[music]
Marcus Grodi: Good evening,
and welcome to
'The Journey Home'.
I'm Marcus Grodi,
your host for this program.
And, once again,
it's a great pleasure
to be with you again
this evening.
I want to thank so many of you
that send us emails,
text messages, tweets,
or whatever,
thanking us for the program,
and it's always good to hear,
and I hope you are also
especially thanking EWTN,
because they're the ones
that make this program possible.
And it's a joy, not only to
be with you again each week,
but I always look forward
to my time with a guest.
Shaun Rieley is our guest,
former evangelical Protestant.
I don't know his story yet.
I'm learning it with you.
So, let's relax, and welcome
Shaun to the program.
Hello, Shaun.
Shaun Rieley: Hello.
Thanks for having me.
It's great to have you here
all the way from DC.
That's right.
You're inside that Beltway.
Inside the Beltway,
but just outside,
in Maryland.
We were in DC for about
five years, my wife and I.
But when our daughter
was born,
we moved out
to the Maryland side.
The little more sane side?
Yeah. [chuckles]
Hate to say that,
but, anyway,
let's hear your story.
Let's invite you
to go way back
into your spiritual journey.
Sure, yes.
So, I grew up
in a very
spiritual household,
Christian household,
evangelical Protestant
is what I would
now call it.
I didn't sort of
have those words.
We didn't call
ourselves that.
No specific tradition,
but more generic,
more evangelical?
More generic, yeah.
Yeah, very devout.
My dad, now, so my dad
was raised Catholic
in New York,
and my mom was raised
Methodist in Delaware.
So I grew up in Delaware.
They actually
had met in DC,
and then decided
to move back
to where my mom was from,
to grow up,
to raise a family
on the farm.
I have 11 brothers
and sisters.
I'm the oldest
of 11 children.
And brought up on a farm?
And brought up on a farm.
That's right.
In Delaware.
So, chicken farm,
which is typical
for Delaware,
if you know
anything about that.
Why is the word 'chicken'
funny, in itself?
I don't know,
that's another subject.
[chuckles]
It is, it is.
Chicken!
That's right.
That's right.
So, but yeah,
very, very devout.
We went to church
every week,
in a very, you know,
what I would call a very,
very devout community,
a church community.
You know,
we were there a lot.
We were very involved.
That was just
kind of the core
of our social activity
was around the church.
And so, you know,
had a very strong upbringing
in Christianity and the
fundamentals of the faith,
in Scripture, and so forth.
Went through and as I
became a teenager,
you know, got involved
in youth group
and that sort of thing.
And, you know, became,
had an experience when I was
about 14 with God,
you know, that sort of,
you know, marked me out
in a certain direction,
I would say.
Kept me, more or less,
on a path.
I got; so we were
very involved
in the youth group.
I played drums
for the church,
played drums
in the youth group.
You know, evangelical churches
have that sort of thing.
And so, but, you know,
as I got older,
went off to college,
I went to
University of Delaware,
so not a Christian school;
state school.
You know, I started...
Did your faith survive
from childhood
into college?
It did, but in a
sort of modified form.
What I would say
is that I was,
I never rejected
it outright,
although I toyed
with other things,
other ideas,
I never rejected it outright.
And I actually think;
and so I had
in high school
gotten involved
in punk rock,
punk rock scene.
So I played
in a punk rock band,
Christian,
we were all Christians.
We were involved in the
Christian punk rock scene
that was, that was a big,
kind of a big thing
back in the '90s to 2000s.
And so, you know,
we were playing,
but, you know,
we got involved
in sort of the broader
punk rock scene, too,
not just
the Christian world.
And so, we were
kind of straddling
two worlds in some ways.
And so, oh yeah,
so I went into college.
I had this, I had
this strong background,
but I started to question
some things, of course,
as one does.
And, but I think the
punk rock thread is this.
When faced with a world,
a university world,
if you want that,
you know,
is sort of anti,
or at least,
not explicitly Christian,
I rebelled against that,
right, in some sense.
And so, that's frankly,
when I reflect on it,
partly what
helped me maintain
at least some kind
of semblance of faith,
which was the rebellion
against the rebellion
against Christianity
that I found
at the university,
in a secular university.
You know, I'm not very familiar
with punk rock.
Sure.
