Protestant Pastor Quits to Become Catholic w/ Shane Page

shane page great to have you in the studio it's a pleasure to be here thank you for inviting me yeah so for those who are watching sum up what just happened over the past year maybe in a minute before we we delve deeper into it well what's happened over the just the last year is that i was a united methodist elder a pastor of a congregation and after a long period of time and discernment i made the leap to become catholic so that's what happened in uh within the last year i was raised in a united methodist family in gastonia north carolina shout out to g-town and um i attended a united methodist church i was a nominally christian young person became a dissipated youth but i did have a what we would call in the protestant world the time a born-again experience which led me to discern a call to ministry within the united methodist church and um and that's what i did for 18 years and i have been a catholic in full communion for about two or three months three months because you and i were going to do a a sort of skype interview a few months back i'm glad we didn't it's always nice to be able to sit across a table in person yeah okay wow all right uh where where do we begin so so methodist pastor north carolina you said it was a relatively big church for a methodist congress well my last uh in the united methodist church there is an appointment system and we have a bishop and the bishop appoints the clergy to the churches that signs them and my last appointment was davidson united methodist church i was a senior pastor there um a congregation of about between 2 500 to 3 200. wow that's suspect yes yes yeah okay um at what so what was your opinion of catholics as you came into the ministry as a pastor i had no opinion of of of catholics in uh in the south where i'm from there was one catholic parish you're going to say one count or one catholic um but multitudes of protestant churches that just dotted the landscape there and as a united methodist and the thought never even occurred to me that i would one day become catholic yeah the word catholic was not even used in my family and um and the only stories i ever heard of catholics were i guess pre-vatican two days with my grandmother would say well i remember there was a neighbor of ours and and we couldn't even go into our house because we were protestants who are these uh who are these catholic people uh yes so even when i became what i would say a fervent christian in these in september gosh it's almost been that long now september of 1996 i was a cook at chili's grilling bar or for nine years a friend of mine who's we've since become distance but there was another cook there named sean my name is shane he was sean and he was a pentecostal and he loved his faith he loved the lord i was always curious as a child so i was the young child who even though i would not say i had any kind of formation you know deep formation in christianity i was as a young child i can remember being very curious about god about heaven what is that what does it mean i would i would take my family's bibles this huge bible and i would and it had all these renaissance images of the lord and i would just pour over it from time to time i would even read the gospels uh and i was doing that at least eight years old uh yes and uh so um when i so sean what he ended up doing is that he rekindled that curiosity so even when i was a methodist pastor i would say never underestimate your witness to someone else so when you were a cook at chili's yes were you a practicing christian no i was not a practicing christian i would say i believed in god i mean i was pretty much what is it called the moral therapeutic deist yeah um and but i would not consider myself necessarily a christian in practice at all but what sean was able to do and i don't even think he knows that and if he's watching i just need to thank him publicly for this is that he kept inviting me to his church i'll go to a pentecostal church i would always say no i never i never said yes to his invitation because um i was afraid of pentecostals and and but then he said hey billy graham's coming to charlotte once you come with us okay and so i accepted that invitation now a week before the actual crusade was happening and it was in charlotte i knew at that point that i needed to go ahead and make a decision whether i was going to be all in for the for jesus or whether i was going to just just you know don't don't as the lord says don't be um cold be either hot or cold don't be lukewarm and even days before the crusade even came to town i thought yeah this is going to be the week for me and that night i did do the altar call and came forward and i can remember he had such a gift didn't he billy graham yes but i for in my case it was already predetermined what i was going to do okay i knew that i was going to go down to the to the ground and what ended up happening is that unbeknownst to me there were people there on site who were going to pray with me i didn't know that so someone came to me and said what you're doing is is going to establish eternity and then he led me into a confession of sin interestingly enough he says why don't you just let the lord know right now what you've done because his mercy is there to forgive you and i can remember bawling i mean just a copious tears in that moment and my my change was dramatic it happened immediately i was really no longer the same and and i don't want to belabor this belabor the point but i can remember being in the car with sean and his family looking out the window and as i'm leaving the cr the erickson stadium is what it was called at the time in charlotte i'm not going to be the same human being anymore and i was not it was a dramatic conversion and i developed an insatiable thirst for scriptures i needed to know everything about everything and poured over the bible nightly had no idea what i was reading and that continued for a couple of years and um it was just dramatic maybe belabor the point a little bit talk about how your behavior changed uh how your interior life changed maybe how some of your relationships had to change at the time i'm not sure yes i would say well i've got kids watching i i i did not make their greatest decisions growing up um and um as i've heard to say before uh i did d-umb i had a phd in d-umb um that stopped all of that stopped i had no desire for it anymore so what i what i used to be was no longer even appealing and you know there's a verse of scripture i think in romans where people think is it in romans where people will think it odd that you are no longer uh rushing towards us yes i think peter one of peter's positions maybe it's one of his epistles and um so that changed did it affect my friendships yes slowly because my friends with whom i used to corrals all of a sudden i'm this zealot and i was a zealot and maybe at times i was a little overbearing i was a new you know me too you know i know the feeling and that those friendships did change and i did lose some of those friendships but some of those friendships became forged through christ because sean for instance and there were a few others who after a period of time helped me discern what i thought was my call to ministry but of course ministry to me was within the methodist church so that's another thing that changed i started reattending the congregation of my family which was first united methodist in gastonia and i would go alone so at chile's grill and bar i would always work the night shifts on saturday i would get out at uh 2 3 a.m but i would always show up for worship the next morning you know for five hours later or whatever it was and i became involved in in that church and then reached out to the the senior pastor of that congregation who by the way wrote me a note and i guess the billy graham crusade when i listed first church as the church of my childhood i received a letter from him from through the billy graham crusade i heard about your conversion i'm praying for you and i reached out with him to him and we became friends and we're still friends to this day where was your mum and dad and pap siblings at that at this point well my uh grandparents so my maternal grandparents my mother's mother and father they were the ones who primarily raised me in the church so i did come from the southern family where if you were too sick to go to church you're too sick to do anything if you didn't go to church it's over and they were very faithful in that uh that changed as i became about 13 or 14 years old they didn't press that so much i wish they would have in hindsight my mother and father well i don't really know who my father is i was raised by a single mother my mother and father divorced when i was about a year and a half maybe two years old my sister was four months at the time and they lived in rocky mount north carolina and um i have no idea what happens none of my business and um she relocated to her hometown gastonia and so my grandparents helped raise me and i believe my grandmother said that my grandfather said without a father this this young man is going to need a father figure and he did what he could to be that father figure for me but he was a very hard man he was a merles marauder in world war ii um had medals i had no idea that he had these war medals until his death he died in 1999 silver star purple heart five bronze stars expert rifleman and i can remember asking my grandmother why did he never display these medals and she said he did not believe you should be rewarded for killing people that's exactly what she said but anyway they were in his uh in his cupboard how did i get on that subject nevertheless they did take me under my wing so i would spend every weekend with my grandparents and then i would live with them in the summer and i think most of that was because of my grandfather and his nurturing of me and to raise me to be responsible person my mother didn't attend church regularly how did you live out your faith after this conversion what did you and sean continue to pray together perhaps did he invite you to his pentecostal church well i was a methodist we don't really pray out loud uh you know methodists believe in the power of prayer except when asked to call upon to pray publicly that's uh garrison keller i think it was um how did it change well i was voracious in the scriptures so i did not after i graduated from high school in 1992 i did not go immediately to college i worked full-time so i was at chili's earning a living i was living with a couple of other guys renting a home and after two years i think about a year after my conversion i said you know i don't think i want to do flipping burgers and chicken for the rest of my life i think there's something more to that and then i um then applied to gaston community college so the the point being is that i spent every day pouring over the scriptures even after i would leave my classes at gaston community college i would take my bible out and i would read an epistle that day i then started getting involved with a program at the church called meals on wheels have you heard of that yes so i became a deliverer and then that rocked my world because i saw a side of my hometown that i had never seen before that existed but that was hidden in plain sight which is poverty isolation i can still remember to this day delivering food to one particular home of a woman and the smell was abject it was practically noxious and it ruined me uh for a few days it was just some trauma i mean just abject poverty so that's really how i lived out my faith but because i was so zealous for scripture and i only knew really i mean united methodist may be the wrong terminology i was basically an evangelical that's really what i was united methodist didn't mean anything to me it just happened to be the tradition of my family that's all um but because i was such a zealot there were other people who said you know have you ever thought that maybe you should do what your pastor does on sundays what did they see in you that they thought to ask that question i think what they saw was energy they saw a a seriousness you know i have i guess you could say i have an addictive personality you know i'm either all in or i'm not and i just jumped completely in to this this christian thing and um and i think they saw me engaging with other people in what we would say is an evangelical way just asking answering questions trying to get people to see what i'm seeing because i was i was so in love with what with this jesus that i was had met who had changed my life and i wanted other people to experience what i was experiencing and god was the only thing i thought about and john wesley who was the founder of the united methodist movement and it was a movement before it was a church maybe we can get into that you know one of the questions that he would ask candidates for ministry is do you think about god and only only god and i could seriously at that time say yeah that's all i think about so i think that had something to do with it and i love my church and i'd love to be there as much as i could it's been said that protestantism doesn't exist there are only protestantisms right okay and different types of protestants hold different views about salvation the necessity of baptism things like this how did you wrestle with that uh were you aware of different beliefs within the body of christ as it were no no that so to that degree i was pretty much outside the circle of what doctrine really is you know you're baptized you believe in christ um i mean at the time of my early conversion i would have not