Journey Home - JH in Canada - Marcus Grodi with Cale Clarke - 07-18-2011

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 Toronto and our guest for this evening is Cale Clark welcome to the program good to be humourous we're gonna jump into your story a little bit but I did hear just just for the fun of it I did hear on the side that you also have a bit of a hobby or avocation that you've actually written your own app for the iPhone tell us about it that's right actually a few months ago I came up with an app for the new English translation of the mass that's coming this year in 2011 so we're very excited about that and there is an app for that as they say so what does it do well basically what it does is it helps people to learn the new English translation of the mass and what we have in the app is the old translation of the mass text we have the new English translation and for each change there's also a reason that is given as well so people can understand one of the great things about the the new English translation is that it really brings out the biblical background of some of the mass texts in really refreshing ways and I think it'll help people to really grasp them and learn them in a fresh way there are a lot of people who would never darken the door of a Catholic bookstore to perhaps read a book about the new English translation but especially the young you know if they if they find out there's an iPhone app that they can download easily I mean they might even bring that to mass with them and hopefully father won't think they're texting in the mass yeah I'm trying to picture the future instead of the little missiles and it'll be everybody sitting there with an iPhone or iPad going from the mass but who knows where our teacher will be with all this technology exactly but thanks for doing that for us it's a nice little app but what I do in the program which you may have seen if you've seen a store before as I invite the guests to to take a long step back and begin this at the beginning of your own spiritual development and let us know you know how you were brought up in the faith absolutely well I was born on June 1st 1973 and that's the feast of Saint Justin Martyr and Saint Justin would loom large later in my life but I was born in Halifax Nova Scotia and I grew up in a suburb of the Halifax area called Cole Harbour and for all the hockey fans out there they'll know that that's the the hometown of Sidney Crosby the captain the Pittsburgh Penguins don't know the guy though I can't get you in autographs or money or anything like that but growing up I was I was definitely a part of a solid Catholic family we went to Mass every Sunday but for me it was very much like being a stone at the bottom of a riverbed in the sense that I was surrounded by the faith like that stone is surrounded by water but if you were to pick up that stone and break it open it'll be bone dry on the inside and I think for me the faith never really penetrated to the core of my being really affected my day-to-day life and when I was in high school like a lot of kids I was gonna back up this little to stop your flow but was is that area where you brought up it was a strongly Catholic you know there is certainly a large Catholic contingent in Nova Scotia many Catholics there absolutely so you know because it has its French Acadian background well the part of Nova Scotia that I'm from isn't isn't Acadia but I know that you have french-canadian roots and region to Quebec but so mainly an english-speaking Catholicism that we're dealing with here but in high school you know like a lot of kids I kinda had a crisis of faith and when I was 17 years old one Sunday morning I said to my mom I'm not going to Mass today and she wasn't of course physically strong enough anymore to grab me by the ear and drag me there and she just you know to turn beet red and said you're going to mass and I said why and she said because we're a Catholic I said mom why are we Catholic because we're Catholic you know I mean I needed to know the reason why was it just an accident of fate you know why are we Catholic and since I didn't really have the reasons that I needed to continue on I kind of step back and that continued on into my university years so all through the rest of high school did you did you go to church once in a while you know I became kind of a see know as I like to call a Catholic and name only and you know Christmas and Easter Catholic you know wouldn't recognize the place without the poinsettias at Easter lilies but when I was in university I started off at Saint Mary's University in Halifax ins maybe a sign that our lady was watching over me the whole time but I got a bit of a scholarship to study international business at Illinois State and I went on this program that had to do with NAFTA the North American Free Trade Agreement and I was talking to our Scott who works with you at the CH Network and he attended Illinois State so he knows the school very well right and I was studying with Canadian American and Mexican students about the north american free trade agreement and we're supposed to be a summer program but i stuck around for the fall semester because i was having so much fun and while i was there there was a it was just one one particular Sunday night I was in my off campus apartment I had some roommates there was a knock on the door and sure enough it were people out door-to-door witnessing from Calvary Baptist Church and I left them in my roommates thought I was insane you know what are you doing letting these religious wackos come into our home and I wanted to debate with them you know and I really thought that they would have a bumper sticker kind of faith you know the Bible says it I believe it that settles it and that was that wasn't good enough for me I need to know some some some actual facts and reasons here and so I invited these guys in and one of the guys that was there was a man named Marty Shriner and he was kind of the pastor of the seniors ministries at Calvary Baptist didn't know in this town in the name of the town is Normal Illinois which is an interesting name that's believe it or not it's the worldwide headquarters of State Farm Insurance but I was a trouble of you know explaining to people that this isn't normal and there was anything you know the conversation we had was anything is not normal it was actually quite stimulating because as I was asking Marty questions about his faith he actually had solid answers for me and I was I was taken aback by this I guess you could say my doubts along the way were of a historical nature like how do I know that Jesus really did miracles how do I know that he actually rose from the dead physically or is this just a fairy tale to make people feel better about their lives and and Marty really pointed out some of the the mountain of historical evidence for the resurrection and I'd never heard this stuff before and it just blew me away just absolutely blew me away and I was so intrigued by it by what he was saying he had given me his cards that call me if you ever want to talk about this again I did in fact take him up on that offer I'd call him from time to time we'd go out for a coffee and then one day he invited me to go to a football game at Illinois State and being a big sports fan I course couldn't turn that down twist my rubber arm so we went to Hancock Stadium and set up in the bleachers and we were watching this game and it was a blow it is about 