Journey Home - JH in Canada - Marcus Grodi with Brian and Barbara Lilly - 02-21-2011

good evening and welcome to the journey home my name is Marcus Grodi your host for this program this is one of our special episodes from Ottawa Ontario and our guests for this evening are brian and barbara lily welcome both of you to the journey home program thank you know are you from ottawa or did you drive in here today we live in ottawa but we're not from ottawa okay I'm originally from Hamilton Ontario which is southern Ontario not far from Buffalo that would be the closest American city I'm from a small town called Linux will Quebec about two hours southeast of Montreal okay so you're close to Vermont about an hour all right positioning that for those from the states that aren't always Newports Vermont okay well wonderful it's good to have you with there's nothing maybe let the audience know what you do because you're a bit uncomfortable bit comfortable with being in this spot in front of the camera yeah I worked for about the last ten years in private broadcast radio major markets in Canada and recently just joined Sun media which is launching a new TV station so right now I'm I'm reading for the papers and learning where commas go and and trying to figure out print which is so different from broadcasting as as I'm sure you know and getting excited about the launch of something you all right well that's some we pray box I mean that's exciting and maybe our audience might later be interested to understand you know there's the difference between the more conservative perspective and the liberals but perspective here in Canada and the battle that you are right in the middle of of that public opinion that's your world and you're covering politics it's it's battle everyday and it's a bloodless support those that's the good part of it yes at least in these days as bloodless yeah these days it tends to be bloodless as opposed to covering murder and mayhem in the streets alright what I normally do on the program is invite the guests to go way back and start at the beginning and give the audience a snapshot of your early spiritual upbringing so I'm not sure who's gonna be first on a tag team but let you decide why I'm the cradle Catholic of the two of us and went to Catholic school here in Ontario was an altar boy so I have a fairly good Catholic upbringing and in Hamilton it's fairly large Catholic community it was quite good I mean you know we had we had CYO Catholic Youth Organization so that we you know sports teams and different things the the Catholic high schools were sufficient that we had enough of them we could have our own teams play against each other you know we had our own little or Catholic League yeah yeah oh there you go yeah and and then you'd play the public schools for the the city championship or what have you but you know Catholic schools would play against each other and sometimes the private schools would join us so I didn't really realize how much of a a Catholic environment there was until I left the city until I left it which is probably about the same time as I kind of walked away from the church never left the church really but it wasn't showing up exactly you hadn't made a conscious choice to leave but distrophy I decided you know you leave home and and you're out in the workforce and you wake up Sunday morning and it's known and oh well maybe I should have been somewhere in a few weeks of saying maybe I should have been somewhere you start forgetting that you ever were anywhere on a Sunday and so that's probably it wasn't a conscious decision to walk away or anything but I I definitely wasn't turning up and I wasn't on any kind of spiritual walk but I knew that there was something missing was it seems I'm an outsider to Canada but it seems from what I hear that the state of the church has changed a lot in the last twenty thirty years in Canada even in the schools the Catholic schools when you look back to your upbringing was the Catholic education that you received a good Saladin at the time you're going there you think well even back then in this we're talking mid 70s through the mid 80s the the catechesis probably wasn't where it should've been okay but it was probably better than it is now one of the things that I discovered when Barbara was becoming Catholic was how little I knew about the church there were times when you know she'd come to me with questions and I just say I have no idea let's go look it up in which helped me and in my own spiritual journey but when I started going to Catholic schools here in Ontario anyway they weren't fully funded we have government-funded Catholic schools here in Canada it's a historical anomaly that likely isn't going away in Ontario anyway it's disappeared elsewhere and but as you got into the later grades of high school you had to pay and so you really had to make a conscious decision my brother my older brother he's three and a half years old with I mean he had to pay to complete his education in the Catholic school I didn't and and nobody does now and I think when the government started fully funding the schools that it actually lessened the Catholicism inside the schools is there because the government if you're going to take our money then these are the standards are going to teach by is that what was happening again well and and I I think there wasn't that decision that people were making a conscious choice it just became the easy thing it was never a case that everyone that was going to Catholic school was showing up at Mass on Sunday we were still in the minority those of us like myself and several of my neighbors that were going to the Catholic school and showing up at mass most of the kids in your class didn't turn up but I would say it's probably even less now and and I think there is a little bit of pressure whether it's implied or subtle from the government to to say well no no you can go this way and the church has the legal ability to say no but the Catholic school board has the legal