It wasn't my tradition
at that time
in my life.
Is the genre of punk rock
a rebellious...?
Yeah.
Do you know what I mean?
It is. Yeah.
I mean in general,
that's kind of
where it comes from.
You see the,
you know, the Mohawks
and the tattoos.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, so it's
very punk rock.
It's very rebellious
punk rock,
sort of at its core,
but there are
all different kinds
of versions of it,
all different kinds
of iterations.
So, if you've got a foot
in Christian punk rock
and in Christian
secular punk rock,
well, those are
worlds apart
in terms of the rebellion
that's going on
inside of you, also.
Yeah, absolutely.
So there's this kind
of tension developing.
And them I'm experiencing
being exposed,
all these different ideas
at college, and so forth.
And so, I'm trying to sort
my way through it,
but, you know, so I became
interested in apologetics,
because I was, I knew
I wanted to hold onto that,
to that faith,
but I wasn't sure quite
what it would look like.
I knew I was
never an atheist.
I probably would have
called myself an agnostic,
at a certain point,
but was searching,
looking, you know,
Christian apologetics,
but also sort of
other world views,
and that sort of thing.
And with your dad
as an ex-Catholic?
Yeah.
And they must've had
a true awakening
of faith
to have gone
from where they were,
to a more fundamentalist
evangelical church?
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, for sure,
and I think that's
partly why.
So, you know, just going
back a little further,
my dad, I would say,
grew up, you know,
grew up in the '60s
and the '70s,
a tumultuous time
for the Church.
He was, I would say, I would
say not well-catechized.
He also had a father
who was traditional
Irish Catholic
who, you know,
rejected Vatican II,
you know, root and branch,
and would only go to
Latin Mass and so forth,
which isn't necessarily bad,
but for him,
he experienced it
as legalistic, oppressive.
His father was
also an alcoholic.
He was abusive
in some cases.
And so, he just, I think,
associated it with a lot
of just a lot of
bad, bad things.
So, I'm assuming that
what you got also from that
as you move on
into this phase now,
is that the Catholic Church
isn't really an option?
Sure.
Yes, although I became,
in college, I did
start toying with it
a little bit.
I went to Mass
a couple of times,
the local Catholic Church
in Newark, Delaware,
where the University
of Delaware is,
and I sort of
started exploring it.
I was interested in the,
the sort of aesthetic
of the Church, I would say.
I think about too,
a little bit, before this,
my parents and I had gone
to New York,
and we had stopped by
St Patrick's in New York.
And I recall now,
when I reflect on it,
thinking that this is
something else,
this is something I've never
experienced before.
What is this thing that
creates beauty like this?
I don't know how
to process it.
It seemed so foreign
to me, in one sense,
but it also seemed familiar
in another sense,
because I saw, you know,
they're talking about Jesus,
they're talking
about all of the things
that I knew, but I didn't
quite know how to
put it together.
So I can, in some ways,
trace it back
to that experience of beauty
at St Patrick's,
in some sense.
Oh yeah,
when you talk about
the two worlds apart of,
your two punk rock worlds.
You got your very plain
evangelical sanctuary.
Sure.
Maybe, maybe not
even pews, you know?
And a rock band
up in front.
And then,
there's St Patrick's.
Yes. Yes.
Where you've got liturgy,
where you didn't have one.
You've got all the artwork,
you've got the beauty.
I mean, they're just
worlds apart, too.
Yes, absolutely.
So just, you know,
trying to reflect
on all that
and bring
all that together
in conjunction
with the apologetics
and the sort of
intellectual aspects of it.
Yeah, it was sort of
wrestling with all this.
And at the same time,
you know,
I had sort of personally
in terms of my,
say my personal morality,
my personal lifestyle,
become very lax, we'll say.
I remember reading
St Augustine, at some point,
"Give me chastity,
but not yet."
And I said, that's me.
[chuckles]
Or, that was me,
you know,
that had been me
at some point.
And so, you know,
I think,
when I reflect on it,
my faith became intellectualized
in a lot of ways,
but I had trouble
figuring out how to live it.
It was sort of something
that I assented to
intellectually,
but I didn't know how to bring
it into, into action.
Our guest is Shaun Rieley.
That can be the danger
of Apologetics.
Sure.
