The Journey Home - 2013-12-2 - Phillip Frederick - Former non-practicing Protestant

good evening and welcome to the journey home I'm Marcus Grodi your host for this program EWTN for many years has given me this great privilege of coming into your homes and allowing guests to share how the Holy Spirit has opened their hearts and minds that the beauty of our Lord Jesus Christ in his church and our guest tonight Philip Frederick we always say where a guest comes from and and he lists as his starting point probably what might be the biggest denomination in America he calls himself a former non practicing Protestant and if we called that group non practicing Christians sadly all of us know people that call themselves Protestant or Catholic or Christian but are not practicing they don't may not know their faith very well for whatever reason and they're not living it or experiencing the joy and and that might be a glimpse of our guest tonight Philip Frederick welcome to the journey home good to have you here a pleasure to be here I mean I always find it fascinating you were talking a little bit just a moment we had before the program how journeys are different from one to the other but it's still after all these years it amazes me to see the same fingerprints of our Lord Jesus Christ on people's yeah people's lives and what that tells us even as the audience listens I know we have people that watch the program and part of the reason they watch is because they have members of their families that are non-practicing indeed and so maybe the question is well how did you come back to the church maybe it'll help our children so Philip it's good to have you in the show I'll get out of the way as soon as I can and I want you to start from the beginning okay well you know I starting from the beginning as a child I had a wonderful childhood I'm one of four children my mom and dad are they hail from southern Kentucky and I think as as in their lives they were handled the the church they were in I think it was kind of fundamentalist and I don't think they felt a whole lot of love in that church I think that the Church kind of scared them so by the time they became young adults they decided to stay away from that and my dad he he was he was in the Air Force so he and he was in the Air Force as a jet engine mechanic and I think he got all into this NASA thing where technology and and being brilliant and whatever else so he I think his confidence in himself and his ability to do things grew and and he started to work for for General Electric and if you've ever the test cells there are like NASA so you know you've got the closed-circuit TVs and countdown timers and displays so I think he really got wrapped up into that and and I wondered you know that kind of environment could breed that kind of real self confidence or call to be extremely self confident self focused and that's that is the way he was in any it had an influence on the rest of the family because I personally I should probably speak more about myself I idolized my dad you know I always tell people that whenever we would hunt mushrooms in the spring and so when you'd go wading into the woods I would follow dad and I would I would make sure that my my foot fell in his footprints and I just wanted to be just like him and so you know he was in essence he kind of took the place of God in my in my life and I had love for my mom and my dad loved and and supreme confidence that they would never steer me wrong and so we had a very happy childhood we never however went to church as a family you know it was a it's an odd thing but when we started going to school and public schools people would occasionally start to witness to me you know and when they would find out that I hadn't gotten to church well then I don't go to church and I I was always a little uncomfortable with well why don't I and whatever else and the dead a question ever come up at home you know hey Dad why don't we do this or if your parents give any explanation no not really I mean we had things I think I can remember having we got a yearbook encyclopedia and with that came a couple books on the Bible and I can remember reading there's a children's Bibles and I can remember reading them but they just they had no no basis I hadn't no help growing up in America I assumed the the usual religious holidays we were celebrating oh yeah and I just didn't have the religious can't to it yeah well you know we we did we celebrated Christmas and Easter I mean they were big holidays Thanksgiving I I can remember dressing up for Easter putting a blazer on and a little bow tie and standing out in front of Mom's tulip bed with our Easter baskets and they would take our picture and after that it's okay go in and change your clothes and go play and there was no going to church that day and so that that was you know as I got older I realized that that was a little strange but you know again in defense of mom and dad they they really were and I believe they were handled roughly as in their youth as far as as far as religion goes but you also give the great example of you trust your parents yeah you know that were there you know the model they're setting for you there's no reason to doubt it yeah yeah and good people and also it was easy for you to just say okay this is this is truth this is the direction yeah one time when I got older we went to a family reunion and I had an uncle and this is our mom's side who was dying I think he was dying of lung cancer and but he he converted he returned to his Protestant roots and he offered prayer before dinner and after the prayer was over I don't really understand why but dad mentioned to me that that he believed that wouldn't die you basically get laid in a box and you