known anything about sacramentology or or christology it's just that i knew that my life had changed with other people to be changed as a result it was my encounter with c.s lewis i did read mere christianity and i guess you could say that c.s lewis was the one who precipitated my desire to learn more because i never realized that christianity had such an intellectual side to it and by no means do i consider myself an intellectual but i can remember reading mere christianity being so struck by the argument yeah and faith and reason coming together and that just fed my thirst which made me thirsty for more when i just read every book that i could get my hands on but no i never really stepped outside of my own convictions and thought well let's compare and contrast what we believe is methodist versus what may be a baptist or a catholic we believe so what was it like studying to be a methodist pastor how long does that take about 12 to 14 years holy smokes yes i didn't realize that so yeah there was a whole process so after 14 years i mean jesuits take nine years before they're obtained i think i love sharing the story i didn't realize we were going to talk about it so i remember going to the senior pastor of my hometown church so i'm going to use the name jody okay jody seymour a profound influence in my life to this day and i can remember saying to him he had never met me before other than that note but he was writing to a stranger after my billy graham crusade conversion and i sat down with him and i said i think god might be calling me to to ministry i don't really know what this is and i just remember quoting scripture and you know just i was the novice that thought he knew everything and he asked me he said well how long have you been involved in the church i said i don't know maybe a year maybe a year and a half did you go to sunday school here no youth group no were you confirmed i said yeah but i don't really remember anything and he said well as far as you being called probably not and he says but i tell you this i will journey with you and then we'll try to discern this together so he was actually supposed to be the gateway into what's called uh at the time candidacy is this person a candidate well you need the write-off of the the senior pastor but let me just jump ahead very quickly and he kept his word and he did sit with me he heard my story a little bit more about my own family background and and then as i got involved in the parish and started getting to know more people some of them were already confirming or affirming maybe that's the right word that i could be called to this ministry i will never forget the day i sat down with him and he says shane you are called i believe you are called and i'm looking forward to the journey ahead and then i became a candidate and so you're you have to be a candidate for a certain number of years you go before uh what's called a board and they have to ask you questions it's a thorough process well let me ask you this i mean it's such a podcaster thing to say let me ask you this 13 or 14 years do y'all have problems with you know parishes that don't have pastors because it takes so long to become one well at the time of my early um the early days of my ministry no i would not say that i would say that now yes yeah okay so that's quite happening or we're in the bible belt as well yeah um so there's a ranking in methodism you have elders you have deacons you have local pastors and um it's very hard to really explain the difference between them except an elder is guaranteed or was is still guaranteed an appointment by the bishop so you will have a church if you need a church local pastors are licensed to serve churches but they don't necessarily have the same um i hate to use the word credentials but it's not the same credentials they may not have a seminary degree um and have passed the boards of ordained ministry um so that's but it's a series of you have to you are examined and i think that's necessary because john wesley not to cut you off john wesley who was the founder of the methodist movement really believed in educated clergy not any whipper snapper can just come in and do this they need to be educated so you were a pastor is that great yeah i was a pastor so what what happened is that i graduated from gaston community college at that point i jody had already affirmed my call i have already become a a candidate for ordained ministry not quite yet certified but how long did it take before he said i don't think you're called and then he journeyed with you and at one point he said you are called about a year i would say about a year about a year and we met pretty frequently um and he i can remember hearing his preaching on sunday mornings and i'm sitting here by myself exhausted i had just gotten off work five hours before and frightened to death and i don't want to sound as if my own inner call within myself was quick and easy i actually struggled with this i was like you know i'm a new convert i don't know if i should become a pastor because that's what all professional athletes do after they become a christian they think oh i'm called to ministry now um it was it was very very difficult but i can remember when i was starting to get serious about it thinking to myself gosh wouldn't it be wonderful if i could make people on sunday morning feel the way i'm feeling hearing this man's preaching and that really attracted me and struck me so i forgot what your question was but after graduating from gaston community college i then transferred to unc chapel hill okay and i took a degree i majored in religious studies so i was pretty steeled that this was going to be my path are you married at this point no i'm not married i was i was single at the time okay what was it like being ordained was that a big event for you waiting that long i would imagine it would have been yes um it was a it was a big event saab was ordained in 2007 after seminary so we can go through seminary because it was seminary who actually started the path for me to become catholic related to that yes and anybody who has graduated with me from duke university listening or will listen to this podcast will will say yep i can vouch for that it was a very catholic orthodox education but nevertheless so after i graduated from seminary you're supposed to submit a stack of papers for the board of ordained ministry to become an elder i was so exhausted after seminary i could not cite another book i could not write another footnote i really i could not because i took everything seriously every paper had to be just perfect and i was exhausted and so i took a year off so i don't know why i told you that but i just did and um so i did submit my papers the next time and they passed me and it was just this relief like okay i've done this i've done this and uh so that was a great a great moment for me and i thought that's what i would do for the rest of my life and how long were you a methodist pastor until just just for those who are watching the livestream right now who just tuned in you became you were brought into the church this year i was brought i became a catholic in full communion this year yeah and how long was i since you were ordained to when you became a catholic how long were you a protestant for well i see i became a pastor in 2003 okay yeah wow at that point i was i would be considered a local pastor in methodism that just simply means you have a license to serve that congregation and only that congregation um so about 18 years yes it was 18 years it was 18 years what was it that started to get you interested in catholicism when you were in seminary okay we can talk about that so when i was a student at unc chapel hill um i took classes with bart ehrman i don't know if you've ever heard of bart ehrman and i can remember already sort of preparing myself for his class because he comes at it from a more or less agnostic atheistic approach and um and i can remember and i loved bart durbin's instruction but he would always have these conferences at the end of each semester where he's going to share his story and it was almost for lack of a better word a d evangelization strategy but even while i was in uh in college i was reading some of the great apologists you know that i thought of at that time i was reading c s lewis there's another guy named norman geisler yep i had read him and i can remember thinking to myself listening to professor ehrman that it's a shame that he came from a fundamentalist background because if there's a crack in the in fundamentalism the whole thing comes down and yet he's espousing beliefs that the church never taught itself you know so nevertheless um i was already and i was reading some augustine and at unc augustine excuse me at unc when i matriculate matriculated at duke divinity school in 2003 i would say two things happen that we can talk about number one i had a class my first class with professor jeffrey wainwright a british united methodist who was thoroughly catholic in his theology and he introduced me to the beauty and of of the catholic faith the catholic orthodox and he would probably phrase it as little c catholic orthodox faith and then later on that first semester i came across a copy of a story of the soul a saint teresa of a ju those two things set the stage when you say he was thoroughly catholic in his theology give us some examples he was a lover of the patristics he talked about the sacrament of the eucharist even as a united methodist as he would quote flannery o'connor if it's just assemble them to hell with it so much so that there were students of his who would ask well professor wainwright why don't you become catholic and i can remember and now that i look back his his remark influenced me he said i was well i've been asked that question many times why don't i become catholic but i was born a united methodist i encountered the lord as a united methodist my family was united methodist or methodist at the time and i will die a methodist and so that prevented him from from converting but he taught courses on iconography the doctrine of the holy trinity the first class that i had with him was the doctrine of or the not the doctrine of but the lord's prayer and we had to read the cappadocians and that had a profound influence on me and i loved his intellect he was very creedal and methodism claims uh wants to be a creedal tradition we we we embrace the creeds and i remember committing that anytime i'm eligible to take a course offered by professor wainwright i'm taking his course so i had him more than any other professor and he i remember when i took his course on iconography i came from an evangelical perspective i never knew what icons were at the time this was just not a part of my my upbringing and i can remember struck by the beauty of what i was seeing and reading the letters of ignatius of antioch all of these things began to have a slow effect on me over the course of my three years in seminary therese however um how did you get in touch with that i can't remember i've been trying to remember that uh maybe she just found me that's what i like to believe i did she is my confirmation saint i so i had to take her name because i credit her with everything what she did was she introduced me to the idea or the the the vocation of becoming a saint that we should all aspire to be a common saint and i loved her boldness um you know that passage is so famous when i read it for the first time it just dizzied me when she said i don't want to be a saint by haves i want all i want everything um so she introduced me to the idea of am i called to be a saint that's language i've never heard before and her zeal her confidence and her boldness and she introduced me to the devotion to the virgin mary that i had never considered before but i remember seeing the virgin mary in the courses like that first year uh in seminary seeing her in icons and being struck by her beauty but not to the degree of having a devotion but anyway that struck me uh so what therese did were those two things she introduced me to those two am i right in thinking that uh uh if you're a methodist there's a lot of flexibility in your theology because it would seem that you would kind of recoil at the idea of praying to mary or the eucharist and here you are you've got a methodist pastor who's talking about the eucharist as if it's legitimate i don't know if he prayed to saints or if he was open to that but professor wainwright yeah well i remember he said made a remark he said to uh the protestants in the room he says do we believe in eternal life or not he had no reservations with praying to the saints was there anything at that point that you had a strong reservation to in catholicism that you thought okay maybe they're right about x y and z but they're not right about zed i don't think i was ever i never recoiled by anything i think i was just underdeveloped like by the time i graduated from seminary we could talk about the real presence of christ but i never really espoused transubstantiation at the time or got to that place i i guess what i'm trying to ask her is are there are there any methodists who are strongly opposed to catholic theology or elements of it because i mean if i talk to an independent fundamentalist baptist they're going to be very or even a calvinist you know they're going to have very strong opinions about why the catholic church is wrong about these certain things but it doesn't sound like you ever had that were there other methodists sure had a strong opposition towards catholicism well if i would have written on my ordination papers uh we should be praying