Is it can,
everything can become
very cerebral.
Yeah.
It can fit.
You can have
all the arguments.
A, B, C and D and E.
That's right.
But?
It's not there.
It's not,
you're not living it.
And so, while I was
in college,
after the Iraq War
broke out,
I went and joined
the National Guard,
as an infantryman,
Maryland National Guard,
and took a semester off,
went to basic training.
That, that experience;
well, in basic training,
the only time you're
allowed to leave
and do anything
that's not part of,
part of that is
when you can,
you can go
to church on Sundays.
And so, there I had to
pick a service to go to.
And, for whatever reason,
I think it was mainly
because of the timeline
that whatever the time
of the Catholic Mass was,
was the time that I wanted
to want to go to church.
And so, I started going
to the Catholic Mass
in basic training.
Came back, graduated
from college,
and then immediately
got word
that we were deploying.
So, I spent a year
in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,
as part of
the guard force there,
sitting in the towers,
and vehicle checkpoints,
and all that sort of thing.
And during that time,
I started discovering
podcasts.
Podcasts were a new thing
at this point.
You're sitting in a tower
for a lot of hours.
Precisely.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
So, I had books
and podcasts.
Technically
you weren't supposed
to bring them,
but, you know,
it's kind of winked at,
because, look,
you're sitting
in a tower for 12 hours.
What are you going to do?
And so, I started
discovering, again,
some more
apologetics podcasts.
Names like Ravi Zacharias,
I began coming across,
and he started dropping names
like GK Chesterton,
CS Lewis, of course,
but I started going,
who is this Chesterton guy?
And then I remembered that,
at some point on EWTN,
when I was in college
and sort of exploring,
I had seen something
by Dale Ahlquist
on GK Chesterton,
and I started,
and I put something
together in my mind.
So, I ordered a couple
of GK Chesterton books
to read, while I was
on guard shift.
With all these,
like Dale Ahlquist,
and a little bit
of EWTN here,
and you visited Mass there,
were you leaning at all?
Or was it just one data point
of all the others?
It was one; at that point,
it was still
one data point.
But it's starting to build.
But I would still,
I would say I was still,
I wasn't really
leaning yet.
This is about, I came
into the Church in 2015,
so this is 2006,
so I still had nine years
before I would,
I would make
the final, final leap.
You know, so these are all
things that are building.
So then I came home
from Cuba,
and then immediately
got word
that we were
deploying to Iraq.
Wow!
So, I turned around
and found myself in Iraq
in 2007, into 2008,
and was in Baghdad.
And well, you know,
that experience alone,
you know, can create
a kind of existential crisis
in some ways.
But one other thing
I think about though,
is that there was
this guard shack,
again, where I spent
a lot of time,
and there would be
books in there,
which former
rotations of troops
had left behind
or what have you.
I remember I read
'The Da Vinci Code."
It was one of the books
that happened
to be in there.
But another book that
happened to be in there
was the Catholic
Encyclopedia.
So I read all
the way through
the Catholic Encyclopedia.
The one-volume version?
The one-volume version.
That's right.
That's right.
Yeah, so I read,
I read through,
you know, this paperback
one-volume version
of the
Catholic Encyclopedia.
I mean, it's still
significant,
but it's just not
the set.
Well, sure. Precisely.
It's still
significant, right.
Well, you know, I'm just
kind of taking it all in.
And, by the way, contrasting it
with 'The Da Vinci Code'
and trying to kind of
make sense of that.
And there were a couple of
other kind of, you know,
Church, Church conspiracy
theory, mystery books
that were to happen,
along with a whole;
you know, probably
20 or 30 other books
that were in there,
but those were the ones
that I was attracted to,
because those were
the questions
that I was asking myself.
And again, more,
so, more podcasts,
you know, sort of developing
kind of questions,
the questions that I was
asking myself still.
But the questions are
now becoming more,
more formulated, I suppose,
in my mind.
I came home from there,
and as many do,
I kind of dismissed it all
for a while.
Drank a lot -
from after Iraq, that is.
Would you, well,
yeah, you've got baggage
you're bringing with you.
At that point
in your time
would you have thought
yourself a Christian?
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah, sure,
I would have.
