley's writings and did a little research and it really resonated with me I sensed that there was a lot of truth in it and I did not start attending a Methodist Church right away but when a friend that I worked with invited me to attend his Methodist Church we almost decided to join immediately it was it was something much different than and what I grew up with this this was a Methodist Church in a very southern baptist town they knew that they were Methodists they when we for the first service we went to was what we would kind of considered high church you know that the minister processed and there were altar servers there were candles on the altar there was a big brass cross on the altar and the hymns were sung with a very nice pipe organ beautiful Charles Wesley hymns and that lifted our hearts up in a way that that that was really much deeper than some of the concerts saw worship not that there was anything wrong with that type of concert style worship but this was something that just was a little bit deeper that it was a little bit meteor a little bit more reverent a little bit more reverent praise I mean there's a place for both a place for sense Silas came back to to my roots in a sense but it was almost it was much more majestic and when we went forward to receive Communion we went so and we nailed it an out of rail and there was just a much more sense of there is something very holy we were doing here that I had never grown up with a pastor saying a Eucharistic prayer at the altar and and the idea of offering a sacrifice appraised all this was just hitting me and I was just seeping it in and and my wife was too she grew up in in California a non-denominational Church and this was all new to her and it took a little getting used to I used to tell people well my friends at Liberty I said liturgy is a little bit like coffee you kind of got to get a taste for it but once you experience it you want the good stuff and we were introduced to that now little did I know that that that particular brand of Methodism was just one one one sliver one sliver of it yeah but it was it was wonderful we also that the people were very friendly we have lifelong friends in that church we were married in that church and the the charity that was shown forth to us still remains with us today how we really felt at home there we also saw an element that that we had not grown up with a heavy emphasis on and that was works of charity the the Methodists were very much concerned in this particular church not just helping the poor but but really asking what what what are some systems and injustice we reintroduce the idea of social justice and and growing up most of what we were focused on was evangelism so it's like the I soon came to learn there's two arms of the Cross of outreach oh that one might be evangelism and the other one is works of charity and they're both works of evangelism just in different ways and that resonated with us too little did I know at the time I was being introduced to elements of Catholicism that's what I'm guessing some of the audience's even picking up on it and we've seen this in the past as we've interviewed other Methodists who became Catholic is that's amazing how in many ways Methodism John Wesley's theology was a stepping stone right into the Catholic Church it was it was a wonderful is like a bridge for us John Wesley for his time would have never admitted it but his ideas were very Catholic of grew up in a Calvinistic England where you know the idea of pursuing holiness was just kind of had been lost and the Methodists were accused of being Catholic and as as I learned as began studying Methodism and even the soteriology the the salvation the theology of John Wesley is very similar to Thomas Aquinas and some of his writings and so I was I was beginning to be softened towards Catholicism without even really knowing it but I still had yet to have a direct encounter with a Catholic with her Catholics at Liberty there were Catholics that at Liberty but they had become Baptist or Evangelical Protestant and I really did not meet a the the first time I met a real serious Catholic that knew whose faith was when I started working in Washington DC and so I had some what I call Catholic moments there that that began to introduce me to Catholicism more explicitly the first was after just right after I'd begun working there and I was still very excited about my Methodist discoveries I met a priest who was just recently ordained father Martin Fox who Archdiocese of Cincinnati he had worked in Washington had fallen away from the church he had he had actually had a conversion a charismatic conversion and and then as slowly was led back to the Catholic Church and he had become a priest when he was ordained he came back to celebrate Mass in Washington with some of his old co-workers including my boss and he we sat down after one one evening and I began we began talking and I was so excited about big Methodists I said you know I was very excited about infant baptism and how our Lord shows his grace on an infant who can't come to him at all you know he shows our dependence on God's grace and and how that there's you know evidence for this in in tradition there's implicit evidence and Scripture that that palmate baptized entire households may have been babies but very early on you know I'm just so excited so I'm like you know it's I understand now it's not just scripture alone that you have to study the writings of the the guys who studied under the apostles if you really want to understand what the Apostles men and I said you know we have this confirmation thing it's great then you