to the virgin mary and have a devotion and that the the bread is truly substantially his body blood soul divinity that would probably disqualify me from being a methodist at that point so they they still there were certain points of doctrine that the methodist church would not necessarily espouse but john wesley his concept was the via media or media via you know the middle way the middle way you know there there are many things that we are not going to agree on but can we at least think alike in charity so that was pretty much his uh his philosophy fair enough in theology um when you were a protestant pastor were there aspects of say catholicism or eastern orthodoxy that you now accepted such as iconography or maybe something else that you sought to bring into your worship to say hey you don't need to be a catholic but this is something we could perhaps embrace great question iconography yes so my first appointment was at a little church called harmony united methodist church and i got the phone call as a student and the person on the other line he says you're going to harmony united methodist church in harmony north carolina i had no idea where that was but i went and i do remember introducing them to iconography now by the time of my first year which we may get into i was an extremely confused post seminary graduate whose world had been rocked by my introduction to catholic theology um oh wow from year one oh yeah yeah maybe we should talk about that um sure and i don't want to be misunderstood either but i was very confused coming out of seminary because i don't know what this means i couldn't shake my love for the catholic doctrines that we were reading i mean we were reading matt cardinal ratzinger at the time so we were reading great catholic minds a at the time he was lutheran was hooter reinhold hooter he's now teaching at catholic university he was a professor who converted to catholic catholicism while i was in seminary or just shortly thereafter maybe in 2003 2004 all of this had an effect on me but what was clearly happening to me was a growing attraction to the virgin mary kind of backtracking going all kinds of circles i remember after that first semester after i had read the story of the soul and i was taking jeffrey wainwright's introduction to theology class i made it my first paper for his class the doctrine of the immaculate conception because i wanted to know more about it wow yeah because not that i wanted to refute it i was just well this is interesting i want to know a little bit more about why does the church teach this why did the pope pronounce it as dogma what was your reinhardt was that his last reinhardt hooter what was his opinion of the immaculate conception i don't know at the time i don't know but i do remember there was some uh there was some paper some treaties that the catholic church published on the doctrine of justification and he said the protesting for me has ended yeah there's no no longer any reason for me to protest and he and he would say that protestantism was a reaction against catholicism so that it would reform it is now in my estimation performed and he became catholic that had uh that had an indirect influence on me at the time of my early was there any sort of repercussions uh from the university i don't think so no i think he was still there he was brilliant he was scary one of the scary smart people um and so yeah i mean that's where that's where i was at the time but i remember doing the paper on the immaculate conception and i was convinced of what i read and then i thought to myself well if this is true if what the catholic church is teaching about mary here is true that she was immaculately immaculately conceived that what else is true because for many protestants that would be one of the biggest obstacles to overcome and here you are first year pastor i know isn't it crazy 17 years ago you're like this is i i agree with the church on this well it's because i think most protestants have a misunderstanding of what the immaculate conception really means they think it means that jesus was not the redeemer of the blessed mother when he absolutely was the redeemer of the blessed mother in a higher way than he was for us and so the argument you know this that's one of the things i've learned is that when i was a protestant pastor i was sharing some catholic doctrine to people for whom it was new but now that i'm a catholic and sharing this with other catholics oh yeah we know a lot of people are watching and they would like to explain so help us you know but but i i can't even remember what i where i was but what they that jesus saved her in a higher way and the argument was is that which is the greater way to save someone before that person falls and then bandage their wombs or to prevent them from falling and injuring him or herself to begin with to prevent someone from falling is the higher means of redemption and i was like that is a for me that was brilliant and it made sense of genesis 3 you know the pronouncement the proto-evangelium of the woman will have an offspring and there will be enmity between the serpent and the woman well how can there be enmity hostility real contempt between the woman and the serpent if the woman is somehow ensnared in what the serpent had introduced to the world okay that makes sense oh hail mary full of grace the the the phrase full of grace was a participle i can't remember exactly what it was i'm not very good i'm from north carolina we're not good at greek sure but um it was the the participle was it was he was saying full of grace not in the moment which is what most protestants would say she's being sanctified now in the moment but it's a past action that denotes an ongoing activity all of that came together that she was saved by the grace of jesus christ but it was a preservative grace for me it made sense and then i thought well then if she is then the the woman who collaborates with the offspring then yes of course she would be without sin because she could not be a captive to the serpent's curse otherwise it would not be hostility um against her um and that and then then then i realized that oh if you're going to espouse that god has to operate in time then of course protestants would have or anybody would have a hard time understanding how could the redemption the redemptive work of christ apply to her in advance but if god transcends time then of course the redemptive work of christ on the cross could be applied to her in a transcendent way but i'm making i'm not making a great case right now for this but i remember being convinced that she's sinless and this could change everything but it did not make me want to become catholic in that moment it just made me more attracted to her at that point okay so when did you get married well i met my wife in seminary so uh my second year of seminary so at the end of my second year may 11th so before we started our third year we got married how did she feel about some of your catholic leanings being a a graduate from a seminary herself well she was never a non-supportive but i think she just said well that's just shane being shane uh we're we're both on the journey to become pastors and so that's what we're going to do um did she too become a pasta she did she became a associate pastor at a congregation in hickory north carolina and she did that until our child was born first child was born okay so real quick spoiler spoiler alert is your wife now catholic she is so this is the story of how two protestant pastors became catholic yes and and it was her conversion that i knew at that point it was the beginning of the end for me and when was the end of the new beginning yeah that's a good way of putting it when was her conversion to catholicism she became a catholic and full communion in december of 2019 so a few months before covet struck and i credit her conversion to the blessed mother but we can get into that a little bit later okay yeah all right well talk us talk i mean this is 17 years as you say 18 years since you became a pastor you became catholic maybe help us understand this journey towards catholicism one of the things you said to me when we were on the phone together is and and you can correct me if i've got this wrong but you said look this is this wasn't like this massive blinding light courageous choice where i saw the truth and became catholic you said this this took a long time it took a long time and and i did say that i said you know a lot of the protestant clergy whose stories i've heard they they say oh i saw the light and i immediately went into the light and i resigned the next day i began seeing the light and was like oh lord please delay this make me a catholic but not yet yeah sure you know it frightened me so it was a long arduous journey so after i graduated from duke i thought about well could i go into the phd program that would be interesting but i was so exhausted yeah and i remember having so i had such a lack of self-confidence in seminary and i still struggle with that to this day like well am i really called to be a pastor well the only way i'm going to find out is if i jump in and become up try to become a pastor and i remember when i started that appointment in in harmony as i said earlier i was very confused still like what does this mean that i'm i'm becoming much more catholic in some of my thinking and i want to know more about the i want to know more about the liturgy of the church i'm going to know more about mary i want to know more about the saints i want more about just catholic doctrine some boilerplate things for for the catholic church and you couple my own the suddenness of my conversion which then translated to what i would say is the suddenness of my call to ministry all of a sudden i'm in seminary and i'm thrust out into a parish i was very confused and so i didn't know how to handle it and what i ended up doing i said i'm going to contact the professor who has ruined my life right now and that's professor wainwright and and i remember going to a convocation like a continuing ed assembly at duke so i went back to duke that october so i started my pastorate about july so i'm back on the campus of duke in october and confused and i met with professor wainwright and i said hey my friend i'm struggling here i don't know what this means i think god might be calling me a catholic have you ever been to a mass no um but but is this possible i'm just i need help and then he said to me i've had a number of students do what have your thoughts and who converted and then he put me in touch with a former student of his who earned his ph.d at duke who then converted from methodism to catholicism and at the time was on the road to becoming a priest so he put me in touch with him and for the life of me i'm going to try to remember his name he was the most hospitable man i have ever met i think his name he would be father now john ramsey in virginia and so i went to um to meet at the time he was a seminarian and he met with me in his uh kind of his farmstead in farmland virginia and he was so delightful and so gentle and i said well what does this mean and i can't remember what his counsel was but it was to go slow i do remember that and he understood well you're you're married now and now you've got a wife you know this would be a tremendous transition for you and then he said why don't you go to a local priest and and i did that were you doing this under the radar of your parishioners have discovered you were doing this they've been quite scared they would be and uh another one reason that i've been reluctant to air all this yeah i was doing this covertly because i was so confused and i wanted to do what god's will was but here i was thinking i had been called to be a united methodist pastor and i staked everything on that and to have that rug even tugged uh it frightened me it makes sense it really did i so i was a confused young man and i did meet that local priest and he met with me for a period of time and to make another very long longer story short i can remember when i met with him again he said shane i because we we even asked could i even become a priest is it possible and he said the only way to find out is to talk to the bishop well the bishop was a no okay i accept that and then the last time i met with him he said shane this is the exact words he used you're nailed i really don't know what you can do and then i remember leaving that uh parish and i thought to myself i'm done with the with these ambiguous games just like when i converted i'm either all in or i'm not and i can remember leaving i'm going to be a united methodist pastor i owe it to the people to whom i've been sent to be all in as a united methodist pastor to love these people and to do what i can as faithfully as i can at that time and i closed the door right so i did i resolved the door to put those temptations towards catholicism aside i did let me ask you because you said earlier i was terrified about catholicism being true i think you said or scared to death because i was interested what are you scared about well what will i do for the rest of my life yeah good that's a very practical concern it's very understandable yeah well you know this is what i i mean i i became indebted uh to you know sally may so i could become a pastor what am i going to do for the rest of my life because i i don't have any other marketable skills that i'm aware of i can i can i can work in a restaurant yeah yeah um but that that's what was was terrible and especially the door was especially closed after the birth of my daughter i mean that's we i did not want to play with