get put under the earth and you decay and that's the end and I thought well okay you know dad's probably right I can see that and so that's pretty much my philosophy on on life that there was no afterlife also at about that time I don't know if you remember there was a book it was Erich von Daniken's the Chariots of the Gods yes well I read that and I bought that stuff hook line and sinker I really did I once I once gave a speech in college on how Jesus was the offspring of a space traveler in an earth woman which was his idea and I know basing on the wheels of ezekiel so you know this is your dad into that too or just was it just something you picked up you know that there was a television show and I can remember him watching that with fascination we we sat down and watched it and I don't know how much he bought into it but as I was in my early teens I really bought into it well and I went from that point you know pretty soon after that I buy the a couple years I was in high school and I had people that were come around and witnessed to me and there were classmates and they would come with their pastor and they would sit there not and I know why they're there they're you know they're trying to hit a hot button and to get to Savior so yeah and and bless their hearts for doing right but I the whole time I knew what they were doing and it was it was just this subtle dance they would try to box me in and I could wriggle out and and when I eventually started working and worked for an electronics company in Lebanon and I there was there were a couple guys they live in Ohio Lebanon Ohio said there were a couple of guys that I worked with that were evangelical Protestants and they were trying to come me so we would get into debates and we used to keep a little tote board up there and it was the Lions versus the Christians and of course I was the lion and they they were debating me under unfair terms because they debated from the position of faith I debated from the position of fact and facts Trump faith in many situations because they can't prove what they're talking about the only proof is through the eyes of faith and if you don't have faith there is no proof so but the tote board was always heavily in favor of the Lions as opposed to the Christians and this one man his name was Craig said man felt if we could just get you on our side I mean we you would do great and I said Craig it's never going to happen you know there your your faith is not going to trump my facts and so that really is as a young man that's what I believed it's pretty soon after that matter of fact on graduation from high school mom and dad did one great extravagance on me that I'll always be forever grateful they paid for a senior class trip to the Bahamas and for me to go so I go there and the the first evening there there's a party going on in the hotel it was all these schools were there and someone said don't don't go down on to the west end of this the hotel because those people down there are crazy so my friend and I of course that's right and there was when we got down there wasn't nothing going on but there was this beautiful blonde gal she was wearing a print dress and she was just spectacular you know and so I introduced myself to her and and she was Debbie Brown from Cincinnati Ohio and and I introduced myself to her and and we went out a couple times while we were down there and when it came time because we we arrived on different times they left like the day before I did and I can remember being really frustrated that Debbie was leaving because I thought I wouldn't see her again now we were going to she lived in Forest Park so that's like 30 minute 40 minute drive from Lebanon and back in those days it was all long-distance phone calls so the odds of us you know seeing each other after that was slim and not but we dated for a long time and and I can remember being impressed with her mother Ruth Brown because Ruth prayed the blessing before meals I'd never never never experienced that and Ruth kept you know the holidays and she went to Mass and it was my real first experience of being around Catholics and devout Catholics and I went as a matter of fact Debbie used to go on search retreats I don't know if they still offer this or not but they're for young people and my first mass was escorting Ruth to pick up Debbie after a search retreat and Ruth apologized to me about the standing up the sitting down the kneeling and she said just follow my lead and and you know it takes about an hour and I can remember thinking the mass is different because you don't have people you know the whole thing is is very it's just a peaceful thing and I was impressed by that our guest tonight is Philip Frederic Philip a well I'm back just a little bit more again so even though you had no faith had you you had you been to worship as a Protestant now so he really had Neve experienced worship yeah generally as your parents ever talked about those Catholics over there no you know that's the one thing I'm thankful for to mom and dad they didn't poison us at all toward any faith you know they you know there are people that that would not like us because we're but mom and dad never said anything bad at all about catharsis so when you meet this Catholic girl I mean you're not a believer but you don't you're not bringing with it a slate of negative to her faith you just don't know it never experienced it came and compare it to anything good you haven't I mean you were you were more than a non-practicing Protestant you were hardly one at all right I mean are you were so and it's pretty it is good it's a blessing when you don't bring to it a bunch of negatives with it how did she feel about your your lack of faith lack of interest or was