affirm your baptismal faith hey man he said where do you think you got all this from little did I know little did I know I really had never thought of it in that way but it was a brand new discovery for you it was a brand new discovery for me and it at the same time Methodism I have to admit it was a little bit more morally waxed than what I was brought up in and a part of I can't say that it was all since C you know one her percent purely motivated thing going in and others and a lot of it yeah it was like well they can have a beer once in a while and that's okay you know they're there and in that that was okay but they wouldn't they did while there was a striving for holiness there some of the elements like there were they weren't as heavily pro-life and there are some things that that's started to bother me but there is a wing within the Methodist Church that was serious enough that if I just stay with these guys I'll be okay there was an evangelical and there was a high church wing it was but little did I know a Methodist Church right Emira that has as far left and as far right as you can find anywhere within Methodism exactly and every individual Church in Methodist school you're gonna have the wide breadth of it but what it brought you into it was a particular faithful evangelical strain of Methodism right right faithful he has a strain that was also very influenced by Anglicanism and very much you know the I identified with Anglican heritage very much as a part of it and there's almost even idea that that we need to reunite with the Anglican Church and reclaim some of those surgical patrimony that that has been left behind so at this point in your journey you and your married this point your wife I got married yes and my career in Washington was going very well there in Washington you're a Methodist Methodist have you thought about the ministry yet I I was starting to work in youth ministry a lot as a volunteer that became very fulfilling at the same time my work in Washington after I got married I always say Washington's a single persons town it's it's he requires you got to be really under your job and I started losing some of my ambition after I got married that I had seen a lot of the the people up there that had worked and family life had taken like a little setback you know a second and I didn't want that and so I was trying to keep a balance but it's really hard and a little bit frustrating and I'm like this is kind of getting frustrating but then at the same time this ministry that I was doing as a volunteer I was becoming very fulfilling and my pastor back in Lynchburg had given me a book on discerning a call to the ministry and I promptly put it on the shelf I didn't even consider it yeah I had my mind made up I had the 10 year plan right right well we're expecting to be in political offers or be always supporting others at that point I had realized that my my talents are more suited towards being behind the scenes it's more so than running for office and I guess after you've worked with enough politicians you can see it's not all glamour and glitz right so we we you know we we were a young married couple and I did one one I remember making a decision I just have to do something else I can't do this as a career in that very night I felt a call from God and I could not sleep and it was you know exam being called called a night and I wrestled literally with God and could not go to sleep and I felt like he was asking me to dedicate my life to full-time ministry and I simply said yes and called up that friend who was kind of a minnow without your wife whispering in your ear was she open to this direction when I told her the next morning she was just kind of like what she knew me very well are you a minister I mean come on why don't we pause there let's take a break and we'll come back because now you're in your trajectory towards Duke right yes that's what's that's a trajectory okay well let's come back to that just a bit welcome back to the journey home I'm doing my time with our guest Joshua Johnson former United Methodist minister we've we've kind of stopped in the middle of your journey where you've just the light the clouds have opened and the light has come down in the middle of the night and said flee from Washington and the life of a politician and consider the ministry I mean that's that's right what you had essentially experienced in the middle of the night right so you know God's called me now what do I do well there's that little book on the shelf there right I had conveniently shelved and of course I went and I talked to my pastor and my pastor had had been a Duke graduate and and he was just a very deeply spiritual man I respected him a great deal and he had introduced me even further into some of the liturgical elements of the church I never had heard of a Holy Thursday service never had heard of an Easter Vigil though we had those at our church and I just thought this was wonderful this was still new and so what we've just finished with the Holy Week that we've just experienced would that have been any way close to what you would have experienced a couple till this time I was just starting to get into that liturgical rhythm with the Methodist Church and yeah I had I had experienced an Easter Vigil with baptisms and in the service of light and and it was very beautiful and so this this time of year when I went to my first Easter Vigil it I had some point of reference you know that all the readings okay alright so did your pastor encourage you to consider Duke that oh yes dukey's are very look loyal as and and they assign you to a mentoring pastor