Yes, I would've
intellectually defended
Christianity, again,
as an intellectual proposition
to be defended,
but again,
not living at all,
and not really any concept
of how to bring that
into my life,
as a sort of
a living thing.
I moved to DC, 2011,
and all this time
still, still reading.
I remember I started
dating my wife
in, now, my now wife,
in 2010,
and she, I remember when we
first started dating
she asked me,
"Do you really believe
all this God stuff?"
And I remember saying,
"I think I do.
I think I do.
I'm not sure,
but I think I do."
And so,
that gives you a sense
for where we both were
at that point.
And so, we moved
to DC together,
not married yet.
Let me say that.
So we moved in together,
not married,
but again, I was still
kind of exploring,
thinking, all
this sort of thing.
And I started meeting
people in DC.
DC has a lot of, you know,
is a strong, strong
Catholic community.
I happen to work.
I was working at the
American Legion at the time.
So I moved to DC
to become,
work in the
legislative division
of the American Legion.
It was a big veteran's
organization.
And so, I was
developing and pushing
on Capitol Hill legislation
designed to help veterans,
and that sort of thing.
But across the street,
if you know where it is,
it's at 16th and K.
Well, almost catty-corner
is Catholic
Information Center.
[laughter]
Great.
So, I noticed that,
and I noted it.
And I said, that's,
that's interesting,
Catholic
Information Center.
What is this?
Sort of walk, you know,
go in every now and then,
and look around
and see what's,
see what's what
and check out the books
and that sort of thing.
And so, again, slowly,
slowly building,
and now, you know,
becoming,
but now
I'm definitely leaning,
Now I'm definitely leaning.
Are you worshiping at all?
Praying at all?
A bit, a bit.
So I started experimenting
with an evangelical church
that's in the DC area,
that meets in a theater.
And I, you know, I was
comfortable there in some way,
in some senses,
because it was,
it was very much
what I grew up in,
or similar to it.
Same kind of aesthetics,
same kind of theology,
that kind of thing.
So I was, I was
comfortable there,
but not completely
comfortable there.
And I think, partly
because I had developed
to a point where
I just wasn't satisfied
with that anymore.
All those things, all those
data points along the way,
were starting to add up,
and I was just not
quite satisfied with,
with what I was, with what
I was getting there.
I had a hard time
putting my finger on it,
but that's where I was
at that point.
[clears throat]
Then, I think,
I can trace in some ways
back around 2012,
gay marriage became an issue,
big issue,
that everyone
was debating at that point.
And I remember thinking
that, first of all,
I was going to have to come
to a position on it.
Figure out how, you know,
how I've thought about it,
because it's what
everybody was talking about.
And so, in trying
to determine,
I was, I had an inkling
that I was,
you know, rooted
in my Christian faith,
that I was opposed,
but I was having a hard time
articulating why.
Moreover, I was living at
the time with my not-wife,
[chuckles]
with my girlfriend.
And so, you know, it kind
of put me in a little bit
of a moral crisis.
I had to, I had leaned
in one way,
but I had a hard time
articulating why.
And I realized,
that in some ways,
the way I was living
was no better,
maybe worse than what
I was trying to oppose,
or thinking I wanted
to oppose.
And so, I started
thinking seriously
about how to formulate
a position on it.
And, of course,
at this time,
evangelical churches,
mainline churches,
are all dividing over this.
Some going one way,
some going the other.
I started realizing that
the only way to have a firm
position on it,
or to have, to make not
an almost arbitrary decision
was a kind of
a Magisterium.
That's how the, that's why
the Catholic Church
was so firm
in Its position on that.
I came to realize was that
it's not just making
an ad hoc decision,
based on a hot button issue
at the moment.
It's rooted
in this long tradition,
not only of, not only
of moral philosophy,
but also of philosophical
anthropology
that goes
right to the root
of the way that the Catholic
intellectual tradition
understands what is,
what is a human being?
What is sexuality for?
All these kinds
of questions.
And so, I started
looking more deeply
into the Catholic
tradition.
I should also say,
at the time as well,
I had in 2011, I began
a Master's program
at St John's College
in Annapolis,
which, for those
who are familiar,
it's a great
books program.
So, in this program
you basically read
through the Western Canon,
from Homer
through Nietzsche.