ability to say no I don't know that they exercise it as they should all right so there's a lot of leadership decisions that are really are trickling down to ends up into the influence of called the conscience 'as of our young Catholic students here in America yeah and people are living in the culture and it can be tough to swim against the tide I must say yeah well yeah and I'm assuming being brought up in a Catholic family with the Catholic environment of the school and the church that the prayers and the devotions were at least some part of your family upbringing when you decided to no longer go to the church on Sundays when you're on your own did that part of your life off also drift yeah no way yeah it drifted away not the phone calls for my mother asked me why I was actually they were there incessantly probably but in a good sense but personal prayer first disappeared disappeared completely until I mean when does everyone pray when things go wrong when things go rough you start praying and so I would become somebody to prayed in an emergency somebody the prayed if things were really bad but not the rest of the time all right not the element of Thanksgiving when things go great not necessarily no yeah and well thankfully Barbara helped bring me out of that all right Barbara what about your start of your journey way back when all the way back when I was actually raised in the baptized and raised in the United Church of Canada it I taught Sunday school I was in the church choir we went to church every Sunday a movie for the audience the United Church of Canada is a they say it was created in the early nineteen twenties 1925 the early 1920s and it's basically an amalgamation of Congregationalists Methodists and Presbyterians which is interesting even in that combination of the theologies and if there was anything left yeah yeah the church itself was very Presbyterian the one I grew up in that just sort of very plain very no statues new icons nothing it was just a beautiful stained glass windows but other than that but we had to go every Sunday and I did that until I was probably it was 16 or 17 and I sat down with my parents one day and said look okay the thing is this I'm not really sure I believe in God anymore and my father who went to church with us maybe once a year was very upset and told me that I could no longer celebrate Christmas because it was the birth of Jesus and at that point I said to him but we don't celebrate it as the birth of Jesus anyway we celebrated as Santa Claus and it's a time for presence and giving it's all commercialized in you know my 16 and 17 year olds debate was I was a I thought it did quite well but it shortly thereafter though I I just stopped going to church completely I don't know I guess my parents just figured it wasn't worth the fight and I went to church once or twice through my 20s I was searching for something I I kept going into churches I never stepped into a Catholic Church but I would go and sort of sit at the back and think no this isn't it's not what I'm looking for and something's missing something's missing and in the early probably 90 to 93 early 90s I every once in a while I would think well what about Catholicism no no no no I'm not having anything to do with that that's that's crazy talk and it wasn't it took almost this was about 10 years before I by that time we were married we had two children at the time and I came upstairs one day and said to Brian okay the thing is I think I want to be a stinking papist and I was quoting from a book that I was reading at the time and one of the characters had talked about being a stinking papist and he just laughed and and we kind of dropped it for a couple weeks and then when I went back to him said no look the I really think I'm this is what I'm supposed to do so I started and it was uh I felt like a dog with a bone I guess I couldn't let go of the idea and we had been doing what we called church shopping for years we had tried a bunch of different yeah I was gonna back up this a little bit because were you married in that church no we were actually married we were going to be married and we when we got engaged he was Catholic but not really you were going the times a year and knowing I should go to Mass but not necess and I had been to Mass with him once at the Cathedral in Hamilton and hadn't going back at all when we got engaged we sort of went back and forth when are we getting married in Catholic Church are we getting married in a United Church he wanted Catholic I wanted United because of what we knew growing up and one day I was on the phone with my friend's mother and told her that we've been bickering back and forth over which church to get married in and she told me and she's Catholic she said it doesn't really matter which church you get married in the point is the marriage isn't it so I got off the phone and said okay we'll get married in the Catholic Church by the big of me at which point he trips I don't know we'll get married to me there you go we're trying to be nice to each other and eventually I discuss it look braiding marrying the Catholic Church would stop arguing with me and then we went to look for one and we picked this beautiful church we do know canarians in Ottawa no we just moved here because there was work and so we found this beautiful church went for mass and spoke to the priest after masse that we engaged we want to get married we'd like to get married here and he's Catholic I'm Protestant and he said that's fine except I need to know that you're a practicing Catholic okay fine so you're I guess you're going back to Mass now aren't you however I had to go as well only not where it should have been yeah I went back the following week and I made the mistake I said that I have any children that were raised that we had I wanted them to know the Protestant side as well as the Catholic side and the priest at the time it kind of tore stripped out of me and I I left in tears thinking I'm never setting foot inside a Catholic Church