that now there are going to be some people say well you should have just trusted the lord and done it i get it but at the time in the environment in which i was in i i just felt that i was betraying those people in harmony whom i loved that's what we need to get into one of the reasons it's very hard for protestant clergy to leave and to become catholic is because they love the people they serve and they love what they do day in and day out as well but i shut the door and i had completely invested in my ministry at the time did not look back did you seek to find ways to discount catholicism not only shut the door no if i did anything i tried to seek ways to enlighten the people i served about some truths of catholic doctrine so for instance um to show them that mary has a critical role in the uh our redemption she's not a redeemer of course but she did collaborate with the lord let's show them how i can remember for instance when i was introduced to uh irenaeus's um concept of the new eve now when i presented that to the methodist people i was serving they were very open to that that made sense to them because you could draw on the scriptures you know christ is the adam yep you know in romans 7 rome and uh if there's a new adam there must be a new eve and that she plays that part so that's what i ended up actually doing well i was just trying to show them hey don't be afraid of the icons let's talk about why well we believe in the incarnation we don't believe that we're worshiping the image we are worshiping the one who's represented in this image and who became flesh for us visible did you ever get any pushback from parishioners this sounds too catholic no that happened later so that happened near the in near the end of my time that's when i realized that uh i was probably at the point of no return but that was still a very difficult time for me you know but we have a lot of time so that that's what i did i just tried to to share with them the treasures there's some treasure here um and un unfortunately it's been buried for some of us and i did not think i was in any way doing a disservice or compromising my own methodism as a matter of fact one of the things that kept me a united methodist is that i i in my own mind was able to reconcile methodism and catholicism how so how did you do that well a lot of uh catholics have the wrong impression of even united methodists or protestants in general but a united methodist i'm just giving you one example we're not solar scriptura in the united methodist church we've never claimed to be solar scriptura scripture is primary but it is not sublime it is not only now you tell that to a catholic oh i did not know that okay we are very creedal we do believe in the communion of the saints now you will not find many methodists praying to the saints but they are open to the uh you know the concept the doctrine the methodist church teaches the real presence of christ in the eucharist now we'll have to get into that a little bit later about what does real presence really mean but they did not espouse the idea of a memorial meal which would be more of a reformed like it's just you're just reenacting something that's already happened yeah baptism as being essential tradition being consequential to our understanding of scripture you could even say that john wesley himself was a player in my conversion to catholicism over a long period of time why because he was the one telling the clergy read the patristics no church history don't spend all of your time in the last 200 years go as far back as you possibly can and understand the traditions and the doctrine john wesley himself was accused of being a catholic priest at the time why don't you i did not know that yeah you're you're just a papist what you're teaching is catholicism now what he could not do is tolerate the idea of the pope and but yes there's a lot of connection between catholicism and methodism if you are not going to go underneath the surface and really try to parse what that what that really means stanley harwass one of my professors in seminary in his voice he says well you know methodists are just evangelical catholics to begin with i mean that's how we framed it we're just evangelical catholics and i'll tell you this remember when i said that people told professor wayne wright you should become catholic and he says no i'm going to die methodist now looking back when he said i'm going to remain a united methodist still espouse some of these great beautiful uh catholic doctrines that influenced me too because he was able to stay why couldn't i [Music] so that that really was uh had an impression on me um who so okay you shut the door on catholicism when did you start opening the crack again okay well the i did not start well let's go back up even farther again because it's not like a linear story of mine it's it's like this that's how i think most people's stories i began i was when i was ordained in 2007 and i thought i was going to die an ordained united methodist elder i remember i started wearing a collar and and what really it convinced me to wear the collar um and the catholic priest listening to me like he wore the collar um now that i look back i'm like yeah it's it's but that's what i did there was a book by lauren winter and she is now or was a professor of duke divinity school and she made this argument about clothing how clothing affects us and clothing tells the story of who we are and if you don't and she says it's foolish in her book and i can't remember the name of the book i think it's actually called real sex but she says and if it is foolish to think your clothing does not have an influence on your behavior it does otherwise we'd be going to the prom in blue jeans and t-shirts there's something that it does i'm like okay well if clothing tells a story then what tells the story of my vocation better than the clerical collar so i remember um i remember wearing that and i always read catholic theologians so i read aquinas i started studying aquinas started studying augustine cardinal ratzinger so and i was incorporating all of that in my sermons and in my preaching and it did nothing but enrich my sermon you didn't consider that opening the door to catholicism when you said you shut it all out you were still okay reading catholic theologians well i guess when i say i shut the door i mean i'm going to leave everything and become a catholic i shut that door sure i see yes yeah and oh by the way a methodist would not call it becoming a saint but john wesley's in the methodist doctrine is perfection we should be perfected in love in this life we should be cooperating with the holy spirit to such a degree that we love the lord perfectly so he wouldn't say we need to become saints but he would say we need to be perfected in love and so that's another you know connection to catholicism um that really helped me hold on for as long as i did it sounds like you were more open to catholic ideas than your wife may have been in seminary and since she was the first to to become catholic did she begin opening the door how did that happen with her well see that's at the tail end of everything so what happened is uh i also read scott hahn's book rome sweet home what did you think of it when you read it bishop robert baron has this phrase that says it grabs you by the lapels quality it does it you know like sometimes when you read scripture it just has this grabs you by the lapels well that grabbed me by the by the lapels but it also induced greater confusion to me at the time because remember i was brand new i'm like what does this mean what does this mean this all seems true i i get it um and she read the book with me but she was not taken by it to the degree that i was that there was nothing here that would say okay shane we need to give it all up and we could be compatible with all this and she never used that language but she was not taken to the same degree that i was um and she knew about some of my catholic devotional practices for instance we haven't even gotten to that yeah so and and i did start praying the rosary as i said tell us about a protestant pastor's catholic devotional life what does that look like well it's more than the book of common prayer uh what i ended up doing i can remember remember i said i had never gone to a mass before so my first year as a pastor i did say okay man professor wayne writes right i better just go to a mass it was a horrible experience really oh it was terrible because it was such a sloppily oh well no it wasn't that just i just remember it was like again i when you walk into a protestant church you're greeted with warmth and hospitality and hugs and you know we put people on you're visiting the church we'll put you on our shoulders and carry you around um i walk in i was like nobody cares i'm here and um and it was silent it was it was just all this silence and then when mass ended it was uh no one spoke to me but i remember there was some rosaries there okay i picked up one of these cheap plastic rosaries and um you knew what it was i knew what it was did not know how to pray it and i can remember so i've got a i've got a rosary in my hand i remember having it on the table the first time and i thought to myself i need to try to pray this but it felt like as as if i was getting ready to step into a cold shower you know you're like here we go oh wow because am i getting ready to commit an act of idolatry so i was still worried and i remember praying i prayed it i did it horribly and i followed something on some website you know that allowed me to do it it was very clunky but then i prayed it again and then i was hooked because what i did is i actually was able to focus for the first time on the mysteries and then i realized this is christo-centric i'm only thinking about jesus while i'm reciting scripture hail mary full of grace that's the angel gabriel blessed are you among women well that's what elizabeth said to mary is still christocentric why is mary full of grace because of christ she's nothing outside of him and i made for the first time a connection between mary and christ that i never would have made a connection before and it was philippians 2 where it says you know jesus emptied himself and i remember praying the first mystery of of the joyful mysteries or the glorious ministries even with the annunciation and that mary emptied herself in that moment the way christ emptied himself and actually she emptied herself because christ um his ways to empty ourselves and that the fullness of grace really means to be emptied of the self she had no ego i remember just making that connection for the will of god and i thought that's that did not draw me away from christ that has drawn me to him in a very deeper way and being struck by that and so i began praying the rosary and i did it my wife doesn't like me using this language at the time i did it in secret because i was afraid look if anybody knows that i'm doing this i'm going to be outed i'm going to be on the evening news it's going to be horrible um only later did i realize that even anglicans were praying the rosary and i think from based on some writings john wesley himself braided which is interesting um and then i became more open about it later but it enriched my life so i went from the rosary and then i took a trip to washington dc with my wife i went to a catholic bookstore that i think still might be there can't remember the name of it and i asked the bookseller what are some catholic devotional things you got anything you pray like i'm a methodist and we have the book of common prayer and they said have you ever heard of the liturgy of the hours i said no i've never heard of it well we should she introduced me to the liturgy of the hours and i bought the four volume set and went to home and had no idea where to begin but i slowly self-taught myself how to do it by going online and so i would pray the liturgy of the hour so we're rosary liturgy of the hours but the liturgy of the hours was nothing more than psalms as you know it's just the psalter a four-week cycle of psalters and so i did that and so i was studying the great saints of the church at john wesley's behest see that's the thing yeah he told me he did john wesley said you need to know the great minds of the church if you yourself want to be a great mind of the church so i was doing those things you said you kept your recitation of the rosary secret but did you keep it secret from your wife no she actually what did she make of me uh she made me a rosary uh soon thereafter and i still have that's beautiful protestant pasta makes a protestant preacher's wife some preachers wives in protestantism play the piano and teach sunday school my wife makes rosaries and did she keep it a secret no she did not and what was the reaction of her friends her reaction was change just being shane um this is just what he wants i don't get it i don't understand it but it doesn't seem to be hurting anything yeah um and uh so she did support me but she never prayed a rosary uh with me but i loved it and yes it could be wrote and it could be dry but i stuck with it but you know what like soaking date nights they can be wrote and dry it doesn't mean we don't do them sure sure that's exactly right i can remember having thoughts like praying the rosary again back to the annunciation you know how jesus says this is my body given for you and i remember praying the rosary reflecting on mary's fiat here i am that what did she say to the lord in that moment but this is my body given for you so before the lord could say this is my body given for you our blessed mother said this