And so, you just kind of,
you know,
you're reading Plato,
Aristotle, St Augustine,
St Thomas Aquinas, Locke,
Hobbs, etc, etc.,
but this is the first time
I've really engaged
Aquinas and Augustine.
And so, at this same moment,
by God's grace,
that I'm working
through these questions
I'm realizing
there are resources
in the Christian tradition
by which to
think about them,
through which
to think about them.
And so, I'm thinking
through Augustine,
I'm thinking
through Aquinas,
I'm reading about,
you know,
secondary literature
on Aquinas's metaphysics,
and trying to understand
what he's talking about,
when I'm thinking about
what is sexuality for?
How do I understand, think
about it teleologically?
How do you think
about, you know,
the morality in terms
of natural law,
and all these kinds
of things?
And so, I'm realizing that
the resources that I need
to think about these hot
button questions of the day,
that I'm being almost forced
to make a decision on,
at least in my own mind,
the resources for that
are in the Catholic
tradition.
Yeah.
This issue of Magisterium,
I think when
you're outside the Church
you might think, 'Well,
it's just another group
of reasoners.'
And I was thinking
that one way of
understanding it
is to think about,
you know,
you can have the old rifle,
where you have a shot
and gunpowder,
and a little patch,
the way they did
in the old days,
you know, where they would
just hit it and it explodes.
Well, if you had that,
and you have a bullet there,
and it just explodes,
it's just going to go wherever.
Sure.
But, if you want
it to go there,
you put in front of that
a rifled barrel.
That's right.
So that this explosion
is directed.
It's not going out here,
it's going there.
When it comes out
of that barrel,
it has a trajectory.
Sure, sure.
That's kind of
like the Magisterium.
That's right.
That's right.
Based on Revelation.
Scripture's Revelation.
Absolutely.
But unless you have
that trajectory,
it's going to go wherever
you want it to go.
Sure. That's right.
Yeah, exactly.
And so thinking,
understanding that,
you know, in some sense,
Sola Scriptura
is not enough,
because I realize,
and that's I realized
that Protestants
of all sorts,
evangelicals, and again,
this was, this was just,
this was
the flashpoint issue
that made me realize
that I saw Protestants,
mainline and evangelical,
reading the same Bible
that I was reading,
and that each other
were reading,
and coming to radically,
radically different
perspectives
on what it says about
the, this particular issue.
And so, it's the issue
that put it into
stark relief for me.
And it also made me realize
that I needed
to marry my wife,
or figure that part
of my life out.
And so, I went to her
and I said,
we need to either get married,
or we need to fix this,
figure out something else.
And I'm pretty sure
I'm heading this direction
into the Catholic Church.
And if you can join me
in that,
that would be fantastic.
And, if not, then we need
to talk seriously
about that.
And she was raised Catholic,
but had gone away
from it for a long time.
And, you know, I would say
raised Catholic,
but, you know,
not, not, not undevout,
but sort of just
culturally Catholic
kind of thing.
The externals.
Yeah, sure.
Going through the hoops.
Precisely, yeah, yeah.
And so, you know,
I told her that,
this is where I'm going,
and I'd love
for you to come with me.
And if we do that,
then we need to get married,
sooner rather than later.
And if we don't do that,
then we need to figure out
something else.
And thanks be to God,
she's now my wife.
We have a two-year-old
daughter.
We were married in 2014.
We were married actually
by my childhood pastor,
because I was not
yet Catholic,
but our marriage was later
convalidated in the Church,
after I came
into the Church.
So back to how I,
the specifics
of how I came in.
And so, I had all
these things
I was putting
together thinking.
Why don't we pause there?
Sure. Sure.
Because I was going
to ask you,
what were the key things
that opened your heart
to the Church?
What were some
of the barriers
that stood in the way?
We'll come back
after the break.
Sounds good.
And before we take a break,
I just want to tell you
that we have on our website
on chnetwork.org,
a number of signpost,
short vignettes,
and a few insight videos
that feature Shaun.
So, if you go to
chnetwork.org,
amongst all the other stuff
that's there,
you could see
those short video,
short programs that we've
featured Shaun in.
So, but we'll be back
in just a moment.
[music]
[music]
Well, welcome back
to 'The Journey Home'.
I'm your host,
Marcus Grodi,
and our guest
is Shaun Rieley.