again nuts to this and I felt that because I thought you know this isn't what I was expecting and then I kept saying to her this isn't representative of the Catholic Church but I was so upset that I decided that I love her I'm not getting married every since about that they've always said did you speak to the priest right after Mass when he's got 20 people coming I said yes and they said maybe not the best time for a philosophical discussion with a breeze that they're inundated at that point so we lived we learned but we kept the church shopping going so we ended up because of that experience we ended up we went for a walk the next day and we found a United Church and the new Edinburgh section here in Ottawa and it's a beautiful church we went to the service the next week talked to the minister and said well look he's Catholic I'm Protestant how do you feel about this kind of thing and he said that didn't really matter because we're all aiming to get to the same place anyway so we ended up getting married five months later I can't remember how long it was it was a few months later knowing back did you know we were going to the United Church at the time I did that kind of put your Catholic thoughts that in the back burner yeah I didn't know so there's no reason if you think about that anymore especially since you had such a great experience at one time that oh they're good yes and I knew not to push to say you know yeah back off a little bit were you comfortable with going to the music it never felt right and and and no disrespect to two people that were at the United Church but it is in Catholic terms it is essentially a liturgy of the word most of the time they don't have communion it's you know one of the churches that has communion once a month but they they don't believe that it's the body of Christ symbolic it is symbolic it is a memorial when you did say a few times it felt like there was something missing I kept saying I'm waiting for something to happen so it's essentially they would you know some of the things look the same they you know there's a hymn and the minister walks in and depending on the church they're wearing robes similar to the Catholic Church and and then they do you know an opening prayer and some readings and this all seems very familiar lanister gives a sermon for a long time and then they sing another song and go home and I thought there's something missing here and and I felt that way the entire time it I didn't hide that and for a little while wood once in a while go to Mass even if we'd been to church because then I just kept saying apartment that's there's something missing and so we were married September 98 two years later two years later almost two years later we had our first child four months after he was born Brian got a job in Montreal and when we got too much of when we were living here my sister her no ex-husband and their child were here so we at least had you know there was one family member when we moved to Montreal we didn't know anybody it was just the world kind of thing and we'd been there for a few months and we started Church shopping and we try the United Church the Anglican Church we tried Catholic I can't remember what we've finally found a United Church and we went back to so we ended up a United Church in Montreal and we went there every week for a while and is the Montreal culture radically different than the culture here because of French Canada more than I think the Catholic churches are generally more empty interest because it's not summer if you're moving to a different it's not just a way for family but I wonder if there's a difference in culture even I didn't notice a huge difference or in culture I mean but the city there's been across Quebec whether it's Catholic or otherwise there had a bigger rejection of the church oh definitely and probably the lowest church attendance in all of North America is under here that which is the you know the cradle of the Catholic Church on this continent who's there and so I mean that that's part of it there's a lot of former churches a lot of beautiful former churches in that city so you ended up finding no church well we went to United Church and then we came back no no 9/11 hit mmm 9/11 and it was two days after 9/11 and they were holding memorial services around the city and the only one that we could said we could find in her neighborhood that was doing one was a Catholic Church so we went to that one and there were people of all denominations there but it was the only time that I'd been in a church except at Christmas Catholic or non Catholic what was packed to the rafters and I left it was a horrific time anyway but it was sort of the probably the start was a restarting of kind of putting the Catholic Church back into my head because this wasn't good a good welcome it was a good yeah it definitely much different than the last time I had been in a church in a Catholic Church for me it always just feels like home so it doesn't matter how long I'd been away it felt like home the 9/11 it's interesting as the first from the state's I always think of 9/11 as it's something that hit us but it hit you equally well up here oh yeah yeah well do you I remember where I was ending yeah the airplanes landed here I mean your culture is our culture here and ya know it's something we all paid attention to him working in the news media he had to go yeah we lived and under M it's like a flight path not one of the busiest ones but under a flight path and it's a creepy one year there were sir planes going overhead for days nothing it was a week there was a no-fly zone and I remember being outside one day and I was hanging clothes on the on the line and a plane went overhead I'm freezing and oh okay they must be letting the planes go again okay yeah no it hit it hit Canadians hard too I remember where I was standing I was coming out of the shower and he said a plane flew into one of the towers in New York nothing oh come on you're just kidding that no and I went and stood in