40 to nothing it the fourth quarter and we we're kinda bored we started talking about God and stands and Marty had given me one of those gospel tracts with a prayer of commitment to Christ at the back and he said - Marty I said you know this is this might sound funny but I've been thinking a lot about our conversations and I've been very convinced by what you've said about the the evidence for Christ his resurrection and would you like to pray this prayer with me he said what I of course I would so right there in the stands we knelt down and we we prayed and I recommitted my life to Christ if you will now they would say of course that I'd been born again and I know better now of course I was but at the time at that moment you would have probably accepted their explanation of your new oh absolutely yeah absolutely I mean you know in that sort of fundamental under mentalist Baptist congregation they would have said that I'd been born again and I didn't know at the time that I already been born of water and the spirit at baptism and that's really what Jesus was talking about with Nicodemus when he talked about being born again was baptism no one prior to the Reformation ever interpreted that verse as being anything other than about baptism prior to that time and and of course I was rebaptised at Calvary Baptist and of course it didn't really do anything baptism is an unrepeatable sacrament but in your conversations with him as he was preparing you through this had you discussed your Catholic upbringing at all was that ever a part of the conversation well it did come up from time to time and I think these folks were I mean they're very sincere they love Jesus with all their heart and I thought well you know they must be right they said you got to get out of the Catholic Church you know now that you've recommitted yourself to Christ because they worship Mary they worship a piece of bread you know his typical anti-catholic misunderstandings but I I don't think there was any malice involved it was the dictum of Fulton sheen always holds true when he said you know they're not more than a hundred people in America who really hate the Catholic Church but there are perhaps millions who hate what they wrongly perceived to be the Catholic Church just just misinformation having been there myself yeah their desire was that you would know Jesus Christ absolutely sir desire they didn't want anything to stand in the way of that and even if it was another faith that wasn't quite right in their minds then you know that saw their desire was like I said it's very sincere for you oh absolutely and when I prayed that prayer in the football stadium something did happen to me it was almost like falling in love you know the trees looked greener the the sky was more blue I came alive to God in a way that I hadn't before I really did start to develop a more personal relationship with Christ which Catholics have to do as well of course and but I did say you know you got to leave the Catholic Church and I remember once a Marty had kind of passed me over to the college and career pastor a great guy named Jerry McCorkle I remember Jerry took me to McDonald's bought me a Big Mac isn't we started talking about things like the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary and he said you know Pope Pius the 12th invented this doctrine in 1950 you know where is he pulling this stuff out of and just a misunderstanding of of the role of the Pope and a you know of a doctrine that had always been part of the deposit of faith so did you write home with great joy to tell your parents about your new birth and Jesus Christ I tell you new converts are always the best evangelists whether they're Catholic or evangelical and I came home I went back to Nova Scotia after this time and I remember preaching to my parents and my sister at the dinner table and their eyes were just you know like it was like I was an alien you know what's gotten into this guy and thank goodness they didn't listen to me I was trying to convince him to leave the Catholic Church and your relatives are always the hardest people to convince anyways but yeah so but they I think we're happy that I had found religion quote/unquote and had some sort of meaning to my life at this point but but yeah I was I was on the road trying to convince everybody that I knew and I remember one of my best friends from high school is name was Steve Cox he once stopped me on the street he'd heard about what had happened to me he said what's this about you changing your religion and I said his Steve Steve it's not so much that I changed my religion but I found the deepest meaning of my old one and I really believe that was true because I had found Christ you know in the center of the Catholic faith is Christ as well and but I needed to rediscover the church and that was really something that took many years to get to at that point all right so your did you finish your school at Illinois no I came back to st. Mary's and finished my Bachelor of Commerce degree to the marketing degree and it was around that time that I went to a protestant seminary when I came back to Nova Scotia I was looking for an evangelical church to go to and a friend told me about this place called City Heights Church there was a church plant at the time they were meeting in my old high school cafeteria just trying to get things together and eventually hope to buy a building but the pastor of this congregation his name was Mike Charbonneau he kind of took me under his wing and this guy he's out in Vancouver now a phenomenal preacher the best I've ever heard still to this day I'm Nydia Marcus so uh present company excluded but he really taught me everything I know about preaching and he he encouraged me to preach my first sermon and I wasn't sure I wanted to do it but it seemed to go over well and and I began to help him out a little bit with Sunday morning duties preaching when he wasn't there and eventually I decided that I need to go get some theological education now if you were being wheeled into the or for heart surgery you know wouldn't be a very comforting feeling if just as the anesthetic was about to kick in yet he asked her surgeon where'd you go to medical school I didn't I I just taught myself at home you know and of course we were dealing with the Word of God it is a much more delicate than open heart surgery you know the heart soul and spirit are laid bare you know and his Hebrew says the Word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword and dividing this spirit marrow and Bonin and so I felt like I needed to be trained so that brought me to Toronto I moved here to go to Tyndale Seminary in the late 90s and began to study there it was an interesting place is that a its association affiliation well this is what was so interesting about Tyndale was a multi-denominational I mean I had guys in my classes who are Salvation Army pastors and many people don't realize the Salvation Army is a Protestant denomination they're wearing full uniform and I had Pentecostals in my classes adaptive you name it and we had some very very interesting conversations remember one class particular the professor's name was Robert Webb and he's a great biblical scholar as a specialist in John the Baptist or as he liked to call him John the Baptizer so not to be confused with a Baptist nomination but I remember we were talking about a biblical interpretation and one of the students raised what you know I