During the break,
we were just catching up,
because, remember,
he has been into rock,
punk rock, way back,
and was wondering what was
still happening,
whether, what happened
to that, his conversion.
But, uh...
I still get into it
now and then.
The band I mentioned,
we, in fact,
the last time we played
was about two years ago.
So, we still get it
together now and then.
Of course, we're all married,
have kids,
jobs, and so forth.
So it's a little harder
than it was
when we were teenagers,
but we still get out there
now and then.
I wanted to lead us
to what drew you
into the Church
specifically,
and maybe barriers,
but it does seem
like the issue
of music and art and beauty
was a big part of that,
Sure. Yeah.
No, I think that's right.
You know,
when I started thinking
philosophically,
intellectually about it,
you know,
you encounter this is,
the transcendentals,
as they call them.
So, truth, beauty
and goodness, right?
And so,
connecting the idea
that all these things
are connected.
But it took a lot
of reflection
to kind of understand
what that meant.
Again, you encounter this
in some of
the apologetic literature,
sometimes, but not
really understanding
how that came together.
And so, it took some,
again, some reflection.
It was only later that I
realized that, you know,
when I pinpointed
that St Patrick's visit,
for example,
that I started realizing,
oh, this is what is meant
by the kind of the draw
of the beauty
in the way that beauty
connects with truth,
connects with goodness,
and that morality
connects with truth,
connects with backwards,
back to beauty,
and that it's all
of a piece.
And that when one of these
things is out of alignment,
then the others tend to be
out of alignment as well.
I was just thinking
back to that analogy
we talked about earlier,
about the rifle,
that "the lie" that beauty
is only in the eye
of a beholder,
is like the explosion
without the rifled barrel.
Yes, that's right.
You know,
it's just wherever.
Sure.
Everybody defines beauty,
what it is.
And so we end
up with chaos.
As opposed to the idea,
which is really new
to me, too,
when I entered the journey
into the Catholic Church,
this idea
that there IS beauty.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
There's a defined,
what is beautiful,
what is true.
Sure. Sure.
And it's connected,
and it connects to morality,
and it connects, you know,
it's all of a piece,
and it all connects,
again, going back to the
philosophical anthropology,
you know, it all
sort of traces back
to human nature.
What do you think is,
what do you think
human nature is?
And once you start
drawing those lines,
then, at least for me,
it all started
falling into place.
But I'll say that
the particular impetus
was a name that some know,
Father Arne Panula,
was the director of the
Catholic Information Center.
I didn't, did not meet
him on my visits
across the street when I was
at the American Legion.
I did meet him
at a mutual friend's home
at dinner one time.
We were both guests there,
and I told him
that I was interested,
curious about the Church.
And so, he gave
me his card,
and I emailed him,
and we set up
a time to come talk.
And so, he gave me
a copy of the Catechism.
And he said,
"Just read it,
and we'll come back
in a month or so,
and we'll talk."
Of course,
I did not realize,
until, really until
after he passed away,
and with all the,
EWTN and others
did these tributes to him,
I didn't realize how kind of
big of a deal he was,
right, because he's,
so he was so humble
that he gave
somebody like me,
who was just, you know,
kind of off the street,
[chuckles]
you know, the time of day,
to sit here and work
through my hesitations,
or questions,
or whatever it was.
And so, he and I,
we started the process.
We worked through
the, started working
through the Catechism
a little bit at a time,
just a little bit
at a time.
And every time I would
come back I would say,
"Okay, this all
made sense to me.
Here's my background.
Help me understand
this part,
compared to what
I had understood."
So he patiently kind of
walked through.
You know, at the end
of the day I came to realize
that I didn't have
any serious objection,
rightly understood,
that I didn't really, really
have any objections
that I could,
that I could seriously make.
That didn't mean everything
perfectly made sense,
but I realized that
the authority
of the Magisterium
was such that it,
once you accept the authority
of Magisterium,
then everything else
kind of falls into line.
And so, a lot of the,
you know,
a lot of things that Protestants
wrestle with,
say the Marian doctrines,
which are a big one.
You know I, it was
a struggle for me,
only until I realized
that the Magisterium
is what it is.
And once you realize that,
at least for me,
how could I object, right?
It's, it's because
the Church,
guided by the Holy Spirit,
has said that
this is the way
we should understand it.