front of people no I can wasn't an accident yeah and I was standing in front of the television as the second plane was coming on screen and I was yelling out of it I couldn't even speak of like playing there's there's another plane and just we stood in front our poor boy granted year old child at the time and he was left in his crib for a little bit while we stood in front of the television just one minute I can't father wait it was yeah it hit hit Canadians are - did you think me look back that was at a spark in your own spiritual journey had that event itself well it definitely because I was sort of in and out of a relationship with God churches anything like that and it was one of those the love praying for a long time when why I still don't have the answers I assume he'll let me know when when he's ready to let me know but ya know definitely at least well at least for a few months it started then you know we sort of got busy with kids and life and stuff and I was like you know God followed by the wayside for a while and then we moved back to Ottawa and we went trip shopping again well I'm also curious Brian in this journey has the spiritual life come back into your life private life at all yes it has in terms of we're part of a prayer group at our church now try daily prayer doesn't always work the way that it you plan and the goal is to get up early and spend some time in Scripture before the day gets going when you've got four active kids that get over the crack of dawn that sometimes gets thrown for a loser but that that's what we try and do and so we're we're part of a few different ministries of the church barbers and the choir I mean the Knights of Columbus part of a prayer group along with a lot of other couples and so we're working towards that and and trying okay which is different and in building on that personal relationship that obviously wasn't there when when I walked away anyway yeah so but this is being pulled into the more Protestant direction the influences at that time you did mention Knights of Columbus but well that that's now that's okay okay no no but but I'm at that time but actually talking about it any know it at that time I I still felt like just a Catholic in exile when we would go to church and when we were there people would say to me so they would ask me questions and I would just say well I'm Catholic so I mean I always identified myself as that even if I didn't fully understand everything about the church that was part of who I was yeah that was one of things that I how I described him to my friends family he's Catholic no he doesn't go to Mass no I don't see him sitting in prayer no he doesn't no but oh he's Catholic it was part of what defined him even if he wasn't actually walking the walk talking to talk at that point it was please a Catholic which probably also defined how you understood what I meant to be Catholic the model he was setting for you you think at the time no she knew I wasn't a very good no okay okay she knew that much good Catholic I knew that you weren't following all the rules alright okay so then you come back here is that right yeah we moved back here and we had our second child and again we started shopping for churches and we couldn't really seem to find any place that fit there we know where that fella didn't even like Roman Catholic churches where we tried finding them and we were going driving all over the place and then found out that we were smack dab in the middle of two of them and so we we found definitely a gem of the parish and started going well then it just start going because I told you that I went I came upstairs and said that I wanted I want to be a stinking papist because you're reading some book that because I was reading a book that one of the characters talked about being a stinking papist yeah that's not what you meant yeah yeah I was just I wasn't being trying to be rude or anything about it I'm just teasing him and I started in RCIA course Oh at a parish out in Orleans then I found out I was pregnant and so I called the deacon who was running the course okay look I just found out that I'm pregnant and I'm due around Easter 2004 and he said well you might still be able to handle it and I said okay so I went for a few times but I came home two weeks three weeks in a row and I was just livid because I while I was at the at the course I felt like I had to defend Protestants I would ask questions and there were a lot of time well three weeks in a row where I was just completely shut down and I felt like my back was up against a wall I thought I'm trying to learn how to become one of you I don't want to have to because my family is still hardest in and I don't want to have to defend my family's point of view while I'm trying to figure out why you all do what you do and why you believe what you believe I finally came home and I said I'm not coming back please I don't want to do it and then but in the meantime we had found out that our third baby was actually baby three and baby four we were having twins and when I spoke to the Deacon said look it's twins he said well you still should be able to do it was he a guy yes he was no big deal right and so I just said look I'm not gonna do this I used the twins as an excuse to get out of the RCIA course but like we went to Mass a few times and we had found our lady to visitation the church that parish that we go to now and even I mean it just it felt like home the first time that we went in and we've left again we did we weren't regular churchgoers by any stretch of the imagination and it took the twins were born in a well on st. Patrick's Day 2004 it was the following year when I finally became Catholic so we went started going a little more regularly than we had been going and everybody one of the things with four kids especially that we had a four year old the two year old and twin newborns we're not exactly quiet and thought there were a lot of churches that we went to even before we settled on early the visitation where we had a