you have a discernment phase that lasts a few years and they assign you to a pastor that helps you through it kind of mentors you through and he was from Duke so and I visited several United Methodist seminaries but when I went to Duke I just knew that that was a plan you walk into the Duke Chapel there and with with how I had been being drawn towards the Catholic end of things there was just no question that was if I got accepted there that's where I was going and I was very excited about it so at the same time I was I was enjoying the youth ministry and and really just feeling an ardent call to start preaching as soon as possible and this meant relocating from Northern Virginia and because Duke is only about 35 miles south of the Virginia mine it's possible to minister in Virginia and and still go to Duke and that was important to me because the Methodist structure of church government it's very similar a Catholic Church they have conferences and they're like diocese and once you're begin the candidacy process you stay in that conference until you're ordained and you stay there for life and I said guaranteed employment earlier it really is you have to do something really bad to mess up and because they need pastors and when you make that commitment to the church they make that commitment to you that they'll provide you with housing you know you're not going to be making a lot of money but they'll provide you with your needs let's take care of your family at the same time and you make that commitment to the Methodist Church you're saying to the bishop you may promise a beating and set I will go where you send me I'll be itinerant so it was a it was a commitment it had a commitment for your wife - absolutely she wasn't quite as sure about all this as I was she had not married a minister say who's marrying a politician she's your president United States but she didn't she didn't see living in a parsonage we had gotten close with our pastor and his wife and he saw she saw some of the stuff you know they went through you got to get board to prove you know getting a new toilet I mean it's a particularly attractive we had just built a new house when we got married up in the mountains and and I was working at home a lot and then commuting to Washington and some during the week but this wasn't what I had promised her we got married so it was a big sacrifice for her and she liked her job she's a teacher and liked her school and and we were moving to a part of Virginia that wasn't as wealthy and we were in Northern Virginia and the part of Virginia southern Virginia high unemployment rate very rural this is a very big change for her and she was from California so we had we had been in Lynchburg which is more in southern Virginia but we were in a college town it's kind of isolated from from the rural areas but I was I was very drawn to the rural areas I'd grown up in the country and the idea of being like a country pastor that was just my dream feeling sure so you land at Duke excited about land at Duke I landed at my at a country parish before then I was I went through the process to become a Methodist minister they have licensing school and they allow you to become a pastor before you finish your graduate studies partially because they need pastors and yeah I'll give you to be able to support your family and I needed to be able to support our our family so it was a great deal but I started in the summer preaching and it was a big shock what I had thought Methodism was and what Methodism was in many places was two different things it was much more like what I grew up was much more almost Baptist the high church was very off-putting to the people they wanted simple him singing and and long sermons and so here I came thinking I was gonna down you know vestments every week and they'd want to have weekly communion and everything and no no it's not it's not I wasn't the tradition the local tradition there and so I learned some lessons on on pastoral care and listening to people and and they were just wonderful people and I loved being a pastor so I started at Duke and when I started at Duke I was immersed heavily and in the study of the early church and Duke you studied that church fathers not writings about the church fathers what they said and I remember reading Ignatius of Antioch where the bishop is there is the church not though we have a bishop where the bishop is there is the Eucharist and the is a medicine of immortality state iron ASL owns and st. Justin Martyr and I was just seeping this all in thinking this is just wonderful alright and I wanted to bring it back to my parish so badly talk about the the sacrifice of the mass and all this that I was learning in church history but didn't go over so well there didn't go over so well so I was almost living in two different worlds that Duke are our Divinity School worship was very Eucharistic centered there is an Anglo Catholic element they brought an Anglican priest quite a bit you know to I was introduced to the high mass with incense and and then go back to to my parachute very rural preaching oriented and probably more of the very popular older hymns he walks with me and he talks with me although really those kind of low level mm-hmm absolutely and stuff stuff I'd grown up with so I could do just you know we get our plans in our mind and then the Lord says no this is what I have in mind for you and I I there was some conflict there but I really loved being a pastor and I loved preaching and I loved studying the word got to study Greek and and got to but what really was drawing me was was a sacramental theology and the the