thought at the time was it was a rather inane question he said you know professor why do we believe the Bible is the Word of God and professor Webb thought for a second and he said well it it says it's the Word of God the students said that's not going to work that's circular reasoning if it's the Word of God because it says it's the Word of God therefore it's the Word of God well we're gonna have to start expanding our list of holy books here because the Quran says it's the Word of God the Book of Mormon says it's the Word of God it's not going to work and the professor you know granted he was kind of caught off guard you didn't have a chance to formulate a proper response but he didn't really have much to say to that and in the back of my mind I think it was fermenting the idea that you know the big problem in Protestantism of course is the problem of authority everybody believes in the Scriptures but we don't all agree on what it means and without an authoritative church you don't even have an authoritative list of books in the Canon for to have an infallible list of books you have to have an infallible church to make that pronouncement in the first place and that's something I didn't realize at the time well I would imagine a school like that which is probably not all that different than where I went to seminary at gordon-conwell yeah non-denominational evangelical assumption that the problem with a school like that that I'm not sure you understand at the time but I'm wondering is because it's nondenominational it can focus on Jesus and get focus on the Scriptures but everything else ecclesiology sacraments even doctor and have to be real thin because you have all these different opinions there exactly I mean common saying that I'm sure you heard as well in unity in essentials unity and non essentials Liberty and all things charity but who is to say what are the essentials how do you know that one person's essential might be the Bible alone another person might have some denominational traditions such as baptism and many denominations like you know Presbyterianism you'll have different traditions regarding that but how do you know what the essentials are you don't really know did you come out of seminary with this in the same denominational commitment that you started or did you end up not really I came in sort of as a as a generic evangelical and along the way while I was in the seminary I got hired as an associate pastor at a Christian Reformed congregation and the pastor actually was one of my profs his name was dr. John Robin he's now the professor of preaching at Calvin seminary in Grand Rapids Michigan and I was in his advanced preaching class thing guess he liked what he heard so he asked me to apply and and I got the job as an assistant pastor there and I was there for three years and I loved it I was so happy I just knew enjoyed the people I loved preaching and and I didn't come back to the Catholic Church because I was dissatisfied with my ministry experience far from it I was kind of convinced against my will what was the message that your seminary training gave you towards the Catholic Church had it ever been brought up during those years or even your time at the Christian Reformed well actually Calvinist reform was it well well basically yeah it was in a Christian Reformed Church yeah absolutely so well actually my seminary was very I would say non-judgmental towards the couch Catholic Church in fact many of the faculty were graduates of st. Michael's College at the University of Toronto which is a Catholic institution that's where they did their PhD so we would interact with Catholic scholars in in our classes and things like that so it was a more I would say accepting environment also because of the multi-denominational factor so um and I'd never really hated the Catholic Church but really what brought me what started to bring me back was an experience I had while I was at the CRC my parents are what we call snowbirds and of course you guys have them too in Ohio they fly down to Florida for the wintertime and I went to visit them one year and they live in the st. Pete's area when they're down there I was kind of looking for something to do and they were still of course it's heading their local Catholic Church and I saw in their bulletin that there was a theology untap meeting that was coming up for young adults they were meeting in a pub to talk about theology and I thought this is great you know I've got to go to this and so I showed up at this local pub in Florida and I sat at a table with a bunch of people that remind kind of in their late 20s that's how old I was at the time and we got talking and introducing ourselves and I said well I used to be a Catholic but now a Protestant pastor I thought I was going to convert these guys yeah and there was a girl is at my table her name was Kristen Clarke no relation to me and she said well that's interesting I used to be a Protestant and now I'm a Catholic and I had never really met anybody that a gun you know I've seen most of the traffic going the other way out of the Catholic Church and I said really what what on earth made you do that and she talked about how she came from a Baptist background and she and her mother just went through an incredible agony when they converted to Catholicism I said what made you do it and she asked me if I'd ever heard of Scott Hahn I said no who is this guy and she told me about Scott Hana who's a former of course Presbyterian pastor and Seminary prog become Catholic told me about his book Rome sweet home said he got to read this book we talked about Peter Kreeft and Peter Kreeft used to be in the Christian Reformed Church which was the denomination I was currently serving in have you ever read his conversions was he at the college were your professor with I think he graduated on Calvin colleagues I believed I think he went to you out to college there but Peter Kreeft of course a Catholic convert I wasn't aware that he was a Catholic convert at the time she said you really should read his conversion story so I kind of took her up on his challenge when I when I came back home to Ontario I read Scott Hans book started reading crepes conversion story and that just just led me to a huge process of discovery and kind of read my way back into the church and in a certain sense a key moment was and he was in 2003 I decided to go to a defending the faith conference at Steubenville and you were there and Scott was there and I was just listened to the presentations and being very moved and I'll never forget the key moment was going to a talk by Patrick Madrid you know the noted Catholic apologist and uh during the Q&A session of his talk somebody asked him about the necessity of conversion and at that point I had been sort of learning about Catholic doctrines being fairly convinced of them but I didn't think I necessarily had to go back I thought maybe I could just stay in my CRC congregation and maybe educate them a little bit about Catholic doctrine and Patrick Madrid I'll never forget this as long as I live quoted lumen gentium from Vatican 2 chapter 14 where it says that whosoever knows that the Catholic Church was made necessary by Christ for salvation but either refuses to enter her or refuses to remain in her cannot be saved and when I heard that it was like wow I was cut to the heart these are not just nice doctrines that I'm learning this has to do with my salvation if I'm really starting to