lot of dirty looks because we had four kids and especially you know newborn newborns they're not quiet if they want something maybe a lot of noise and there were a lot of people that just weren't welcoming and there were a couple of churches that I walked out in tears thinking okay forget that they weren't Catholic ones but I'm gonna forget this I'm not going back and when we found our lady the visitation like I said it was like going home and everybody was very welcoming I mean baby of being thanked everyone would yeah and it was such a surprise compared to the experiences that we'd had in other churches that I was like okay well maybe this is the place to go and then which is Sam's gonna say sometimes it's not intentional in many Protestant churches but when the center of worship is a sermon then the center of that is an adult intellectual experience mm-hmm and so all these little voices around here disrupt that Alright disrupting that which is central to their gathering yeah I don't think they intended to be that way but that's what it can become the center of our gathering the homily is great but that's not the center that's a whole different world so when you finally came in then well I did you go through I say hey or you just know I didn't actually reading I started reading I was wrong you came home with a book with rooms and a random bookstore my library public library browsing the books trying to feed my own spiritual journey and found that this helped him become kefka's helped his wife become Catholic okay I think this is a book for my wife that would have been the fall of 2004 and I couldn't put the book down I kept reading it and almost every patos but exactly yes that's exactly how I feel yes yes yes all the way through the book so when I was finished the book I said you've really got to read this book too and I said I'm definitely sure that I want to be Catholic but now the problem is trying to find a parish where we can have a home so that's when I guess that was when we know that's not when we decided it was January we had a fight one Sunday morning we had a fight well I don't remember what we fought about but we had a fight and I thought forget this I'm I'm out of here I've got to get out of here for a while and he asked for everybody I don't know I'm going to church somewhere and I had to drive by a couple of churches and I ended up at her lady the visitation and I went in and even though I had by that point I had decided that I wanted to become Catholic and I was having a really big problem with transubstantiation and I'm like I don't really because in the United Church that I grew up in the wine is grape juice the because I don't want to encourage alcoholics to come into church just to get the wine big part of the temperance movement yeah and its brand it was Wonder Bread when it was just white bread right so how does this become Jesus I couldn't wrap my brain around it and yeah even with him saying it's just one of the mysteries you just have to believe it I can't I need more than that but I sat in the back of the pews that day and I was still angry at him like I said I can remember what it was about and because I was angry at him I started getting mad at God and like okay look it seems like you're calling me to this but you're not really giving me anything to go on right now I don't understand this part and when it came time for communion I stood up to go even though I knew I wasn't by that point I knew that I wasn't supposed to go and as I stood up right in my head I was yelling at God saying you know what you better prove you're actually in that little it sounds very disrespectful now but at the time I was just mad I said you better prove you're in that little cracker and in that little goblet of wine right now or I'm walking out of here and I'm not going to become Catholic and I felt a hand on my shoulder and I turned around to give the person behind what for except he was too far away from me to have touched me and I kept back I kept looking back I'm sure that people watch I think church must have thought they've got a crazy person in their mid and I kind of looking up with the front going okay that really okay no no that wasn't that didn't happen I don't believe that at all and I felt a hand on my shoulder again and I again I know how to look at the person behind me and he was still too far away from me to touch me he just kind of nodded at me and smiled and uh-huh okay I got the blessing and I turn around I went back in my seat hit my knees and I had tears streaming down my face I'm sure they thought that was crazy too but I left and went home is it okay I think I found our church and we're going to Mass and we ended up speaking with his the parish priest and I said I started the RCA RCIA course it didn't go well and we ended up sitting down you and I and father Brian two or three hours and it was just we've been going to Mass for a long time at that point you know we started and and had read several books and yeah when we went to him and said the barber would like to become Catholic at Easter you just put put her through or her numbers and made sure that she understood the doctrine and made sure that she understood but he did it in such a warm I didn't feel like I was being grilled it was it we sat down we had a conversation for two hours the other thing and at the end of it he stood up he said I have absolutely no problem welcoming you into the church and I got all slippery and if I cried and did a girly thing no and it wasn't much longer a week two weeks no but these these 13 2005 a week before john paul ii passed away no well he paused at that point so good please take a break and we'll come back we'll pick that up and just a moment alright the practicing welcome back to the journey home program our guest for this episode are brian and barbara lily and I kind of cut you off just when you're on the edge you're ready to come into the church this is back in 2005 Easter's 2005 yeah so this is when you came into the church and