sacramental life the idea that God uses material things that he created to convey grace to us it's not that these are add-ons to salvation these are gifts these are free gifts he gives us of grace and this resonated so much with me perhaps because growing up I did have doubts of salvation and and the sacraments were renewals of that covenant God made with us and they strengthened you they they make you more ardent in your love for God and your love for Jesus and so I this is I was trying to live the sacramental life and as a Methodist not having yet been introduced to the need for the priesthood for valid sacraments but we studied the theology of st. Thomas Aquinas and towards you into my first semester I I hadn't had this inclination you know from growing up there's got to be something wrong here I mean this is Catholic stuff I mean and I had no idea becoming katha maybe I started thinking I'm gonna have to become Anglican because I really do want to move towards that into things but Catholic no no no there's got to be something wrong here and I just simply could not find anything that contradicted Scripture what I thought was a contradiction was explained perfectly and it was really me that had misunderstood this mean of Catholicism yeah were you I mean we're actively looking at Catholic doctrine during your time at Duke had you encountered Catholics that we're trying to help you see it is that yeah I there's some Catholics at Duke that were studying there believe it or not there's a wide spectrum people we have everything right from very extremely you even maybe not UCC but that she had some Episcopalians and you had some he had even Anglicans had left the Episcopal Church they're coming to do cuz I'm gonna Episcopal Seminary yeah you had all kinds but uh there they were the anglo-catholics whatever tell me oh yes yes we believe all this stuff you know everything is st. Thomas Aquinas teaches yes and there's if your own Kastner to me yeah well there's a few problems over there they'll tell you about this so they they had not been imposing on me but they I was starting to come to the Catholic one particular friend of mine with some questions and he was every question I had was answered perfectly so at the end of my first semester had a family member who was pretty staunchly Evangelical Protestant and very very intelligent and very much he loved Luther and Zwingli and he gave me a stack of books to read Luther's commentary on Romans and I told told him that over Christmas I said you know I really haven't found anything wrong and the Catholic but I'll study this stuff because I'm sure it's there just haven't found it yet so I kind of committed to going through all this Protestant theology in the next semester we studied the Reformation theology and that's where I kept hitting just no no no no no this is wrong I I would stay up late at night going back and forth this that what the Reformers were teaching what the early church fathers were teaching was not in continuity and my wife is just thinking what is he up to your wife also drawn to the high church liturgical so that you were on the same page and it came to that we're on the same page yeah with that now it's some of the theology she got all this by osmosis sure because these are our dinnertime conversations and I started getting to a point towards the end of that semester that that I started it was in the stage that I can be Catholic and be Methodist but it was slowly becoming clear that there there are some problems with that I couldn't just stay in this little strand of Methodism my whole life what about the evangelical call if I'm so narrow how can I be an evangelist and then the question of orders came in holy orders I had been assigned to a new church that was even closer to Duke and they really loved the the idea of the real presence of Jesus and I had been preaching it so everything was was resonating with them but then I ran into this thing that you need to be a validly ordained priest to be able to celebrate the Eucharist and and have the Holy Spirit change bread and wine into the body blood soul and divinity image of Christ so I encountered that and that was kind of this thing that hit you you get real defensive off what are you saying I can't do this so then the the the the other thing that I was encountering some of the liberal Protestant theology some of the high critical methods of Scripture and I saw a lot of my my peers kind of doubting the authority of Scripture and the only answer I could come up with with why scripture does have authority was because the Catholic Church has Authority there's no Bible without the Catholic Church and they they are inspired by the Holy Spirit the church is infallible that's the only reason why the Holy Scripture isn't I was thinking that there maybe somebody just heard you say that mm-hmm realize you jumped a lot of steps in there to come to that point but just maybe briefly why is it that without the Catholic Church you have no Bible because the Apostles entrusted this sacred deposit of faith both written and oral to their successors and they gave the the authority of the Pope and the bishops did not die when they died with the authority of Peter was passed down as an office and we see this in Isaiah he talks of this office of Prime Minister I believe it's Isaiah 24 and through that authority when it came into question what is truly apostolic teaching that is written tradition the church came in council together with the approval of the successor of Peter to say that these books here these particular Gospels what we are apostolic teaching and these aren't and so that that