believe that the Catholic Church is the true church I need to go back you know for the sake of my own soul so I was very convicted by this and I went back and talked to my pastor about it John Rothman and I thought he was gonna tell me no you're crazy you know stay in the CRC but he had told me you know when I was doing my masters and patristic s-- at the University of Toronto is studying the Church Fathers and he said I I thought about converting and becoming a Catholic and he ultimately didn't but far from discouraging me I was quite shocked he said you know maybe this is where God is leading you and that really you know just took me aback and so I sort of continued on this road and then I realized it was all true and I needed to come home through your seminary training well even backing up a bit through your born-again experience in the football stadium and then and then going to the seminary and then your experience as a pastor there would you have understood that a church of any sort was necessary for salvation or would have been more it's your relationship to Jesus regardless of what church are in yeah no I I would definitely have been in that camp you know it's all about the relationship with Christ but I began to realize that if it wasn't for the church specifically the Catholic Church we wouldn't even know who Jesus is you know we think about all the christological controversies of the first four centuries you know there were what would seem to be persuasive arguments for a lot of these positions but the church eventually decided no this is Jesus Christ you know he's true God true man he has a human soul you know all of these controversies defining who Jesus says we need to know who Jesus is in order to love him you can't love someone that you don't know and it's the Catholic Church that safeguards you know critiques about the person of Christ and so yeah the church became huge for me I also began to realize that you know the church was his mystical body and if you want to have Jesus you know I always say Jesus comes to us in a tripartite form he comes to us of course in his physical body that he took at the Incarnation that he ascended into heaven with is is glorified at the Father's right hand and then of course there's his Eucharistic body we have to have his Eucharistic body to have the full Christ and then the mystical body of the church was it the same for you as it was for me I remember from my seminary training we would it wasn't that we ignored the words were just talking about the mystical body of Christ or the body of Christ it's just that we would mention them but not take them very far because the trajectory of those things what was to Catholic yeah you know anything like the Lord's Supper we would talk about we would of course celebrate it as you would have but never really took it too far was that your experience yeah and I think there was a fear of taking it too far where it might lead and another pivotal event that happened in my life was going to a denominational conference for the Christian Reformed Church and their headquarters Grand Rapids Michigan and I went to the famous admins discount theological bookstore and that was just a while it's like being a kid in the candy store you know these cheap discount theological books and of all places that was where I found two books on Cardinal Newman of course was recently beatified by Pope Benedict one book was a collection of sermons by Cardinal Newman on Mary and that was pivotal but even more so was a book that was written by father Stanley yaki called Newman's challenge and you know they've been so many misconceptions about Cardinal Newman you know a lot of people try to paint him as a as a figure for liberal Catholicism nothing could be further from the truth and there's a chapter in the book that talked about letters that Newman wrote to his closest friends and associates many of whom he lost his friends when he converted and he talked about the necessity of following the truth wherever it leads even if that is into the Catholic Church and in each of these letters that he wrote on the eve of his conversion he used the phrase one true fold one true fold one true fold and he said what a doom would have been mine if I had kept the truth hidden as a secret within my heart and I could have saved others from from agony I could have saved others from not knowing the truth I had to share even it you know my own you know to whatever cost it would accrue to me and so that that's really the way I felt and when I once I realized this I knew I needed to to convert I knew I needed to come home but at the time art we lost her senior pastor he'd gone to be a preaching professor at Calvin and the congregation asked me to stay on for a few months during the transition time because I was only the only guy they had so they knew where your heart they knew where my heart was I told them you know I'm coming back to the Catholic Church and I really struggled with whether I should preach about things that I was learning you know there was this unethical and and and Newman's words really were the impetus for me to share the truth that I knew I figured this may be my only chance some of these folks might might be dead by next week you know you'll never preach the same crowd again as they say and so I decided to share what I was learning and there's one particular sermon I gave about the Annunciation that rub some people the wrong way but one guy came out for me afterwards he said thank you I've never really understood you know the Catholic teaching on on Mary before and who she is and her role in God's plan of salvation thank you for sharing that so so I think it kind of got through to some people I guess in a way you never know where you're planting seeds yeah we're you married during this time I mean often that's the big issue when a clergyman asked to decide to become Catholic was that an issue for you well I'm very thankful that that I wasn't married at the time because I think it made it easier for me it was only really my own welfare that I was dealing with at the time and I wasn't married I met my wife actually soon after I returned of the Catholic Church and I was kind of an interesting story in itself and so I was very thankful to beat her Patricia has been just just wonderful for me and so did you then after a couple months come into the church and then what happened your family were they jump in backflips or well they were there kind of maybe a little bit you know they were surprised I think but they kind of took it in stride and yeah and they weren't they stayed pretty calm I think through the whole process through evangelical years then coming back from the Catholic Church I think my grandmother's were quite happy about this but they're quite development well you know this might this might be Agra for you answer on on television but sometimes what I've noticed is when the Catholic wanders discovers Christ in his enthuse and then discover the church again he certainly comes back and thews and often more enthused than his family was all along with their Catholicism yeah I think I think that's that's certainly the case you know and and perhaps they thought I was just you know what's his next move gonna be you know is he gonna convert to Islam perhaps they thought it was a little bit unstable but you know I think I think they they were happy ultimately that I did come back but I think you know like like a lot of folks I think you