not a topic of cotton not a topic okay it was I remember we had a a little sit-down discussion at our YMCA in Lebanon and she said and we did this when it was apparent that that our relationship was going to be a long term and she just wanted to know she was more concerned than anything with does her Catholicism pose an issue to minister I said no and she said you know what what is your faith and I said I really don't have a faith and I quickly changed the subject I know I didn't want to dwell on that but no debbie's faith didn't bother me now I will say that that after we got married and maybe I'm putting the cart before the horse when she started going back to church I warned her that those people will put they'll they'll make themselves be a wedge between you and I and and that was a sincere concern of mine so in that sense that's my one prejudice against the church okay as it was happening so but here you are dating you're dating a Catholic girl it seems like it's moving right along did what was well by this time you're out of college yet at this point I didn't go to college I I took I did a couple years but but I did really didn't complete college all right but I mean are you working now because you get it up working where your father worked well I did I I started out working at this electronics company and in south Lebanon and it was it was I guess I need to get things in sequence here I worked there and Debbie and I were married we we got married in 1981 near it was in in May May 23rd anyway so we were having a happy little life together I'm sorry was it the religious it was it was a Catholic Mass I didn't communion wasn't offered but it was a Catholic Mass and I can remember taking the the pre-cana in classes and one of them the funny little lines was is the the person offering the class said well how many mixed marriages do we have here not I'm looking around and Debbie sitting to my left is she's got her hand up and I'm like and I when they said mixed marriages I thought they were talking race I've never talked in faith I'm like oh okay well I can see that so it was it was kind of humorous but anyway I can remember when you sign the piece of paper saying that you won't preclude your children from being Catholic I can remember thinking cleverly well but I won't encourage the children to be Catholic either so I thought I was clever I wasn't anyway father Dave lemco married us he was a very good man we were married at Our Lady of the Rosary oddly enough in Forest Park Ohio I say oddly enough because we're we are a rosary praying family now we love the Rosary anyway so we were married and we had a nice little life together Debbie and I you know like a lot of young couple were trying to figure our selves out sometime in the spring I think around 1983 I got a call from a close family friend who asked me with the halting voice if I had spoken with mom and dad and I said no and she said you need to call your mom and dad so I called him and mom was on the phone I said mom what what's the wrong eye and said that there's something I needed to talk to you about and mom starts sobbing into the phone I'm like what what is going on and she told me that dad had a mass in his abdomen and didn't know what it was and I talked to dad and dad said yeah we're gonna go get some tests done and the doctors pretty quickly diagnosed that his lymphoma and they gave him chemotherapy and I'm sorry they they did some testing on him to specify what it was and he they came home from the hospital on Mother's Day that year me which you know is painful for Mom she'll always remember that on Mother's Day and I still remember mom in the in the kitchen crying pitifully and dad kind of sitting on the sofa in the living room just kind of stoic Lee telling us he has six to ten year sentences is really all I have and I can remember thinking how does this jive with your faith and what you believe but he just was very stoic about it anyway we began then trying to present mom and dad with grandchildren right away we were contracepting and so our first daughter Carolyn was born and then very quickly after that Katie was born and it was neat watching mom and dad be grandparents because they really took to it very well there's a picture of dad feeding the girls little scoop of vanilla ice cream on a cone is just precious sitting on on his lap on the back patio and it's a shame that he was taken so soon from us but toward the end dad started speaking it his uh his family was from the Church of Christ I can remember seeing his dog tag he was in the Air Force seeing his dog tag and it said Church of Christ I was a boy like eight years old I said does this mean you're Catholic and dad says no this Church of Christ I said but does it mean you could be Catholic and he said well yeah you could I could so I don't know why an eight year old who knows nothing about Catholicism would ask that but anyway he started speaking to this minister from the Church of Christ and I don't have any idea what they talked about but Dad it had expressed the desire to be baptized and the Minister for that church said we only do total body immersion and I should have said before this when dad's cancer got very advanced is when this happened and they had done a they were going to remove his spleen because they they saw through cat-scans this is this is somewhere around 1988 they saw dark mass on in his abdomen so they thought his spleen had had kind of ruptured and that he was bleeding that way and so they cut him basically his whole abdomen open and and he was healing from it and he had almost no immune system so he told the man that he couldn't have total body immersion that he would get an infection to be dead very quickly so I don't know what I think