is my body given for you lord i mean that that to me that just that just enriched my understanding of christ which of course now that i'm a wannabe mariologist and have a long way to go i realize that's her mission is to bring you to christ you said to me that you met scott hahn where were you well i did not meet scott hines we just we did speak by phone so uh a a priest in my in my last year we'll need to really talk about that as a part of my story he attended the eucharistic congress in charlotte to this priest and scott hahn was one of the keynote speakers i see and so i had already confronted confronted the wrong word i consulted this priest when we're getting into my second conversion i guess you could say a couple of years ago and he approached dr hahn and said i got this protestant i don't know what to do with him and um can you do something and you know and dr han gave the priest his contact information i texted him uh he's too busy he called me immediately he's good like that ah that really struck me you know and i was like i just can't believe i spoke with dr scott hahn um and then we corresponded by text a few times as well so that that's how i know uh dr hahn you referred to it as your second conversion well yes that what when i was at the point of no return yes okay so how did that happen how did the point of no return come come about well you're i'm going to be able to summarize my whole story in no time uh if you'd like to go back we can do that no no you're you're in charge um i so my marian devotion just continued to to flourish and deepen and um i ended up doing the de montfort consecration oh no you were you were gone at that point there's no i didn't know at all i remember getting i ordered the copy of uh total consecration because it kept showing up on my amazon suggestions forgive me how many years ago was this that you did the de montfort consecration um it was two years ago april of 2019. i see so a little bit more than two years now and yes that was what set me down the path and i remember seeing it it was a suggested reading i said i keep seeing this thing i'm going to order it and i remember why as i was reading it it uh this is something i had to do this was um for those not familiar with the demand for consecration let people know how that happens 33 days that sort of thing well you you first you begin by really reflecting on the why um what is mary's role in the life of christ take seriously how the lord came to us how did he come to us how did the word become flesh and became flesh through mary how should we go to the christ go through mary take seriously the way you know jesus says i'm the way the truth and the life let's take seriously his way what was his way to us and how mary i was what really struck me was i think he was invoking augustine about how mary is the mold of the holy spirit the mold of christ if you pour you know that the holy spirit christ's body was formed in her and if you pour yourself in to mary through devotion to her she will form christ in you and i was like oh that's beautiful now there may be but but someone else in presidential will find that may be repelling and um but to me that struck struck me and so then you after you read about mary about why this matters why you should do it because christ had a devotion to the blessed virgin mary this is about christ's likeness and by the way that's how i try to talk to protestants about why mary you know why let's let's be christ-like but we'll get into that later and then you have a series for 33 days you are preparing yourself to make this act of consecration when you are saying i want to be so much like christ who became dependent on his mother that i too will be like him and become dependent upon mary so that so that christ will be formed in me so it is thoroughly christological and christocentric it is about jesus what's your response to a protestant watching right now who says how is that not idolatry to consecrate yourself to a to a human to a to the mother of jesus yes but but a human nonetheless well if it because if we have a competitive understanding of of grace yeah yeah i can see why they would make that argument the reason it is not is because you were following the very path jesus himself took and that's something that i did try to teach as a protestant pastor that discipleship in the biblical new testament sense it's not just following jesus that's true the new testament understands discipleship as participating in his life the fullness of his life letting him live the fullness of his life in you which includes his infancy his ministry his death his sufferings his resurrection we're to participate fully in that and that if we are going to truly participate in the life of christ the fullness of his life then mary is going to have to have a central role and what did jesus do in luke chapter 2 but become obedient to his blessed mother and so you're just following that pattern while you're praying through these 33 days making a consecration when was the point that you said i think i might have to become a catholic okay well at the time i thought i could still reconcile really um i can i could you know i'm going to go all i'm going to be all in on being this the pastor of this church the the and then i think i realized it after about june or july of that year during the uh the turmoil that was happening in the denomination which is another very long story um and it was about that point i realized i'm in trouble but what was the tipping point for me was the conversion of my wife at that point i realized okay this is something i can't avoid any longer so again i wasn't this dramatic time for me to go it was still a very slow process but my the conversion of my wife who at the time of my consecration to mary she had no idea she would ever become catholic as a matter of fact i think the book fell open in front of her and she saw some of the language that de montfort was using and she she's given me permission to say this my gosh um he's lost it he's joined a cult yeah this is cultic language and i can remember i found some t-shirt online that has the uh the insignia the the a the uh av have you seen i can't think of what it is i know what you mean okay yeah so there's a t-shirt and i bought it on zazzle.com never even heard of zazzle and i bought it she saw the t-shirt she was like we have got to have a talk um and she more or less says that you are leaving me for another woman and it is mary and i said well she is mother not spouse what's interesting is scott in rome sweet home talks about that kimberly which i forgot about yeah she talks about this almost this jealousy of this attention going towards another woman yes uh but there was a there was a since not of a fat infatuation but yes i guess you could say from one perspective it was an overnight change in me and she didn't saw coming but she did end up telling me a little bit later that i did see its profound good effects on you that you were becoming different you were becoming a different person and that had an influence on her one of the things that de montfort says is that if you let allow mary to be your mother truly look to her as your mother a creature not divine but if you look to her mother she'll become the mother of your entire house if you let her and i can remember my wife for those four or five months she was letting me do my thing i was i was being a marian um she called me as she was leaving to go visit her mother and and father-in-law stepfather excuse me in kansas and she called me from the airport she says you know i think i might want to pray a rosary and i immediately ordered one for her and she came home and she prayed the rosary and four months later she's a convert to the catholicism wow and if you have told her when that book opened back then you'll probably become a catholic one day what would have her response been no no i don't think she would have resisted it but i don't think it was even on her radar at the time you know because she's had an evolution of thought and theology over the years because you know i did remember being a methodist pastor struggling with we have women who are serving as pastors that seems to be okay that's not what the catholic church teaches so it's not like i was thoroughly catholic even when i was i was a shortest you know very much a methodist who had a lot of catholic uh doctrine under his belt with a devotional yeah what's that like as a protestant pastor whose wife is becoming a catholic um well what i i supported her in the journey what about your congregation they did not know at the time and i made a calculated decision maybe it was not the right one not to really say anything about it i did not want to go step into the pulpit one sunday morning and say hey everybody guess what my wife is a catholic you'll never see her probably much in the service ever again she makes lovely rosaries i think my hope was that we would be able to to demonstrate that it's possible to live in two different worlds um so her conversion happened and then i befriended a a priest at the catholic parish near where i served so after my demand for consecration and i did it on palm sunday of 2019 by myself and i remember there was a vacation break for me and i went to mass and i had not really been to mass all that many times but i remember after this particular mass there was a priest there i'm gonna i'm gonna give him a shout out his name is father brian becker and then after the mass he's there greeting the parishioners i walked past him and was headed to my car but then i said you know i'm going to turn back around and ask him if he can meet with someone like me so i turned back around and i said hey do you ever meet with people through the week um because i've got something going on in my life and i'd really like to meet with you and he said sure and so we met and then we might need to take a break but he was very pivotal in helping me turn this corner no we don't need to take a break unless you do tell us how is he pivotal so he met with me and then i explained to him all that was going on so i gave him in a very condensed way my story and i told him what i had done and then i remember he just asked me questions about catholic doctrine spirituality and then he was such a wonderful listener and what i'm going to tell you he said he did not say but this is what i heard him say okay because he was much more priestly he was very gentle but firm he said my paraphrase shane everything you're telling me indicates to me you're already catholic you are not going to be able to have peace until you cross the rubicon you didn't put it that way and then i remember he gave me counsel about how truth makes a claim over us and that you need to understand that this is a grace this is grace god's grace operating in your life to help you see the catholic church as the fullness of truth you're going to need to unite yourself with the fullness of truth and he even used or made use the language maybe it was later of of obligation you know because of the of truth well i left and going well i'm not doing i've got a family i've got these people to serve i was still not quite there yet but i met with him again and he i remember he asked me questions like well i'm curious what do you in the methodist church do about mortal sin what do you think is happening when you are breaking the bread in your church um he even came over to our house for dinner one day and it was perfect because he was very christ-like because you know how jesus ruined pharisees dinners you know he would go into their homes eat dinner with them and just drop some like she's loving she's loving me more than you people but uh i remember he really questioned me even at the house you know like what what what are you what's going through your mind when you are presiding at your communion table how do you reconcile what god is helping you claim about the doctrine of the transubstantiation he didn't say that versus what you're doing and i remember trying to reconcile the two you should have said this is how socrates got killed stop asking questions yeah but he did not um corner me in any way he just asked the questions which made me have to wrestle with them yeah what what what am i doing so he was the first priest to really challenge me in the most priestly way i don't want anybody to get the wrong impression he did an amazing job he was a true spiritual director for me and and then i began as the as the months went on to realize oh my gosh am i being a coward like i mean really because i don't want to be but i've got this family i i don't know what i'm going to do with the rest of my life is this really what god wants me to do just to leave all of this behind um what ended up happening is that i started attending mass frequently because my wife is now catholic and um i think the mass strengthened my resolve and i'm fast forwarding a little bit but there was there was power there to the point where i i i've got to do this but i can remember thinking to myself am i being duplicitous too but i tried my best to rationalize my way out of that i really did um you know we're we're we all love the lord you know and and these people need a pastor and i i can remember during covet thinking well if i left what are they i mean this is a terrible time i owe it to these people um to to try to shepherd them to shepherd the church and again i go back to what kept me in is because of i loved the people and i loved the work and i loved preaching you know i loved all of these things um but i eventually realized that no at some point i'm i can't live with this much longer but i will say