know lukewarmness is the great enemy of the faith you know I think I think a lot of Catholics are in that boat and at least if you hate the church you're passionate in some way and you care someone who's lukewarm is very different seems like there's some place in Revelations where the that's right where our Lord Jesus he didn't like lukewarm this at all absolutely I wish your either cold or hot but because you're lukewarm I'm gonna vomit you out of my mouth it's like coffee you know we drink it hot we drink it cold but lukewarm nobody likes it alright let's take a break dick sounds good and we'll come back in a little bit with the rest of welcome back to the journey home our guest tonight is Cale Clark and we're right in well you've come into the church and your term to your story but I'm you might want to back up a little bit because in a sense that what were then the the key things or topics or issues that helped you rediscover and appreciate your your Catholic faith yeah and as I said the beginning the program my doubts were always of a historical nature so to me history is key whether it's the history of the Catholic Church and really the Catholic Church is the only church that has a credible claim to being founded by Jesus Christ it's the only Church that goes back to Jesus and still exists today you know as Jesus said the gates of Hell will not overcome it so that's huge and also again just the historicity of the life of Christ Himself specifically his resurrection and I didn't know it at the time you know back when I was at Illinois State and those guys knocked on my door but you know in in 1st Corinthians chapter 15 Saint Paul is very blunt about you know that he's very very upfront about the issue if Christ was not raised from the dead our preaching is useless and so is your faith you know and if Christ hasn't been raised let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die I mean there is no hope without the resurrection man and the Bible is very upfront about that and the idea that this actually happened in history it's one of the most well attested well attested events of antiquity a lot of people don't know that and you know something happened and you have to explain that somehow and they're competing theories that are out there like the swoon theory you know which I'm sure you've heard many times is quite popular among German theologians and scholars in the in the 19th century this idea that you know after the crucifixion well then nobody doubts that Jesus was crucified by the Romans you know after the crucifixion Jesus just needed a cool place to rest and lie down and hit well in the in the darkness of the tomb he was able to kind of just take a nap and felt better you know and decided to just roll the stone away by himself walking to town on you know feet that were pierced you know knock out the guards and and somehow convince the Apostles that he was the Lord of life and had conquered the grave you know they would have been like get this guy a doctor I mean you know he's in rough shape you know there's no way that theory it's Planes the change you know in the apostles in the beginning of the church or this idea that the Apostles stole the body you know they've really got Jesus's body in the trunk of a car somewhere you know they were able to somehow again overpower the guards take out the body of Christ and go around preaching that he's alive at the risk of their own necks well all the while knowing that he's dead you know that's just a preposterous theory and you told them at one point were martyred exactly the resurrection of the truth of the Resurrection they would add their death been lying and hold of that lied to the very end of a they knew in their heart it was a long well that's exactly right I mean there are many of course I would grant that there are there are many people who will die for what they believe to be true for example the suicide bombers of 9/11 sincerely thought there would be a heavenly reward for their actions they were sincerely wrong but they believed it but no one is willing to die for something that they know is a lie and the apostles were in a very unique position to know whether Jesus had appeared to them alive or not so I mean these these sorts of things I just convinced me to take a step of faith in the direction that all the evidence was pointing and that in that direction was that Christ was alive and he can be encountered today and for Catholics we encounter him most fully through the church in the sacraments where he physically comes to us especially in the Eucharist a big issue for someone like yourself coming from the Christian Reformed into the Catholic Church would have been Peter and there may have been a listener to that may have beg to differ with you because they may have argued from an Eastern Orthodox perspective that well our church goes all the way back physically but the difference is Peter how do you deal with that is you want your journey yeah well that's that's a great question and when you again history being ignorant of it as you know as you guys say you know what the coming home network to be deep in history is to be deep in Christ Newman right exactly it's it comes back to Newman and so again if you look at the historical record I mean there was a case I believe it was around the Year 189 AD where Pope Victor told the Eastern Churches to get the you know to come into line with Rome about I believe was the date of Easter right and he said if you don't do this I'm gonna excommunicate you guys you know and the eastern Bishop said you know we don't think we should really have to do this but they eventually did comply with his requests but nobody said you have no authority to say this you're just a you know one among equals as a bishop a fellow bishop they knew that because he was the successor of Peter you know from Rome he did have the authority to - to judge in these matters so again history you know comes out on the side of our position about Our Lady yeah what was she had in your journey well like I said at the beginning I think the fact that I attended st. Mary's University or lady has kind of been watching over me as a good mother the entire time and and I remember a key incident that happened on my on my journey back I wasn't quite ready to come home yet but 2002 World Youth Day in Toronto of course the Holy Father himself was here john paul ii and they had a massive way of the cross you might have seen this on television there was hundreds of thousands of people on university avenue in toronto for this enactment of the way of the cross and curiously enough another interesting thing was that the guy who was playing the lead centurion the roman centurion leading jesus to his death actually turned out to me my future brother-in-law so i didn't know that at the time but i attended the way of the cross with some Catholic friends that I had met I remember talking this one guy about her lady and he made this comment our lady is everything to me I said well hold on here shouldn't Jesus be everything to you yep you know aren't you kind of missing the point and I didn't understand at the time that you know any true devotion to Our Lady will of course lead one to the reality of who her son is because it is you know to Jesus that we go and is to him that we always return as st. Josemaria Escriva said through Mary and Jesus of course initially came to us through Mary and we go back to him through her and through her