the man's name was Steve ever told him about that but dad was never baptized the the fall October 15th of 1989 is when dad passed away he was 49 years old and so from my perspective you know my dad was my God my God was now deceased I had this fleeting thought that I could I would just do anything I want to do I had no reason to be good I had no reason to aspire to anyone's praise anymore and I really don't know why I didn't go that way the raising of mom and dad being married to a good woman I'm certain contributed to that but that you know that's what given your position your perspective that's a valid question yeah yeah if you don't believe in anything there's no reason you know but you know so so I I live for several years after that learning to to be my own man I think that I particularly being is dependent on my dad as I was it kept me from growing up and I started doing things for myself thinking for myself a lot more than I had before and I think that his death was the last step in my mature raishin as a man and I started thinking it at a point then about mortality and it kind of bothered me a little bit the dad had said well when you die you just go in a casket and you decay and then talking about being baptized so he never really told me but there's a slight disconnect so we don't you know in the back of my mind I'm thinking he had a revelation there's something that changed in the way he thought and I'd started so I I had started drifting that that direction toward thinking about spirituality at an event that happened Debbie's mom had a stroke and she we didn't at first understand what had happened to her this is a few years after dad passed away and she was she at one point she was critically ill she would the hospice had been called in they were saying she won't last the night she was I mean their fingernails had turned kind of purplish and she was in the embryonic fetal position I should say and so we were all gathered around Debbie's brother and sisters we're all gathered around and they said well let's pray a rosary for Mom just to let her know we're here and to let her know it's okay to go on and she hadn't spoken for a couple days and so we're praying the rosary and near the end of the Rosary Ruth opens her eyes surveys the room looks around like what are you all doing here and we're like I'm like that's weird you know so anyway I leave that night and that were you joining them in the Rosary I was I was but at that time you know I'm like yeah I can do this stuff it's I don't feel it I don't believe it but I can I can do this and so I went home that night and Debbie came home wearily the next day and I said so is she gone is she no she's still here but it's not going to be long anyway about 11 o'clock toward noon that day we got a call I'm like well this is the call so Debbie's sister barb called and said Phil yes can I speak to Debbie I'm like okay so I called Debbie over there and Debbie she it's gonna be hard to say this Debbie says mom and and and it's her mom talking to her on the phone just right as rain and as I'm like that's very odd how can you go from being at death's door to within 12 hours speaking to your daughter on the phone and it it is truly if I can say that I've seen a miracle it was that and Ruthie got well enough to attend family Christmas that that year she died shortly after that but that was a miracle recovery and it was I'm certain so that she could say goodbye to all of her family and and Ruth she her role in my in my journey home was tremendous and it was it's kind of fun we don't talk about it much as long as a little unacknowledged but it was sincere and profound you know going with me to Mass we would go to by then I'd go with Debbie and her mom to Easter Mass and so anyway that that I'm guessing whether you know it for sure not that Ruth was certainly praying for her son well well she went his art the heart and mind will be open yeah to the beauty of the surance she we when we moved out of our apartment the first time we broke the bed down when we moved the mattress of the bed we found a green scaffold of course and I didn't know what it was well I imagine a non-catholic viewers having a clue what we're talking about but that's one of the the Catholic devotions of their means of offering up a sacramental prayer for the conversion of someone and it's not a superstitious little coin that you stick in there but it be connected with a very committed offering up a prayer for that person and she was doing that for you why don't we pause there for a good time for a break because that sounds like you're getting at that point where you're going to start talking about the all this is what's starting to happen yeah open your heart to the church all right our guest for tonight it's Phil Frederick going back to school welcome back to the journey home our guest tonight is Philip Frederick I'm Marcus Grodi your host you know I was thinking about you mouthing the rosary with the family as they wronged you not to believe it but I think if you look back were their seeds being planted in the act of doing that both intellectually as well as spiritually as you look back in your life at that time yeah I think so i i've called it nudges i think a lot of people will call that their their eventual journey to the church that you've been nudged your whole life and even going back to my dad's dog tags and my asking about being Catholic there's no reason to do that but the the call I think is has always been there for me and they're they're just myriads of things looking back on it that that have nudged me into that orbit my my daughter's okay so so one of the things that happened when Debbie and I married is I drew Debbie away from the Catholic Church she really didn't