if you don't trust that the Holy Spirit ordained and was guiding these particular men gathering counsel if you don't trust that then great that's we have today with with people all of a sudden rediscovering all these other books yeah and wanting to lift those up equal with the New Testament and and actually you end up with that if you throw out the authority of the church right and so my question was why do I accept the authority of this council back in the fourth century in the first seven ecumenical councils but I don't accept was there something that happened like the rupture Christ stopped giving the Holy Spirit to the church and I remember in a small group once in a class somebody said well are you gonna become Roman Catholic because you really I said I don't know I don't know I wanted I knew that the Bible was true that was ingrained in me I knew that and I knew you couldn't just explain away certain passages that were uncomfortable about moral teaching you know you know like that was happening a lot well Paul was sexist you know I said we don't have to follow this thing I finally on a trip to Texas my grandfather was dying I had a distant cousin who was it was Catholic and we after dinner she said gosh you know have you ever heard of Scott Hahn let me give you this book he's a Presbyterian minister that became Catholic and I said I can't read this I've got to read all these other books you know and make sure it's fine something wrong here first that my family member had given me but I didn't like I actually I couldn't help but reading the book on the way back to Raleigh on the plane I and through the airport I read most of through this book called Rome sweet home right and on the way back from the airport I was under such heavy conviction of the Holy Spirit that I want you to give up your dreams of being a pastor being even a priest I want you to give this up for to become a part of my one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church I came home and told Katie my wife this and she's like I don't know why can't we just be Episcopalian or Anglican and and I gave her the book to read and at this point I had I decided I gotta meet with a priest so I met with our local parish priest father Charles Brian Dolan and he invited me to come to daily Mass said you can't receive Communion but but but you can always attend and so I started tending daily Mass and like a tractor beam is drawn into the unit wrist that is that our Lord upon the altar but but then things I just wasn't quite ready and I stopped going to daily Mass I started concentrating more on I'm gonna be a Methodist pastor and I just backed off a little bit and a few months later I met with the parish priest and I was just coming off of a high having baptized a man on his deathbed and and celebrated the Lord's Supper therefore for him on his deathbed end of life conversion I've so I said father Charles is just great conferring the sacraments and I said you know I this whole question of Catholicism I think I'm just gonna wait till I'm done with my graduate studies you know Methodist Church is paying for my seminary I got all these scholarships you know I got to take care of my family and I'm just at peace with kind of waiting and he looked me in the eye and said you're not at peace and I said he saw right through me and that's when the question became I really do need to it's not just a question of are the sacraments real it's we do I have the authority to celebrate the sacraments do am i a part of the church really and I became very heavy on me during that time and I kept going back and forth and I thought maybe Anglican Monday maybe Methodist one day was driving my wife crazy but eventually I knew I had to make a decision and so I was studying John 17 that they all may be one as I am the father in one so the world may know that I that that I am sent by God but you know the father in the son are completely one not not just in worship but they you know they don't believe different things not that God yeah technically doesn't believe he's God but but they are one completely and if that's how the church is supposed to be then how can we have these divisions and doctrine there is can only be one true church that teaches with the authority of God and there was no question which church that was and if I want to be closer to Jesus if I want to follow him completely I must come into full communion with this church and so finally I had some resolve and after I had some resolve Katie started looking a little bit more into Catholicism and we hit this question of birth control and she you know had she looked into it she said I don't know about this and and I had said well I don't want you to become Catholic just because I am in fact I'll even wait I'll give you some time look into this and and I don't want you to unless you really believe it and she looked into the teaching of the church and openness to life and we had found that a lot of the struggles we were having in our marriage was because of our whole view of marriage has worked that was the one sacrament I didn't study too much it dude and and had really done a poor job of of living out and we realized that that openness to life mirrors the life of the Trinity and mirrors Christ that love for the church and it's it draws you closer to God when you're open to life so that what we thought was the greatest barrier no pun intended became the greatest grace for us in our marriage coming into the church and so we received into the Catholic Church on December 2007 and with great joy Gaudet a Sunday jewelry receiving the Catholic Church and the Lord has blessed us