intercession as well yeah the the mystery there I I remember I wonder if you thought the same way that when when I was a Protestant we would often ridicule the crucifix and say see Catholics don't believe he really resurrected yeah because they've got him on a cross which in a big picture is absurdity because if we didn't believe in the rhetoric resurrection there wouldn't be anything right well that's about it's a bit like Mary you know we're looking at Mary so we must worship Mary but if we didn't believe in Jesus as really the point of everything we wouldn't be looking at Mary either that's absolutely true it's I mean she is a creature she's the most exalted creature of all far above the Angels the angels can only dream of what she was able to do which is you know to contain God living inside of her that's why the early fathers compared to the burning bush yet she was not consumed and that's that's very true and with respect to the crucifix you know I always say to people who ask me that same question you know we know Jesus rose from the dead okay you know we're very big on proclaiming the resurrection but the reason why we like to instead of having an empty cross on the wall and have a crucifix is to remind people that that is the greatest act of love that has ever been seen on the face of the earth and this is what we're called to imitate that act of total self-giving which is what what love is all about Christ modeled it for us well another major difference between the Christian Reformed tradition and the Catholic tradition is liturgy in the Eucharist and so how about that in your your your pilgrimage of faith now that was absolutely huge and of course one of the things I've done recently is I've come up with this iPhone app it's called the new mass and it's for the new English translation of the mass so liturgy is important to me one of the things that I realized when studying church history was that people couldn't just sort of construct their own worship however they saw fit when I was in the CRC one of the one of the things that happened to me that really made me think was I wanted to start a service for young adults and the pastor said to me dr. Rotman said to me well you really need to think about the liturgy and how you liturgical II want things to fit together and so I never really thought too much about Christian worship to that point but that really made me think like how should a liturgy actually be constructed and you know in a lot of evangelical congregations you know you the centerpiece of course is the sermon but there is a liturgy you know of sorts and if you start messing with it people let you know about it you know if you put the sermon first for example you know someone will complain because the is in order to worship I think everybody knows deep in their hearts there ought to be but when you look in the Old Testament people were not free to sort of worship as they saw fit God gave very specific instructions to Moses on the mountain about how he wanted to be worshipped and the Golden Calf incident as Cardinal Ratzinger said in his book the spirit of the liturgy was nothing more than people trying to pull God down to their own level to to create a God in their own image in a worship the way they wanted to do it rather than deal with the Living God and how he wants to be worshipped and God does have ideas about how he wants to be worshipped and for us we know that that ultimately is the mass and in the early church it's not as if the early Christians gave some surveys you know to the Parthian Xand the barbarians and the Creedence you know what kind of worship will best reach the people in your community you know no it was it was kind of this is it and you have to conform yourselves to it it's called the maps and well again we have that really witness from Justin Martyr absolutely and just a murder again his feast day is my birthday and reading his apology to the Emperor and he describes the mass and this is quoted at length in the Catechism of the Catholic Church it is essentially the same outline of the mass that we have today and this was another powerful reminder that you know the Catholic Church is in continuity with the Church of the Apostles via the early church is the Catholic Church so you leave the CRC you finally after a couple months delay you're in the church do you land running I mean what do you do now well what happened was there was a priest who had kind of helped me back in and he had heard my confession and I said the Creed in his presence and you know when you're revert like me it's a pretty simple process to go back in you just make a good confession confess your faith and you're good to go and he said you know there's a priest by the name of father Joe saying who's looking to hire a layperson as a pastoral assistant why don't you give him a call and I was like oh so sure about that but the father Joe actually called me and he said come in and see me in my office and when I left the CRC I didn't know what I was going to do I figured I'd go flip burgers here's something I didn't really have a job father Joe invited me into his office and he just asked me a few questions about my view on faith and was I Orthodox or not and at the end of our talk he said you're hired I looked around I said well where is the search committee you know when I joined the CRC I'd gone through this huge process and been raked over the coals and he said you know in the Catholic Church we do things a little differently I'm the search committee you know I'm the pastor and you're hired if you want the job I said sure so I've been working with father Joe ever since and we're now here at st. Justin Martyr parish in the Toronto area and there's just a murder again yeah and there's just a murder again and and being an apologist is something I'm passionate about as well like st. Justin's and soon after I came back and in the Catholic faith I began the faith explained seminars the faith explained calm and I do travel around and give talks on the faith and different issues and right now I'm doing a lot of talks in the new english translation of the mass that's coming up and we're just so excited about that and i want to share the knowledge that I have and hopefully help people that were in the same boat I was in years ago the talk also goes in the midst of that you you met your wife do you I did and that was that was again God's providence at work and you know what had happened was I was when I was still in the CRC there was a guy in my congregation by the name of Ray he was a teacher who was very involved in the pro-life movement and he kind of pricked my conscience a little bit because I've been pro-life of course for years but I hadn't really done much about it and every year we have the National March for Life in Canada much as as in the states that have one in Washington and our March is in Ottawa and you guys are headed of course to Ottawa for some journey home episodes our nation's capital and Ray used to take the day off from work he was a teacher and drive to Ottawa five hours each way just to be in the March spend a couple hours in the march for life come back home just a witness for life and and Ray really inspired me I said this year I'm going with you so we drove down to Ottawa together and while we were on the march for life that's where I first saw my wife and I had noticed her and I said well that's that's a pretty girl but I said you know I that's kind of a crazy idea