you're really already in the church yeah I don't coming back home alright so all through Barbara's learning about what the church was and through her process it really gave me a chance to answer her questions by looking up the stuff I should have been already we're still learning and and they're still learning doesn't mean the richness of the Catholic faith is immense and so she would come to me with the question why do you do that I don't know let's go look it up and so you know Catholic sourcebook at one point Catholic for dummy you know all these different books pulling them out the catechisms on top of the piano let's find out what's going on why and so that was great for both of us and then as Barbara was going through receiving her first sacraments I got to reintroduce myself to everything properly in terms of coming back to confession on a regular basis and things like that so how was your first confession about 45 minutes long I got teased about that but I guess it's truly a first confession it was a first confession nothing like that in the United Church some of it was spiritual direction because I'd never done it before I didn't I and I had 31 36 years of confessing to make up for yes it was about 45 minutes long father Brian really helped me through it and it was a good experience and the thing that I found really surprising about it and that I get five and a half years later I still find it surprising but I look forward to his that when I've been given absolution I just feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulder and I feel clean basically spiritually clean and like I can handle anything and I really had that experience the first time that I went to confession I actually remember that from my first confession when I was a child no real yeah I still remember that and it's still there so I don't know why I stayed away foolishness stubbornness I don't know but yeah you're right it's there but not long after hers you had were you next in line or it was just the two of us in the church on a weekday along with our our priest and yeah so I was in there for probably an hour but again you know I'll defend myself spiritual direction as well as new to me I'm not sure they did that when I was going to confession so it's well they may have been doing face to face or that you'd probably didn't when you were a child what no they they had brought that in oh when you were young - okay yeah they brought that in you had the option of going behind a little screen or sitting face to face so and I'm still not sure which one I prefer it depends on the day so you're you're both in the church you're in the church I suppose it could have been easy to drift back into just basic church-going had your faith really caught on fire as a result of coming into the church yes yes absolutely and in terms of you know really at that point on fire for reading the Bible pretty much every day somebody had given me a study Bible where I could look up you know you're having trouble with this find the answer in the Bible there which I don't think Catholics use that sort of thing enough it's big among Protestants I think that's something we could learn from them is turning to Scripture I don't know how many times I've heard cradle Catholics anyway say well I'm Catholic I don't read the Bible you know that's that's not the way we should be doing it and and I think we're those that view it that way our surrendering a great part of of what the church is and what the Church teaches I didn't ask you to a head of time to make sure that this wouldn't be embarrassing but praying together as a couple is is it something that's a grow on you and you didn't have it at first had to become easier as a Catholic with the models as a Catholic we didn't actually really start praying together as a couple until probably about six months after I became Catholic because but we were going to weekly mass and I felt like there's still something more on that I feel I should be doing here but I didn't really know what and then in the fall of 2000 was a 2005 mm-hmm that's when the intercessory group started up there was an intercessory prayer group that started up at our church so I started going to that and that's when we started getting together and praying together as a couple and I mean we've got four kids we don't do it every single day but we do try to make it a regular part and as we're going down to big decisions on life what are we gonna do about buying a house what are we going to do about this break down the card that we had a van and it just died in the parking lot of a shopping center one day with groceries there was meat and ice cream it was it was not fun and he got up the next morning and said okay well I have to go into the car dealership we need a car and I said all right well you have fun with that and he said no no we're gonna sit down were to play the Divine Mercy chaplet and I said well okay go ahead and have funny thing no no we're doing this together we need the car okay you're gonna ask Jesus for a car all right fine so we sat down and he prayed very specifically I need I need a vehicle for to carry around six people it has to be affordable we need this we need this and we need this it's the easiest car purchase I've ever made for everything yeah and so what we try to do that for big decisions but you know I was probably saying with four kids climbing in and out of bed in the morning at night they're always waking you up yeah it interrupts things but it is something we try to do and we try to get the kids on board with it as well oh I mean the kids we say prayers with them every single night they get a blessing every single night they they will actually come to us and think I can't sleep at night I'm gonna go pray a decade of the Rosary okay go do it God okay that's good your faith hadn't changed but you're in the same business yes how about the relationship of this change in your faith and your convictions in relationship to the business that you do it can make it more difficult