go I mean maybe maybe the high holidays but that was about it so we're at a family gathering and it may have been a wedding and Debbie's nephew's wife was talking to our oldest daughter and said so are you ready for your first holy communion and Deb Debbie's like we haven't done the classes you you know she hasn't really hasn't done that yet so that Sunday Debbie shows up for church and they have registration for our for a PS our parish school of religion so Debbie enrolled her in these classes and and and so Debbie started going in the fall to back to church again and that's when I warned her you know you let those people drive a wedge between you and I in the church and that that was my experience there there are family members who had gone into other faiths and it's like they if the husband didn't follow then they were going to drive a wedge but the husband-and-wife because they wanted her in the fold so that was my concern and Debbie would go off and I would stay at home and I'd fix breakfast and she'd come home with the children when and and that perhaps that's another thing I should put in there a year after my dad died on October the 27th our son Philip was born who was born while we were contracepting we were still still far away from any of the church teachings and what was so neat about that I had a friend who okay so I left working at the electronics company and I went to work for my dad's company which was GE in Cincinnati and there was a friend there his name was John we called him trapper and trapper was an evangelical protestant and he told me says what would it take for you to come to church and I said what it would take would be for me to sit down just like I'm talking to you and talk to my dad that's what it would take and he said well that's that's not too tall of an order let me work on that I'll pray for that and so I started having dreams of my dad and I dreamed he was still alive and I could feel his presence and when I when I would wake up I would be confused right at the start and then I would realize ah that that was a dream but it was so real that if I would cry because I'm I felt like he was still there and it was like losing him all over again so I'm thinking what trapper had said and like men that's not exactly the deal of the trap I wanted to be able to sit there and talk to him but it was very very close and then then like I said a year later my son who we we named Philip Lester for my dad is there so it's it's almost like my dad reincarnated and reincarnation is a bad word but he's he's back you know and it's oh that's rattling around in my Inn my head but the other thing is is in when I started working for for GE I started in an electronics my background is electronics I got laid off from GE and GE went from 22 thousand people in Evendale to 8 thousand and I wasn't going to get called back at GE not in that job anyway well my the the the manager of the area called me back as an exempt employee working as a technician which is exactly what my dad was doing in the exact same building that my dad worked in and it was weird because eventually they they have job classifications and I I became the cell owner of test cell a1 which was the exact test cell that my dad was a cell owner it so I was walking in my dad shoes again and you know you're these things were rolling around in my mind it's like there's the coincidence was remarkable so all of those things Ruth's miracle her recovery just started really making me wonder and and dad's deathbed conversion if you will started to make me wonder so Debbie's going to mass and she's lugging the children off to mass and and you know three children can be a handful sometimes so I thought well I can start going and I'll just referee the kids I'll keep the fighting to a minimum and she can enjoy mass so I'm sitting there and father Liu homier was our pastor at the time and father Liu is a saintly saintly man his homilies they just exuded holiness and I'm sitting there listening to him thinking this I could get used to this this is VIP this is very comforting very soothing I feel this love for Christ that I'd never felt before and I didn't know what was going on there and I can remember one one Sunday we were up late or something like that and and Debbie decided to let me sleep in I think I worked late and Debbie decided we sleep in that day so I'm hearing them out in in the rest of the house getting ready to go out the door and I leap out of bed I'm like why didn't you wake me then Debbie says why I thought you'd like to sleep in I'm like you know I'm going to mass so I throw my clothes on mat my hair down and go off to mass and Debbie to this day she really didn't know that I had fallen in love with a mass and fallen in love with you know father Lew and his teaching so father Lew at this time was starting to get somewhat elderly he had bad health he started offering Communion he would sit on a stool because it hurt his back to stand that long there were rumors that he was going to retire and I'm like you know I really need to make up my mind what I believe because if he retires and then I get baptized I couldn't live with myself not having this man baptize me so that fall they an announcement shows up in the bulletin about our CIA Rite of Christian initiation for adults and nice I told Debbie I want to sign up for that and she's but you're taking college classes at nighttime I know but but I want to join the church and the classes I can I can finish those anytime but I really want to go through our CIA so she treated me like I was glass or like I was you know some frightened animal that I could get scared away but there was there was no turning back at that point I just I loved the church I started I started reading