this it wasn't just me i was in a situation at the time where there was pressure coming from even the the church in the denomination i was serving so there was there was reaction there was concern about me uh about not so much that we think he's catholic although there was a couple people says i think he loves mary and and that that could be a problem like well if it's not right to love the blessed mother i'm guessing i'm not in the wrong place you know i guess i'm in the wrong place but there was a lot of pressure coming from the congregation as well what else were they seeing do you mind me asking it's not so much they were seeing is what they were not seeing so um i want to make sure my language is right in 2019 the denomination had been made ratified or re really re-adopted its position on traditional marriage now i will say that up until about 2019 which is the same year i did the de montfort consecration i really never gave a lot of thought to same-sex marriage in the church i mean um but after that decision i remember thinking i need to know a little bit more about the arguments here and i started reading again becoming reacquainted with the arguments why this is theologically an error and i became convinced that as traditional marriage and um what i think was happening is that the denomination is not really necessarily shifting that direction and so there were those within the church who wanted me to to speak out and to be a little bit more vocal and i was fairly new to that that congregation at first and that's the last thing that i wanted to do um and at the time by the way at the time i still myself was not thinking about converting you know how this is where i was i've just got to figure out how to how to serve here but there was a lot of of concern um criticism and i was feeling that pressure as well so it's almost as if you could say and this is really a haphazard way to put it i was almost squeezed out too um so there were two directions there was my own inner conviction uh coinciding with the church as well so were there many people in your congregation who wanted you to affirm so-called there were there was a sizable number of people so when you say it's what i wasn't saying is what you're doing that's right that's correct that that's correct and it wasn't where i saw the denomination going to begin with that i was becoming more and more a minority uh within my own denomination and what does this mean so i was extrapolating out like okay what is this going to look like if they do uh change the language but it was a very tumultuous time um right after that vote to adopt the traditional stance it really was just it wasn't adopt it was more or less just re-stated yeah but wouldn't that give you more job security if you're towing the party line to put it crassly you know it's not as if they came down on the side of same-sex marriage and then you were against it you agreed with what your church now restated well i was up until 2019 when i was serving other churches again it was not on my radar you know this was not i didn't think i had a dog in this hunt i just didn't think about the the about the theology i was just i said i just loved whoever came to the congregation yeah that's whoever you are i'm going to love you and um once i started revisiting the theological implications on this and then i realized oh this is a problem i could not stay in the denomination if it decided to oh i see yeah but but sorry i'm a little confused but they did restate that a marriage is one man and one woman yes the the the there's what's called general conference which is simply the official mouth of the denomination and it is an assembly that consists of it's a global representation so methodists from all over the world go to this convention and it sets the laws so once the church restates that why are you still worried your congregation can just leave because of i think the nature of the the context in which i was serving and the american the western context in which i was serving which desperately wanted to see that language overturned got you yes and it became at times the grass roots initiative as it were is pushing the same sex agenda and um you know i will be honest uh i was very hurt um at times it was it was vicious i had never really been a part of that kind of nastiness directed at at me as new as i was um and it was it was difficult it was difficult um but that pressure just continued to mount and to mount into mount and i i came to a decision through the realization it wasn't a decision that even if i were to remain a united methodist pastor this is not a good fit that congregation this is not going to be sustainable um but what i i did do is okay i need to do whatever i can to serve these these people as faithfully as i can um until the time for us to part ways happens and even then i wasn't thinking and i'll be a catholic in in a year and a half anyway so it doesn't matter that really that thought had never uh crossed my mind um so that was that was happening so this wasn't just me i think it was the context as well the circumstances as well were you getting any pressure from your wife to become catholic no no no my wife is wonderful uh she wondered how is the congregation going to react that i have just converted but i will say that there was a time where if that would have happened if a baptist if the the preacher's wife or the preachers would have converted that would have been a scandal but there are other clergy whose spouses are serving in other denominations or even attending another church not their own i mean there are catholics there are catholic deacons who have spouses that attend the local so it's not as scandalous as it would have been um i think what i did is that i should maybe maybe i should have been more forthcoming with the people around me who had to make leadership decisions that hey my wife has just converted and i did not stop it she's on fire for the lord she loves jesus i mean it's just what's happening in her life is remarkable but i did not do that so what ended up happening is that some members of leadership did say hey there have been family members of members of our church who attend the the catholic parish who have seen you and and the mass and we just want to know tell us a little bit about that um yeah okay so what happened next they did their job they were doing their job yeah and i just made it really about my wife and i wanted to support her yeah that i i'm a father and i'm her husband and i want to do what i can to support her but i do think that that time uh in the mass had a profound effect on my will eventually um it the the graces that came from there was great power to that but i did try to to make it work yeah i remember when you and i spoke on the phone and i don't know where you are you know in your timeline here but you had made the decision to quit yeah and you said to me let me put it this way you said if the eucharist is not truly the body blood soul affinity of jesus christ i'm making the biggest mistake of my life yes how i put it was if the if if the eucharist is just a symbol then what i am doing is the stupidest decision i have ever made but if jesus is truly present in the eucharist then what i have done is not stupid it's actually rational and um that impelled you know compelled me to to do this but there were other circumstances that were apart there were steps along the way um i can remember after my marian consecration i came across the ministry of gabriel castillo and um and i saw him and i was like well this is a guy who is as on fire for uh our lady than than i am and then he started speaking about praying the full rosary and i remember even de montfort uh started speaking about the full rosary being the you know the three three decades three full rosaries 15 decades i was like wow this is amazing um maybe i should start doing that and i can remember this was about a year later um i i reached out to him and wanted to help him in some way and so he's one person who who said on his podcast and let's offer him a shout out yeah i believe his youtube channel is called gabriel after hours gobby after hours it's also true faith tv he's doing great work people can go check him out all right everybody needs to check him out and um and so i remember i he was doing it he just started this podcast called the children of mary and i remember i reached out to him to see how i could help him in some way and um and then he gave me a shout out anonymously on his podcast but i can remember he said and i think he was speaking to me although maybe i'm wrong he was just like do god's will do god's will you've got to do god's will just do god's will and trust jesus um and that went right to my soul so that's one piece then i read a series of books by father uh calth matthew calth who is the rector i believe is what is called at the uh saint joseph seminary in mount holly okay i'm not sure not familiar with him anyway brilliant and i came across two of his books one on the sacraments so this is summer of 2020 okay so i converted into 2021. this is the summer of 2020. i came across a couple of his books one was on friendship thomas aquinas and friendship the other one was on the sacraments and that had to grab me by the lapel's quality i was like you know i can't teach some of this this is good stuff but i can't say something what i'd like to say and um so those two things combined that about the time fall came up fall of 2020 i realized i've got to do this oh let me back up gabriel also said one other thing he quoted mother angelica i'm not really familiar with mother angelica but he says that faith means having one foot in the air one foot on the ground with a queasy feeling in your stomach and i think what i came to the conclusion was i believe the lord i believe i thought the lord was going to show me the way okay if you want to be united to me in the eucharist then the lord's just going to open that path what i came to realize and it still took my breath away was no i think i got to take that step and then as my foot is falling the path will open up wow and um but i never really announced this you know i was very i think after my experience uh it was a tumultuous time for me and in that ministry context i did not want to add more fuel to the fire and honestly up until about january or february i i was like am i crazy i mean is this really going to happen am i going to do this so um but i made that decision that yes this is going to be the year that my life is going to have to change i want to be able to talk about the eucharist the way i should i want to talk about mary the way i should i want to and in many ways matt um my my conversion was really through through mary i do think that it was the virgin mary was calling me uh and i had to do it um so uh so there we are so shane when you how did you make the decision and how did you end oh you told us how you made the decision but how did you announce it what was that like i did not make an official announcement so what ended up happening was um two things the the the i think for the most part the church that i served they realized it was a bad fit as i realized it was a bad fit and so it was an independent decision and um that it was announced that were parting ways it was announced that were parting ways um and i was eligible for a sabbatical i'd been serving as an elder for a number of years and i was eligible for sabbatical so i took a sabbatical because i needed that time because my life was about to change and i was afraid what am i going to do now for the rest of my life because it's not like i had a plan it's not like i had done some job hunting and i knew this was i just knew that i could no longer be a united methodist yeah yeah that that really does take tremendous courage it's it's one thing to make a decision where you see all of the benefits and none of the negatives but you have a family how what are you going to do with health insurance how are you going to make an income i mean all that stuff yes and i did not know what that was going to look like so um i left that congregation in february i believe by the end of february and had no idea what i was going to do i was i was just seeing you know doom and um and i saw a couple of positions and i applied for them just for the sake of doing it one was a director of evangelization at a parish about 40 minute drive from where i was living at the time and i'm still living there and i remember when i applied for it i thought there is no way they are going to hire someone who has just left um the protestant church but i got to know the priest his name is father lucas rossi wonderful i mean we just became fast friends and he hired me they hired me okay yeah so i am now uh the director of evangelization wow at saint michael gaston see this is what the catholic church needs it needs protestants bringing in their their beautiful gift for evangelizing so you know bring bring your gifts in with you to the church yes yeah and and some of that zeal and so i i pray that i will do my best for that congregation what's interesting is that it's the very parish where about a block away i grew up in a house about a block away from that parish although i had friends of mine in childhood who went to the parish but i never really i played on the campus as a child but i'm like i'm in my old neighborhood now this is this is crazy full circle yeah complete you know complete full circle so what have some of the reactions been from your your congregants and then maybe some of your friends from seminary other protestant pastors uh most of the protestant pastors have been in