sometimes but I would say some of the my positions on some of the cultural hot-button topics let's say that you deal with in politics and there's the same on both sides of the border right my views on those never changed even when I wasn't so I even had a conservative perspective way back when then you've always had that to a certain extent you know maybe not necessarily politically but you know life I've just always known that that abortion is wrong you know touched on the hottest Terry Schiavo was going on as Barbara was coming in 2003 into the church the Terri Schiavo case was going on and we were on completely opposite sides of the fence you know she's just learning what the church was the teaching on this and what an opportunity and I was telling him don't know if I'm in that position you're to pull the plug no I don't want to be kept alive in Houston but no well I can't do it and there were some rather loud arguments that went on until the afternoon that she died and I was watching on television as the news came in saying that she had passed away and when he got home I met him at the door and I was in tears and he looked at me and said what's the matter what's the matter as if Terry Schiavo died and I'm listening to an ole afternoon he's a journalist and he said yes I know and I said well is he the thing is I think I was wrong and the only reason he said what what do you mean I said well it has to be God because the only way that my opinion would have been changed as if he had changed my heart and I'm gonna cry yet so yeah it was and slowly my views on things have come around to the things that he has never changed like he said abortion I always felt that abortion was wrong I was pro-choice I'm no longer no choice but I was he was against euthanasia I was all for it and so dealing with those things you know especially now I report on federal politics you know it's the equivalent of being a Capitol Hill reporter I'm on Parliament Hill here we deal with these issues it can make it difficult now at the same time I have to be fair to all sides you're a journalist but you know I'm still holding on to my convictions thankfully now I also write a column and so I can go forward my own views on these things but if I'm interviewing somebody I you know I can't complain about others not being fair to pro-lifers if I'm not fair to the other side in terms of presenting their own views in the way that they say them rather than skewing them so it can be difficult sometimes if you really don't agree with somebody to do that but you have to do your best on some of these difficult issues like you're talking about I've noticed it sometimes it uh a progress that people go through at first they may not like it because the church says it's true I'm not going there and then at some point they get to a stage where they might say I believe it because the church says it's true but then they get to a stage and say well wait a second it's true not because the church says it's true but the church says it's true because it's true it's true it's just that the church has been the one that's defended the truth all along are you still on that progress because you've come from way over here I'm much closer than I used to for sure and you're saying why don't you think I always liked about the church with the fire or one of the reasons why I chose Catholicism was that it doesn't change its mind on things just because you know because it's in fashion or you know I liked the fact that it was traditional and but yeah a few weeks when Pope Benedict was before he was actually you know elected Pope I started going to tailspin because there was all the reports in the media they would want a really liberal Pope and I was like well what did I join you people for if you're just gonna throw everything that'll win now and finally one day Brian said to me look it doesn't matter who they elect no matter how liberal they are they aren't going to be liberal enough for the Liberals and that's what I got okay you know people talk in politics in terms of liberal and conservative and within the church it means something completely different and so I was just trying to say like it's not like they're gonna come in and change doctrine even if within the church they're more liberal than John Paul the second was and you know the church is the same today as yesterday and will be tomorrow you know the church does not change about the church that I didn't know at any time before I became Catholic was that the Catholic Church is actually about love because I bought into the media hype that its anti-gay hates women I bought into the hype and what I've discovered since then is that that is not the church there are humans inside the church we mess up all the time because we're humans but the church is about love God's love and that is just that's enough to just keep me going on even if it's not the most popular what I was going to say nothing most popular because here you are coming back to the faith of your childhood and you're coming all the way from not just a non Catholic position but but you know a pro-choice position into the church at the same time that as you've referenced sadly the Catholic culture here in Canada seems to have gone in the other direction how do you look at that now from your perspective now the church around you here in Canada there are bright spots I think that we didn't have you know a a great time in in terms of the schools and catechism and so on that's starting to come back there's some real bright spots in terms of new schools like a lady seat of wisdom in the Ottawa Valley just great you know small liberal arts college trying to start up in and bring back because like like in the United States a lot of our Catholic colleges drop the Catholic part it became secular colleges with the same name and great religious orders like the Companions of the Cross and you know things that are are bringing the church back to where it was in bringing them the love of Christ back to the forefront