about the church because the only the only thing that bothered me was is it the right church and so I started researching the all the various different denominations outside of the Catholic Church and they all kept pointing back to the Reformation or some of them didn't even make it that far back and I'm like it became more and more apparent to me that the longer I sought the truth it became more apparent that the church that Christ founded was the Catholic Church so I'm like this is this has got to be the place so I show up for the the first night in for our CI a was offered in the rectory there was only like three or four people in the class that I was in and father Liu he leaned back he took his collar off and was just very relaxed and he started working through the sacraments the first sacrament that he worked on was the sacrament of baptism and he says there's three forms of baptism in the Catholic Church there's the baptism by faith there's a baptism by blood and there's the baptism by desire and I said can you explain the baptism by desire he said well Phil if there's if you want to be baptized but there's some obstacles something that cannot permit you to be baptized then you're considered baptized in the Catholic faith and I'm like oh that's my dad's Who I am and it's like I was I was so thrilled I couldn't restrain myself I come home and I'm telling Debbie about it and my dad and I shared a barber his name is Wendell and Wendell is is a very good man he's a Protestant man and I was telling him about this and he says we'll fill that scriptural like how so he says well the good thief on the cross he probably wasn't baptized but he was baptized but he was assured that before that day was out he would be in paradise with the Lord and like you're right that is scriptural so I was just I was just thrilled that not only was I going to be in the church but my dad was going to be in heaven waiting for me and that was you know the whole thing when you realize that you're going to be where your wife is you're going to be where your children will eventually end up being it was the relief that the the I I don't I guess I really don't know how to exactly to describe it to you that I how I felt but it was it was tremendous again our guest is Philip Frederic tonight do you remember in that journey because the Lord has been using in your life that all different kinds of ways to give you a glimpse that there's another world you know from your earthly perspective of a coincidence or you know reincarnation of what how are you gonna describe but the point was that the Holy Spirit was nudging you as you said yeah to be awakened to the to that there's another dimension here do you remember at what point you talked about you falling in love with the mass you're falling in love with the teaching of a father was a Leo father father Liu what point did you fall in love with our Lord Jesus you know that's the interesting thing about that is is is for me it was it was learning that God existed one of the to say falling in love with Jesus a lot of the times when when people would witness to me they they kept pushing Jesus and it I ran away from that I I didn't even use the name Jesus for a long time and I think it was I really do think it was when I recognized the Lord in the Eucharist one of the things that father Liu talked about was when we talked about the sacraments and we talked about the Eucharist was that the Lord was in the Eucharist and that was wonderful but I think probably my biggest conversion we we went to Christ renews as parish a local parish retreat and in that is where where I were I really fell in love with Jesus and and felt that Jesus loved me much more than I could possibly imagine and and so from that point on I've grown out of that I could imagine that that experience with Christ who knows his parish which is like Catholic weekend renewal might have brought it all together for you I could imagine how that would have done that and you know that very powerful experience of our Lord in the context of other Catholics renewing their faith yeah but it's you know that the strange thing is is when you when you go from I've always said I'm sure you've heard it before there was no proof that God existed but there was a day and I don't know when it happened when I allowed myself to just opened myself to the possibility that yes in fact God did exist I saw it daily I saw things that that told me that he existed that he loved me that he cared about me that he was guiding my life and guiding events in my life and looking back on Ruth's you know miraculous healing my son being born you just start seeing things that there's there's just no way that that was an accident or a coincidence that it was a signal grace a sign from God that yes I'm here I'm in charge you need you need to follow you need to learn you know when you were mentioning earlier about your dad's desire for baptism and didn't happen I was about ready to save baptism desire and I didn't I didn't to discover I almost get teary eyed myself to discover them that was that was a touch of the Spirit not only for him but for you yeah and seeing that did well so as your is your wife doing backflips that you've come into the church you know she she somewhat guiltily will say that she never prayed for my conversion when when her sister barb who lives in California and barb is the family zealot and and you know when barb found out I was taking our CIA class she sent me three books two of them one of them was a catechism and the other one was surprised by truth and for some reason can't remember the third one right now but barb told Debbie that she was praying for my conversion and had prayed for my conversion all along Debbie's one of Debbie's