full support some of them said well we saw this coming [Music] yeah what do you think is going to happen to shane i think he's going wrong yeah before i even made that announcement he's going wrong and um most people have been in support there there were a couple of comments that hurt me um so the they were just implying that i was never honest or maybe i was having kind of a an affair and a faith you know like you never really loved us uh oh an affair in a metaphorical sense yeah yeah yeah and that was hurtful and but i also realized that this will be the price of converting i will be misunderstood as a matter of fact i believe father rossi my my priest said as much that not everybody's going to be oh well this makes total sense and we're of understanding they're going to be some who are curious about this but i i just have to know i just have to know the truth for myself that as i was a united methodist pastor i love the people i served i was i tried to be the best pastor i could and there was no nefarious yeah you know hocus pocus happening in the background i'm currently in touch with the pastor of a mega church in europe i won't say what country i don't want to out him he is currently wrestling do i become catholic uh you know he probably has similar thoughts to what you had maybe it maybe just grow where you planted and this is i don't want to rock the boat and this is fine i don't need to become a catholic what advice do you have to protestant pastors or protestants in leadership maybe they're even running youtube channels right that they've made a kind of career doing the thing and they're really nervous about it what would your advice be um my advice could only be the questions that was asked me was this what do you think what is really happening when you consecrate the sacraments i'm talking to pastors what do you think is happening what do you do about if you've if you've already come to the realization that there is mortal sin and there's venial sin and the protestant church by and large does not espouse that well what do you do with that um what do you do about the sacraments what do you do about sola scriptura if you're if this pastor is in a tradition that espouses it and you've come to the realization that that's actually not true and the scriptures themselves don't support solo scriptura i would ask those kinds of questions but in a gentle way with sympathy because it's just part of my french damn hard to do it um and because especially if you are married with with children and you've got to find and you want to provide for them and then i would say throw yourself at the feet of saint joseph the husband who also had to provide for his family and and really get to know saint joseph don't be afraid because he will find a way for you excellent well here's what we want to do we take a quick break when we come back i got a bunch of questions from my patrons that i want to ask you sound good that sounds great all right thanks a lot shane thank you all right i want to say thank you to ethos logos investments for supporting this show el investments.net pints i guess when i was a bit younger i thought that investing was something that only rich people did or old people did or rich old people did i didn't realize it was something that i should be looking into as well and when i began looking into it i realized i don't want to invest in companies that are doing immoral things and that's where ethos logos investments comes in they were founded to work with individuals and institutions within the united states that seek to infuse their morals into their investment portfolio with portfolios that adhere to the us conference of catholic bishops responsible investing guidelines you can be sure that you aren't profiting from intrinsic evils like abortion embryonic stem cell research pornography or human trafficking please go check them out ethos logos investments is what they call el investments.net pints there's a link in the description below el investments.net slash pints for employers they offer socially responsible and catholic 401k and 403b options as well so yeah go check them out el investments dot net slash pints securities offered through securities america inc member finra sipik ethos logos investments and securities america are separate entities advisory services offered through securities america advisors incorporated yes the second group i want to thank is hello hello h-a-l-l-o-w dot com slash mattfraddhallow.com hello is a fantastic app that will help you to pray and meditate it's not like new age mindfulness apps that lead into wrong ways of thinking this is a hundred percent catholic and it's super sophisticated if you go to hallow.com and sign up there you'll get a few months for free before deciding if you want to pay a minimal amount every month to have access to their entire app now you can download the app right now and you'll get access to certain things for free so be sure to check that out if you just want to you know play around with it and see what they have to offer but if you want access to everything that they have like sleep stories and bible studies and all sorts of beautiful things like that you you have to pay a certain amount every month to get access to that if you want access to everything for a few months just go to hello.com mattfraddhallow.commatrad and sign up there thanks and we're live all right this has been fabulous thank you so much for sharing your story with me and being willing and i want to apologize in advance for any loss of subscribers as a result of my interview are you kidding no no no no no i mean i know you're joking but i'm still not going to play along because it was just a beautiful story and yeah i'm very great i feel like i've left out so much but thank you thank you yeah what's this going to be like for you like because you said before me before we jumped in here you said you don't really want to do this it's not like you really want to share your story no i'm you know i'm much more reserved everybody thinks that well you're a pastor you're a preacher um that you clearly like to be in the spotlight the public line no actually i don't um and i'm exhausted by it and even when i was a preacher and this came as a surprise to uh parishioners and even my colleagues that i found preaching i loved preparing for it i loved it you know i think it was thomas aquinas who says that the only thing greater than contemplation is sharing the fruits of your contemplation i loved preparing and and getting the fruit basket together that's a terrible analogy and sharing it but i found preaching to be a burden it was hard i mean i would sit there and think gosh i'm the only one in this entire building that's called to stand up and speak this morning yeah and and then you put your heart and soul into it and you've touched some people but then you also have you know there's some days you just hit a foul ball um or you know or those days where you think you're you're at your best and you have just i mean it's as if the incarnate lord has walked right down the aisle of of the community and then your the reaction is uh thank you for that have a good day i'm like is that what happened to the lord of the sermon on the mountain he's changed history and you just know some senior came up to him afterwards and said thank you for that that was lovely i hope you have a great day i want you to know my so-and-so is having surgery i didn't anyway but anyway that's just the life of it but i do miss that part i want to let our patrons know if they go over to patreon.com they can put their question here for not pass to shane is that how yeah sorry we should shout out uh we had a 50 super chat from ewon ah 50 super chat that was very kind what was their name it was uh it was the letter e and then excuse me all right cool and then also there's a beth wright in chat bathroom yeah what did she say who's saying that she and her husband are in rcia right now because of you did you know that okay so for those who didn't hear that beth wright and her husband are now in rcia because of you they said you know who this is well i'm just an instrument right i'm just an instrument yes i do i do that they have wonderful people they were uh um prisoners of mine wow in a former community that uh that i serve i never did finish my my i'm an introvert i'm actually an introvert and most people don't believe it yeah i think i am too yeah yeah i like i like good conversations with a few people but yeah i would not like it took me i i just got on facebook for the first time last last year and i still don't post all that much it's very difficult for me and i would love to know why i think it comes to my childhood but i would never pursue something like this well i'm grateful it is undoubtedly a blessing to many people so thank you um colin carr thanks for being a patron cohen he says what aspects of your protestant heritage slash pastoral experience do you hope to bring into the catholic community what are the things that catholics could stand to gain and or learn from our protestant brothers and sisters okay i think that catholics should not be afraid to say they have a personal relationship with jesus christ amen that's not a protestant thing and uh father rossi if you're listening i'm going to quote you my friend but he was preaching on the feast of mary magdalene and about her love and her devotion and he just said can we stop saying that having a personal devoted relationship to jesus is a billy graham thing you know catholics came up with this is a catholic thing i think that i think a zeal for the for the the scriptures you know and that but that's a vatican ii um desire and you read the vatican ii says we want catholics to be to know the scriptures and i do think so that's an element of my protestant background um that we can bring to this but as a methodist see we weren't just bible alone and a lot of we were we were scripture and tradition as well shane goldsworthy thanks for being a patron says why catholic and not eastern orthodox i thought about that i think it would be it would come down to when you look at orthodoxy they seem to be very ethnic um you know you have russian orthodox greek orthodox everything seems to be centered more around nationality or ethnicity maybe i'm getting the language wrong whereas catholicism to me it was more appealing because it encompasses the globe and that did have an impression on me i had a miserable experience in that first mass that i attended but i do remember looking around saying wow where it's it's very diverse here not to say that protestantism can't be because there are congregations or that orthodoxy but at the time for me that was striking that's not something i was accustomed to jill says good morning i observe protestants evaluating typology and the church fathers through the lens of their faith traditions which makes the truths of the catholic church hard to see how did you begin to see past your own scriptural lens so if i can just sort of quali just sort of put a bit of a spin on this i have heard protestants say things like well i mean you can get anything out of the church fathers like if you're protestant you can read protestant things in the church fathers i do not agree with that at all no i would agree especially even the letters of ignatius of antioch when he talks about those who already disbelieve that it's truly the body and blood of christ in the eucharist that's pretty firm on that as well um and of course that was a part of my my conversion that's when i realized yeah it's just really him but did you find yourself trying to read your protestant traditions into the church fathers no i never came to it that way i actually tried my best to submit myself to them uh and and to learn from them but again for the non-methodists who are protestant that's what john wesley that was his vision is that we would get to know them this is something perhaps that we catholics need to do a better job of and that's not viewing our protestant brothers and sisters as a sort of monolith that's right theologically universal sort of group it's very diverse the people i serve they love jesus i mean they they love the lord and god bless them um for that and and and they want to learn and they want to learn more so i was never resisted um like as i said when i would bring to them some of the the great treasures of the catholic faith and and even in pastoral settings you know can we can we pray to the saints well of course let me tell you why you know and so at least in my experience the methodists that i serve were very open to many things mason lindemuth lindenmuth leiden lin okay i'm sorry i should just stop reading last names but thanks for being a patron mason says my father is non-denominational christian and has been married to my mother for 21 years now we are using means of conversion such as the green scapular and rosary but he doesn't come to us with many questions and carries the rosary around like a good luck charm is there any advice you can give for evangelizing and getting people to open up and consider the church embrace your own particularity i i think the best way to evangelize someone is not to try to overtly evangelize them you be the catholic you believe god has called you to be and it can be and it will be beautiful and that beauty will attract that person you hope by grace and to the truth of the catholic faith um and then learn your own learn learn why you do what you do but see if you're going to one thing i want the catholics understand and that i even had to learn in my my zeal so if you want to help a protestant understand why we