in so many ways I can't even begin to describe since we have come in wouldn't trade it for the world know that required then you left Duke no I fortunately there is a heavy enough Catholic element there that I felt like I could still complete my degree and get a good Catholic education in fact now I know there's a a lot of Catholic universities I got a better Catholic education there and then some Catholic universities I had they I was very blessed to have some very faithful Catholic professors and Reinhard who directed my my my master's thesis and I got to study mary ology ecclesiology and i was even allowed to study a little bit at st. Charles Borromeo seminary so yeah it was a huge blessing and I still have a great love for Duke so now that you've come into the church what about that call to ministry you had sensed before that the love and the light shined in the middle of the night woke you up believe it or not it's become much more clear I was very much focused on MA even as a Methodist pastor my career well now I realized that it's my career is only to serve my primary vocation which is marriage and I have the privilege of working in the Catholic Church in a parish and as a Catholic campus minister at a university and I love being able to share the fullness of truth with with especially young people in a way that I just could not outside of the Catholic Church so I've really found my vocation alright which you know it's one thing that we've here in the coming home network the reason we exist is to stand beside non Catholic ministers who come into the church and one of the issues is what about that call that they received way back when and one thing that that we've firmed over the years is recognizing that that call was not you didn't miss hear God it was just you just at the time didn't realize the trajectory of what he was calling you to prepare for mm-hmm when you came home to the church right I've learned that God is very patient he he will not give it to us all at once so lead us slowly I think we have an email this comes from Kristen and she writes I am a brand-new Catholic but I'm still struggling with a few practices especially the acceptance of gambling among Catholics in fact in my parish there was a planned bus trip to a local casino am I being too Protestant in my view that gambling should be avoided thanks well the the thing the thing that I have realized in Catholicism is that there is of great wisdom and and it's our moral teachings the Catholic Church would never condone gambling that leads one to abandon one's family or misuse money in any way and that's unfortunately most of the gambling that goes on today it's just that I don't know about a parish bus bus trip take a CE no but you know if you play poker with quarters is that a sin you know so I grew up thinking like cards were sinful you know playing cards were sinful and it was an extreme but you know the truth is is is very wise and and I wouldn't well I remember earlier you I can't member what the topic was but you were talking about the the struggle with defining like the meaning of baptism or right or something in in the Protestant standpoint if there wasn't a scripture then it was your local pastor saying you don't do this or you do this and what's the foundation for them and when you start doubting that that local pastor had the authority to say that what are you left with right yourself or whatever group whereas the Catholic perspective on whether it's gambling or drinking or other issues there are moral standards to understand you know something that is a sin something that's a vice something that we have to stay out of bad company to make sure that we don't give in to the pressures of that certainly if gambling is becoming between you and God even if it's just quarters playing poker that would be something you'd want to detach from we have another email quickly Jason from Rockford do Catholics believe in being born again absolutely absolutely are born-again Christians and we understand that being born again comes through the waters of baptism as Jesus said in John chapter 3 verse 5 unless one is born of water in the holy spirit he cannot enter the kingdom of God so at the same time you know my view growing up was that was be a conversion experience or John Leslie put in my heart being extremely strangely warmed we affirm that too there has to be conversion in one's life baptism isn't a free ticket to heaven it has to be lived out every day and but absolutely born-again wash as you were saying you were starting to discover later the graces that you would receive long ago at that baptism you didn't even realize at the time they were the foundation that in many ways all that you've become and those graces were earning me towards confirmation in the Eucharist in a way that only now I can see that baptism gave me a thirst for our Lord Jesus in the Eucharist and that explains all these things all right well thanks so much for sharing your journey for audience and our blessings and you and your wife and your how many children oh well we have twins right now they just turned 2 and more likely than not we'll probably more twins in the future because my wife said twin alright thanks Jonathan thank you for joining us on this edition of the journey home I pray that's been encouragement to you to appreciate this great faith that we have see you again next week you

Channel: EWTN

Views: 17,104

Rating: 4.7551022 out of 5

Keywords: EWTN, Journey Home, Marcus Grodi, Joshua Johnson, Catholic, JHT01313

Id: T1rD2sLbFRw

Length: 55min 51sec (3351 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 26 2011