friends said that at our wedding he was talking to Ruth and saying well you know what about Phil not being Catholic and Ruth leaned over to him she said Deb you'll get a minute so you know it's just it's that people are always praying for you when I was taking our CIA class father Lew Deacon met ostendorf Hershel steward deacon Hershel told us that people were praying for us all the time in parts of the world that you can't imagine and you start to feel that you really do feel this pole I was talking about in in physics you know when you when you cross the gravity boundary toward a black hole you cross the event horizon and at that point there's no escaping the black hole and it sounds unflattering to talk about God and the Catholic Church's the black hole but once I cross that there was no getting out and I'm thrilled yeah I might be the happiest man ever being in the faith I love the faith the thing that is that is frustrating about now being in the church and knowing so many people that are outside the church having family members that are outside the church I want to witness to them just just as the the you know my evangelical friends tried to witness to me and when I start talking to them I see the eyes glaze over and I'm like oh please please just give me a minute listen listen to me for a minute because it's so warm and cozy by the Catholic Church in the Catholic Church like of like a a little fire you know that's it's just be a comparing father Lou's approach versus you mentioned others that were trying to press all the time I mean there's the presence of the Eucharist there's the mass but then it's also father Lou's approach I wonder if you look back on that and see that there's something we can learn from how father Lou brought the gospel to you that gives us encouragement to reaching out to others he he really embodied the love of his fellow man father he just loved everyone and when you were around him he's he's got in in the parents he's been gone several years now but he still got a large following of people that absolutely adore father live and it's and it's a healthy following they love him and and they pray for him and they want to know how he is my my second child Katie a few years ago we had a healing Mass or not a healing Mass but am Oh confession Mass this is after after father had retired he came back to hear confessions for this mass and Katie didn't know he was there and when the priest all processed then she saw father Lewis she just burst into tears and it's just the love that she had for so it isn't just the words though they're true as they are but my father Lou there particularly backed up by the love of him as a person the way characterized the way he lived the gospel father definitely lived since coming into the church he said you're a rosary pray and family how was the the becoming a Catholic changed you and your family yeah we and my girls and my son my son probably less remember the days before my conversion in my days after so we went from sleeping in on Sundays and doing nothing to always go into mass to praying the rosary we are a part of a family rosary group we get together Sunday evenings and and pray the rosary with several other families we always went to that we have a friend still remember as after I converted we were sitting around the local swimming pool and he said hey the rosaries over at our house tonight you guys want to come over and pray it and Debbie looks at me like can way inland sure I'd yeah that's fine so we go over there and and we've we've just been praying the rosary since then all right we have an email from Patsy from Tampa Florida she says our home has not been a particularly religious one over the years my husband and I are trying to remedy that though we were both raised cultural Catholics but without much in the way of an act of faith life what are some things we can work on to bring our marriage and our kids closer to God you know for Debbie and I going on going on faith retreats you know to help we both did a Cursillo weekend Debbie was like hit by a lightning bolt on a hearse and weekend and when you when you have experienced something like that your faith becomes on fire and then praying together praying the rosary in the evenings together really does help an awful lot making sure that you keep bad influences out of the house helps an awful lot our house when you walk into our house there's no doubt that you're in a Catholic home there are crucifixes over the doors there there are devotional statues through the house it's you just have to start living them now how do you explain those do you're not Catholic buddies when they stop over you know that they really don't they really don't say anything I think I really don't know what their their their take on it is I I hope they just see it as as piety that they see it as goodness I think we're trying trying to display that you know we've got the the little Mary statue out front Mary and the infant in Prague holding the baby Jesus so that's that really is that's what we do do you see father Lu as a is now a continuing model for you he is his father comes to the parish every now and again to visit us we just dedicated a new church father worked long and hard to try to get the new church going he saved some stained glass windows for us and when he came into town I was father's valet and there was no higher position I was I was very proud to do that we have another email Kathleen from Oregon she writes I am a lifelong Catholic and I love my church and all it stands for Protestant churches are good at reaching out to anyone who comes into their church and makes them feel very welcome we in the Catholic Church here are friendly but there isn't a lot of connection to make our