to want to talk to her here to you know say babies and she was there with summer students she's a teacher and I desperately wanted to introduce myself to her but I didn't do it I was too shy there was one moment towards the end of the March we were walking up Parliament Hill together and it's just the two of us side-by-side but I didn't say anything to her and she kind of disappeared into the crowd but I never see her again and about a month later I was invited to go to a mass for the feast day of st. Josemaria Escriva and when I went to this mass I walked into the lobby and there she was she was she was there again I said well this may be a sign from heaven I need to talk to this girl so I introduced myself to her and we went out on a date and the rest is history so was she a lifelong Catholic yeah she would she was a lifelong Catholic and a cradle Catholic and and she had been you know obviously as a lot of Catholics do you know she'd had you know a few crises of faith along the way but she had never walked away like like I did and and so she finds that sometimes hard to understand you know the other side of things we have several evangelical friends and and she's kind of getting to know that world and she's been a great great help for me in my ministry there may be some parents watching the program who are lifelong Catholics whose children have left like you did yeah all right and from the shoes of a river yeah talk to them a little bit if you would what without pointing fingers of blame that's not the issue but what can we do better to make sure our children catch the faith and keep the faith well I think you know I always go back to what I said to my mom you know chai which I mentioned the beginning you know why are we Catholic you know because we're Catholic isn't a good enough answer we need to train young people in apologetics you don't give them as much as they can digest at every stage of their life they need to know the reasons for their faith because when they hit university and they're taught by secular professors who have PhDs and they must know what they're talking about you know it is very easy to be swept away into the secular you know minefield that we live in one of the things I like to be involved in this campus ministry and there's a local university called York here in Toronto and and when you walk down the hall to the Catholic chaplaincy office it is a it is a sort of a rogue's gallery of all the different philosophies of life that are out there there's there's the Wiccan Students Union there are the animists there's every Protestant denomination Under the Sun Islamic student Federation secularists that are out there atheists and at the end of the hall there was the Catholic chaplaincy and sometimes it's tough for young people to find that place theoretically speaking so I think I think that that's religious education is is is always the key in my books yeah of catechesis you know that quote that you mentioned earlier from you lumen gentium which says that if a person refuses to either enter in or to remain Ian you know they can't be saved but what I find fascinating about that particular quote from them when gentium is it's in a paragraph in lumen gentium that's directed to Catholics exactly the next paragraph is about those are outside the church the next paragraph about non-belief so in other words what it implies is it's possible for a person to be a Catholic but not enter into the church and that's a very good point to make Marcus because right after it says this it says just because you're in the church don't think that you're scot-free you know you can't you can walk into McDonald's but it doesn't make you a hamburger you know just simply being in the physical boundary of the church does not mean you in fact as it says you know the judgment will be even stricter for Catholics those who knew what their masters will was did they do it and and that's really the key question are we living up to our faith you know to ever much has been given much will be demanded and so my wife always says that's a scariest verse in the Bible for me because you know am I really living up to the faith that I profess that I claim to profess and so we have to become Saints that's a goal of our life if we don't we've missed the boat completely one of the biggest tensions in fulfilling the Great Commission go you therefore and make disciples of all nations it's the tension between which comes first evangelization or church renewal you know and we want to mean and we're going to go out and bring them to Jesus well what are they going to find when we bring them back well if we focus on church renewal what about those beside the church that don't know Christ so there's that which chicken in a name yeah absolutely so how do you view that now that you're working full-time in the church helping out fathers say I think evangelization is renewal and here's what I mean by that you know every Catholic must evangelize this is not a job just for our priests or nuns consecrated laypeople we all have to be the salt and light of Christ in the world and we preach the gospel in many ways the st. Francis of Assisi once famously said you know preach the gospel at all times if necessary use words the way that we work the testimony of our very lives ought to be enough to attract people but eventually they will want to know what makes us different so it will be necessary to use words and I think that I've always said the best way to grow in your faith is to start sharing it because when you when you do begin to talk to people about the faith they will have questions and you'll have to know the answers now it's okay if you don't have those answers off the top of your head you can always say that's a great question I'm gonna go back and find the answer but do get back to the person and that's what I mean when I say evangelization is renewal because as you share your faith you begin to grow in it yourself and you have to make the effort sir to read the Catechism or other resources so you can you can check your lack of information with the great gifts I mean from the truth that the church gives us absolutely yeah you seem to be very excited about the coming of the new English translation what do you think about its impact on on the faith of the church in Canada well this is this isn't going to be an incredible teaching moment for the church in the english-speaking world and I think that in Canada we have our work cut out for us in many ways and of course the new English translation doesn't doesn't affect things as much and in Quebec obviously because it's the French translation is actually quite quite wonderful that we have and but but still I was having a discussion with with a priest friend of mine who's been on your show before father Eric Nicolae he's a convert as well and we were talking about the church in Quebec there was an evangelical historian by the name of Mark Knoll who I know that you know well and he once wrote a book about the history of Christianity in North America and he said that in the 1950s Quebec you could make the argument was the most Christianized place that had ever been seen on the face of the earth the church was omnipresent in society everybody went to on Sundays it seemed and the faith was a part of everyone's life but yet in one generation the edifice completely crumbled and now when you go to come back it is a very secularized place there's still many faithful Catholics there