instead of it just being about showing up but not knowing why it's about you know the whole package and so I find that really encouraging and it really helps at least me it helps me in terms of you know staying on track whispers encouraging one of the things that I noticed that when we first started going to our parish there were an awful lot of empty seats there were three masses over the weekend a lot of empty seats there aren't a lot of empty seats left anymore we show up early yeah we used to be able to show up five minutes before master and have our pick of where we wanted to sit I can't do that anymore if you want to see you have to get there so you know if that's more than just your barriers are you seeing that around hearing about it around other parishes as well so I think there's there's hope and there's a hunger out there you know people want to be fed they're looking for something and I think that the church is finding a way to say well we're what you're looking for and hopefully there's enough local parishes and local bishops that are able to convey the message in a way I think things are getting better their Eucharistic Adoration helps by the way too that's what we found at our part are you seeing that on the 18 our parish we we started that and that that has worked miracles they started a few three or four years ago it was only an hour once a month kind of thing and now we have it every Friday from 9:00 in the morning until 9:00 at night and there's another virtual it's not perpetual yet there's other 6:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. kind of thing there's baby steps but it's coming you have four children are you seeing that the Catholic families your age are following the being open to life or of a lot of them bought into the cultural soup around them that's more pro-choice or at least it depends on the family in our parish there's a lot of pro-life families definitely I mean there's a lot of us with three and four children at our parish at their schools there's still seems to be we're not much anomaly but ya know compared to the to some of the other schools in town that aren't Catholic schools showing up with four kids would be really strange at our at our school not not so strange it's still odd but not so strange all right your week excuse me your work in the media I'm is there a Catholic influence in the government or as or is that way down below the radar well it's way way down below the radar you know there's a a book out earlier this year that tried to claim that the government was being taken over by factions of the far Christian Right and we were moving towards theocracy it's its furthest thing from the truth it our prime minister is an occasional churchgoer he's not Catholic there's Catholic MPs there's there's Mass on on the hill that takes place now and again now we have priests that come in and give talks sometimes that creates controversy though the fact that a priest shows up and speaks to elected represented has created controversy here it shouldn't but it has and thankfully there's a there's prayer groups on the hill as well too to keep those that are of us that are trying to practice our faith give you some fellowship and and keep you on the straight and narrow but one of the sad irony is most don't know that one of the main impetus behind the American Revolution was the fear that the Catholicism in Canada would creep down into the stage so Sam Adams says that he was more afraid of the Quebec Act and that than he was the Stamp Act but the irony is that here we are up here that very center of Catholicism sadly has lost some of its energy some of its commitment and that's our prayer that it will come back and we'll see couples like you rediscover the faith and be part of the great seed of the of the church here in Canada in the future when are you seeing other couples like yourself rediscovering the faith around you we're not an anomaly we know a lot of big younger couples older couples couples our age and I would think this something that's different from when I was a kid is that you're not showing up maybe the children are showing up but if you're showing up now it's not due to social pressure if you're showing up now it's not because while everybody else goes to Mass so you better too you're showing up because you choose it and if you're choosing it it's for a reason right you know you're showing up for that relationship with God that relationship with Christ that you're not getting elsewhere I think I'll be trying to teach the kids is that we're not Catholic just on Sunday we're Catholic every day all day so it's not just on Sunday that we're going to church and saying our prayers we're saying grace before meals you people yeah you're thanking God for the food I've had arguments with family members because my family's still Protestant for me we're not all of them really supportive of my becoming Catholic why are you saying grace well because God doesn't feed me just at Christmas and Thanksgiving he feeds me three four times a day every single day of the year so I you know we're trying to teach that to the kids as well and they will actually keep us on the straight and narrow there's been a couple of times right bone-tired do we have to go to mass and it's one of four voices we'll say yes you do don't suggest a burger for dinner on Friday but we told as well by the six year olds a couple of weeks ago you can't eat meat on Fridays no well Barbara and Bryan thank you very much for for sharing with us your journey and also for your witness and your family it has lost your work so thank you both and thank you for joining us on this episode the journey home I hope that's been encouraged meant to you so god bless I'll see you again next week you

Channel: EWTN

Views: 12,329

Rating: 4.7037039 out of 5

Keywords: EWTN, Journey Home, Marcus Grodi, Brian Lilly, Barbara Lilly, Canada, Catholic, JHT01267

Id: 3W5jcvvKPZM

Length: 57min 51sec (3471 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 24 2011