should have the blessed virgin mary in our devotional life which by the way it should not be just a catholic thing i would even say to my protestant brothers and sisters who are listening it needs to be your thing too even if you remain a protestant and maybe we can get into that don't start though with saint maximilian colby's pneumatology yes don't start there start i mean you've got to you've got to root it in the space i see the i see the chat there we have a we have a super chat from austin decker thanks mate he says shane matt what advice would you give to protestant pastors who want to convert but are concerned about finding income for their family what job should they look for and apply for after converting well let me let me first preface that um excuse me all my former parishioners if they're watching they know that i always i'm waving my arms and i just hit the microphone that would be normal for them um here's what i should say a protestant clergy like me will not convert until the desire to be in union through christ in the eucharist exceeds the fear of the sacrifices involved you have to allow them to get to that point i had to get to that point where my desire and love exceeded my fear at that point i was able to convert that is excellent advice yeah and and just yeah i mean that that's the only way to do it that's the only way they're going to allow you arguments are not going to work they're going to have to grow in charity this is true of many human things if i wake up at six in the morning because i've set my alarm because i want to go surfing say as i used to in san diego my desire to surf has to outweigh my you know fear of getting cold right or getting up early that's right unless and if it doesn't if it doesn't exceed that fear i'll just hit snooze or i'll pull the plug out of the wall yes and and when we had another we had the uh the pastor of a parish of the parish my my uh that i attended along with my wife and she still attends there he visited with us and it's so funny we burnt all the food i mean we it was just the food was it was a disaster but i remember having a conversation with him and i and he helped me realize that you know shane god is not going to make the exception for you by which he meant like it's not going to consider the littlest of the field god provides for everybody but as far as your concern shane i guess you're on your own god's going to forget about you you have to trust that the lord will provide but you also have to be willing that it's going to look differently you have to accept that cross i had to come to the point where yes the the the part of the job that i do the vocation i do like preaching that's over but the lord will give me a different pulpit we all have different pulpits mine is still going to be there it's just going to be different and just trust that the lord will still give you a pulpit it's just going to look different travis france thanks for being a patron travis he says i'm a former protestant myself what has been the most difficult thing to adjust to in the catholic church for yourself what was the most difficult thing for your family to adjust to honestly there's not been anything difficult when i became catholic and started attending the masses as a catholic it was the most natural thing in the world for me and i think some of that is because i was becoming more and more conversant with some of the cultural aspects now i guess if you back up all the way as i was fresh green i had knew nothing about catholicism and attending my first mass yeah it's strange and what i had to get used to was um the devotions everywhere there's a devotion for everything and for every circumstance i just found out there's a patron saint that took me a little time but if you begin to understand that you know heaven and earth overlap in biblical cosmology they're not separated then of course all these people and saints with their wild and crazy personalities are still among us okay i really like this question so i'm going to ask it and then i'm going to kind of add some meat to it t says as a convert i ask this earnestly how do you know your catholicism is really true and not just another phase i think the reason this is a good question is because we're always excited and passionate about a new face catholics do this with devotions they get hooked on the rosary and then they get bored with that and they pick up a different devotion they get very passionate about that and they get bored with that and they go on to something else i know of protestants who perhaps become eastern catholics and that's a bit of a phase for them and that that wears off and then they become orthodox and then they become an old russian believer because that's even more intense how do you know this isn't just a phase well i think the only response is the only reason to be catholic is because you believe it's true um and truth is jesus christ and jesus christ is truly present in the catholic church um that's why i stay but that doesn't mean they're not things that are not going to frustrate you you know i i i'm invoking for instance saint therese of lejeux you know she became that carmelite nun at 15. well she knew going in that are going to be some things that drive her crazy but she knew that going in it wasn't a shock to her when she was in the convent and she was able to accept that but if christ is truly present in the eucharist and he is truth itself that's why i believe it's true actually that's a that's a good point because it felt like back in the benedict or john paul the second days catholics would brag a lot about all this unity that we have but if you know catholic youtube is any indicator we don't seem terribly united all the time what's it been like for you coming into the church seeing these divisions within the catholic church and i might be using that word division loosely i'm not saying people are systematic necessarily or apostatizing but i am bothered by it um certainly the scandals of recent years had an effect on me but i think i just understand that let's i hate to sound so flippant but at some point we have to give the lord some credit for the disasters because he's the one who calls sinners to himself what do you expect uh that's a beautiful baby really he calls sinners and of course there's going to be um some issues i mean judas was one of his apostles so so that i've not been scandalized by any of that okay let's see here justin mcgee thanks for being a patron justin says what was the first well maybe you've already addressed this so feel free we can move to the next one or you can recircle it what was the first epiphany you had that forced you to acknowledge that despite your other objections the catholic church must be true for me it was the reality of the papacy do you have any ongoing doctrinal struggles and if not which was the hardest to overcome uh no for me it was the true it was a real presence in the eucharist john 6 and realizing that uh the lord as many of the catholics already know was not speaking metaphorically he was speaking literally so much so that it scandalized the people to whom he was speaking and he did not water down that language and then you go from there to first corinthians where if you're not discerning the body you're you're eating and drinking damnation to yourself why would a symbol do that and then seeing ignatius of antioch in some of the early church of the fathers espousing that i did think as a seminarian that trans substantiation was something formulated at the council of trent but really what they were doing as you know was just articulating what was already a part of the tradition uh patron jacob wagner says theologically and devotionally what part of protestantism are you most concerned about leaving behind or do you feel like there's anything you're leaving behind well the people of course but if he's talking about um doctrine or doc doctrine emotionally um i think it's just the the methodist as speaking as a former methodist the idea of being madly in love with jesus being totally united but that's a catholic doctrine as well so i can't really think of anything off the top of my head um yeah because again there were so there's a lot of similarities but when you get down into the nitty-gritty you realize oh these are profoundly different like i believed at the time that i that in the real presence of christ in the eucharist as a methodist but then i'm like what does real presence really mean he's not really there to the extent that you can adore the elements well then is that really there so i can't think of anything sorry about that no i mean i often hear protestants say that when they become catholic they feel like they're just entering this larger world that in a sense nothing has to be left behind except for heretical beliefs but the whole thing's broken it's a good way uh and i don't know who said it but uh the catholics never throw any through anything out of the attic yeah yeah oh you know and i need to also say this another profound influence on me uh in this conversion was bishop robert barrett in the word of fire ministry so i wanted to make sure that that's a part of that tell us tell us how well i i ended up coming across a copy of his book to light a fire i believe that's the name of it i'm not familiar and i'm like i've never heard of this this person but i like what he's saying and so then that led me to youtube because it was mentioned over and over again and his approach and his intellectual appeal and his uh eloquence his videos really had an effect on me and then that that drew me in uh as as well so uh so the word on fire ministry is doing great things and i realize now as a catholic there are some catholics who have criticisms of it but what who doesn't have criticism to level against something but keep bishop baron keep doing what you're doing thank you let's see bradley grusso says my father is a retired methodist pastor and is quite skeptical and worried about me in my process of my catholic conversion what advice would you have for me when talking to him i would let him ask the questions you just be ready to answer them again don't try to proselytize so much i mean i think i think the best evangelization happens in relationship and without coercion you know arguments i just don't think arguments are necessarily not many people convert because of arguments over a period of time maybe but let your let the let the holy spirit develop curiosity in your father and let him ask you some questions but you yourself you be an on fire catholic and you'll set somebody else on fire patron dkv says did any friends or people of your methodist congregation convert along with you uh no other than the two who have not yet converted uh no one that i know of has has converted i did not shout from the rooftops that i'm becoming catholic like i said yeah but those who know me okay i did have intimate friends they're not surprised by they were not surprised by any of this and wished me well elliot brubacher says uh did the conflict and confusion in the church give you pause or cause you to question your decision to convert you've addressed that but if you want to take another no i would say that the turmoil in the tradition made me realize that i would have to at some point yeah yeah fantastic man this is this has been great almost 800 people watching so there you go i love that you said like the lord will give you another platform no here we are yeah yeah yeah so what's next i don't know i mean it's whatever the lord wants at this point i'm uh i'm going to just work as hard for the parish that uh as the director of evangelization we've got some new things happening there uh the new year and um getting to know them serving with father rossi and just to be a committed catholic i wonder if the lord's not calling you to help assist your brothers and sisters in protestant denominations i don't know uh and i would i would love to be a part of that in some way um to help people who are starting to become convinced of catholicism to be that bridge but you're still going to be dealing with the the living situation which again the desire to convert the desire to be catholic in union with the lord of the eucharist has to exceed your fears you know i do think that sometimes catholics aren't terribly sympathetic to just how difficult it is to convert you know we say things like yeah it's true just do it like yeah but i've got a family and this is how i feed them and that's an obstacle i remember thinking to myself lord why is this got to happen to me i would love to be able to convert without having to make my family suffer in any way i don't want them to have to be the the consequence of this but then i think well that that's a silly thing to say in many ways i am a father and you know as sometimes parents need to let their children suffer for their convictions you know like the jews suffered you know for their convictions and they raised children to have to suffer their conviction so i i look at myself as one of those but they have not really suffered i mean god has been faithful yeah well look this has been a pleasure thank you kindly for coming on the show um someone someone wrote they said start a podcast bro i'll subscribe so well thank you everybody and thanks uh thanks for listening all right cheers thanks a lot god bless

Channel: Pints With Aquinas

Views: 372,932

Keywords: aquinas, catholicism, catholic, pints with aquinas, matt fradd, theology, debate, religion, st. thomas aquinas, thomas aquinas, philosophy

Id: iqejcICADDc

Length: 116min 12sec (6972 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 14 2021