and there's still the signs of the faith I mean it's absolutely mean that's all there of course it's very much like when you go to California you know all the names of the towns are named after saints you know like Saint hyacinth and you know in places like Francisco San Francisco San Diego exactly it's very much the case in Quebec as well and in discussing this with father Nikolai he made an interesting observation he said I don't think the church in Quebec was was ever really that Christian to begin with because if it really was it never would have fallen apart like it did in one generation it was only apparently Christian and there is the danger of cultural Catholicism like I talked about the beginning it can be a stone in a riverbed surrounded by water yet be bone dry on the inside and I think in many ways you know we have to fight against that in our culture in learning about the liturgy we get to learn about the heart of our faith which is Jesus Christ that's what the mass is all about so the fact that we won't be able to go from memory anymore is a golden opportunity not just to teach people some new responses to the mass but you know the deep meaning of the mass and and that's what we tried to do with this new mass app you know as simple as it is just to help people to learn what some of these changes are and and fall in love with Christ in the mass yeah there's going to be those those who will fight against the new translation just because we've the way we've done it forever yeah although they may not realize that when he done it this way for 30 years it sounds you know them but it does make it difficult when you've got to republish all the liturgy books and the music has to fit the new translation so they need to pray for people to be open to what the church wants to give what about the Saints in your journey we've mentioned a couple times but we're doing particular Saints that played a part well st. Justin Martyr obviously played a huge part in my journey Cardinal Newman who's now Blessed Cardinal Newman was obviously huge as well and you know I just think that you know when we look at the Saints we see total Christianity the reason why they were so they stick out like sore thumbs is be they practiced all the corporal works of mercy and the spiritual works of mercy at the same time like somebody like Mother Teresa who you know many atheists are taking shots at these days her compassion for the poor they have no problem with but her steadfast adherents the doctor in the Catholic Church they can't understand and much like Jesus himself who was a polarizing figure I I do think that when we when we see the Saints we see Jesus you know poured through their particular personality and that's that's what we all have to realize - we're called to be Saints as Hebrews says without holiness no one will see the Lord and we don't have to become a generic cookie cutter Christian we don't have to become like Ned Flanders on The Simpsons you know we were called to be the best version of ourselves when we get closer to Christ we don't have to be afraid that he's going to transform us into a person that we don't like we're going to become a much better version of who we are and we'll be able to reach far more people than we ever dreamed it might be good especially if we have any CRC folk or people that presume that Catholics believe in works righteousness you just talked about living a holy life maybe clarify that make sure they understand the place of faith and works in our Catholic well both Protestants and Catholics believe that we are saved by grace we're saved by the grace of God but we know that we have to cooperate with that grace and so that is what this process of sanctification is about God is a gentleman as I always say you know when I got married to my wife you know I wasn't an arranged marriage I didn't put a gun to her head and say you know marry me or else you know she freely chose to enter into that relationship and that's what God is like he's a gentleman lover and you'll never twist your arm he just gently calls to you and he wants to enter into that relationship and so we do have freedom if we didn't have true freedom then you know where does sin come from well God is not the author of sin it comes from you know our free choice to turn away from him and so we need to turn back to him we need to cooperate with his grace and when we do that we'll see that Catholic doctrine makes sense the best way to know it really you know the proof is in the pudding as Jesus once said you know if you want to know whether my teaching comes the father you know let a person do my teaching let him live it out and he will know whether it is true I think the same is true for the doctrines of the Catholic Church they work in practice because they are true I know one thing that was very much a part of the Calvinist background and that is understanding God's call in your life are the elect and all right you know how it God has been guiding in your life as you look back now and the different paths you went do you see the hand in God and all that oh absolutely I think God God was there every step of the way and you know I think in many ways you know he allowed me to walk away so he could bring me back and help others on the journey and and and that's something that I hope to do and it's something that you're doing as well with this program and the wonderful Ministry of the coming home network and I I do think that in everyone's life you know God is in the details as it were and nothing happens purely by chance nothing escapes the Providence of God and what we need to do is train ourselves how to read these events and see what God is saying to us recognizes calls in our lives there may be someone who's who's watching today who may be you know hearing the voice the spirit in their life come home and I would urge them to get off that couch go to confession come home you know watching wwt n it's great but but the point of it all is to come back to the Lord in the church sometimes I wonder if the biggest barrier especially for reverts who have left the church is themselves because they've said maybe in the process so many things against the church that other their upbringing and they've established themselves as this yeah and so that's really what they've got to set aside just to come home to the confession yeah you have to eat a lot of humble pie absolutely but as they say there's no humility without humiliation and so you have to have to admit that you were wrong and and that's also very freeing to and just say you know I'm happy to be home you know and I was never more glad to be wrong that I was about the Catholic Church all right Gail thanks a lot hey one more time tell them about your app just where they find it if they wanted to well it's official you can just go to the App Store through iTunes and it's called the new Mass or they go to my website the faith slang calm and there are links to it there all right all right thank you we've begun a program today and thank you for joining us on this episode the special episode from Toronto I pray this has been a courage meant to you and look forward to being with you again on another episode of the journey home

Channel: EWTN

Views: 8,596

Rating: 4.8947368 out of 5

Keywords: EWTN, Journey Home, Marcus Grodi, Cale Clarke, JH in Canada, Catholic, JHT01300

Id: cDsADqzIMGY

Length: 56min 31sec (3391 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 19 2011