parishioners and newcomers feel that they are that they really belong are there any workshops books or anything out there that could help change this and again in our parish the Christ renews is parish once you go on that weekend you've got hundreds of friends because the the closings the whole program you really do get very integrated in the pear we do things we have outreaches in the community we have st. Vincent DePaul that we go to people's house and we help them spiritually and with material matters I'm a member of the night of Columbus and we do outreach there we try to help people that that need things fix furnitures moved things of that nature so yeah there there there it's unending in the church the things that we can get involved in in the parish and in the community at large thinking about you walking in your dad's footprints yeah your dad did the exact same job you are doing or we're doing or are doing this but he did it without a sense that there's anything after this life at which to me I can't imagine that because I've never lived that way of always even when my wild years believe somehow even when I was in the Vandana kadai that they had the back of my mind because the lack of anything after the Box just seemed to would seem to undercut every reason for doing anything but now you're in the very shoes very very job award very job how did your conversion of faith change your attitude towards work and who you are as a man and what you're doing did it have an influence on that yeah it absolutely did but because before I was I was working for myself and I was working for my family and and I pray the rosary usually on my drive in in the morning and one of my prayer intentions is that I can do my job worthily as a disciple of Christ and that I can somehow influence others so you do you start you start to live a larger life when you're living for someone other than yourself you're living for for Christ in his church and that's that's something that makes what dad did in my estimation even more wonderful because he lived under under such a limited definition of a life scope and if he had had a church he that he could he could work within it would have been a lot better well even the way you told your story is it is an indication that you began to see life differently because you're looking back and seeing how God worked here God worked there God did this you're seeing that in a way that otherwise you wouldn't even thought to do then you know one of the things that that it dawned on me at some point again with if if my dad was my hero and dad could do anything when it when his demise was manifest to him when he knew he was going to die and he decided he needed to convert one of the my big motivators was I know I'm not as good a man as my dad was so if I'm fortunate enough to see the end coming can I do any less than my dad did and that's that's the thing that I would tell everyone out there is I don't care how supremely confident you are in yourself my dad was very confident in himself in the end he knew he needed help so all right deal from Columbia Rights I became Catholic along with my wife a few years ago it was more her idea than mine and I've never been too comfortable in the Catholic Church I'd rather go back to my evangelical roots but don't want to leave my wife behind is there something I can do to be a better Catholic I I've always said my big thing is this look for the truth if if you want to if you really need if you really need to know what's right seek the truth study what does Kap Catholicism teach and and these other churches where did they come from and you'll find they came from the Catholic Church and why did they leave and they left this is not going to be politically correct but they left out of disobedience and that's never good one of the things that that I it weighs on me as Martin Luther was the disobedient priest and from that Christianity Christendom used be that the Catholic world but from Martin Luther and his disobedience the church is fragmented and fragmented and fragmented I have a friend that I work with who says well I really don't go to church anymore I think I can just stay home and pray I pray every day and I'm like you you can't do that that's not the rules you you've you've taken Martin Luther's disobedience down to the person level and the whole world could be that way and if you if the whole world does that there is no church anymore so we're going the wrong direction Oh away from the church the Catholic Church is the wrong direction one minute to go what about our lady I love the Blessed Virgin I love her and and again in in the in my family my Protestant background they don't understand our mother they they don't understand they don't understand the communion of saints they don't understand that when when these saints when Mary died or ascended into heaven was assumed into heaven they don't understand that she's not separate from us that that our souls continue to live and to know that she's there pulling for us as her children speaking to her son asking you know his favors and his love for us it's just a tremendous place I am besides their intercession the reality of this great communion of saints also reminds us that we're still close to our dads yeah I mean what a blessing that is it is a tremendous film thank you for joining us on a journey over and sharing the journey with us it's my pleasure and thank you for joining us on this episode of the journey home I pray that it was an occurrence how much you

Channel: EWTN

Views: 6,675

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Catholic, EWTN, Christian, television, JHT01413

Id: CdPTylgmK4I

Length: 56min 17sec (3377 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 05 2013