So, how could I
believe otherwise?
Who am I to
believe otherwise?
For so many,
the Marian doctrines,
dogmas come into place,
again, back to that analogy
of the rifled barrel,
when you go from our Lord,
to His apostles,
to the early Church Fathers,
you see this trajectory.
Absolutely.
Did the early
Church Fathers
have an impact on you
in that seeing
the foundation
for some of those beliefs?
I mean,
to be perfectly honest,
I'm only, I'd say
only just recently
getting into
the Church Fathers,
as I, you know,
in the way that I should.
But St Augustine for sure.
I read 'Confessions' first.
I read that as part of my
Master's program at St John's.
And then, of course,
read other things by him,
'City of God,'
not all of 'City of God.'
It's large, [chuckles]
but worked, you know,
worked kind of through it,
without reading every word,
and still continue to.
In fact, it's in
the other room right now,
[chuckles] as we speak.
But yeah, I mean, once
you start understanding
that the, you know,
the conceit
I think of Protestant,
especially evangelical
Protestantism,
is that somehow
we're going to,
we're going to
eliminate history,
and we're going
to go right back
to the early Church,
and the early Church,
all these accretions
that the Catholic Church
brings to their worship
and to the liturgy,
and so forth,
are not authentic somehow,
and I came to realize
in revisiting
the early Church
that it's not exactly true.
These things
do go right back
to the very earliest,
the very earliest
Christians.
And St Augustine is early,
but not that early,
relatively speaking.
You know,
he dies in 430, I think,
and so that's, you know,
it's not that early.
When you read him,
you realize he's not
creating these ideas.
He's standing
on the shoulders...
That's right.
That's right.
..of a long line
of very trustworthy men
that are part of this
line of Magisterium.
Exactly.
That's exactly right.
And he recognizes that
there's a boundary there,
because of,
or again, Tertullian,
who in the end,
kind of went off a bit base.
But the idea was, 'How do I
know that this is true?'
Because it comes from
a Church of an Apostle.
That's right. That's right.
That's right.
But what I will say
about St Augustine
is that it's true that
he builds on the Magisterium,
but the other great thing
about him is,
is that he's not
afraid to engage
with all of the other
philosophical schools.
He addresses Cicero.
He addresses the Platonists.
All of these things.
And he says, "Look,
they have some truths
that we should consider,
because their
natural reason
allowed them to
get at some truths.
And so, we can both
learn from them,
but also reject them
when we must.
And by the way,
we can do it on their,
not exactly
on their own terms,
but we needn't be afraid
to engage them
philosophically,
as well as theologically,
because what we have is,
is more powerful.
And so, you know, it's not,
it's not this kind of;
he wasn't afraid
to think philosophically.
And that was another important
thing, I think, for me.
And I would say
Thomas Aquinas as well,
right, bringing in
Aristotle
and showing how Aristotle
can help,
help us think about
our own, our faith,
and what the meaning
of transubstantiation,
things like consubstantial,
you know, all these words
that we use,
you know,
understanding that
he's using these
philosophical concepts
to, to convey
Christian truth.
And so, we needn't be
scared of them,
because if, you know,
if God,
if Christ is the logos,
and God is the maker
of all things,
then we needn't be afraid
of anything
that bears the logos.
And, you know,
Augustine's a great example
of God preparing him,
because of his background
and experiences,
with the Manichaean,
and all that thing.
Sure. Sure.
You know, to be able
to fight the faith
against the Donatists.
He is able, he's equipped.
And I love that phrase,
I think it was Augustine,
you know,
"In essentials, unity;
non-essentials, diversity;
in all things, charity."
I think it was Augustine.
Or it's,
I think it's actually
a 17th-century paraphrase
of Augustine.
But yes, yes.
But it gets down
to the issue, 'Okay.
Essentials unity.
Well then, how am I
going to send,
how am I going to determine
what's essential?'
That's right.
That's right.
There's the key, you know.
How do I determine
what is essential?
Once I have that boundary
of what's essential,
then it allows me
to have that diversity
as, I mean, Augustine and
Aquinas don't exactly overlap.
Yeah.
There is,
where is, you know,
Aquinas is a little
more Aristotle,
and Augustine
is a little more Plato.
So you have a little bit
of their overlap.
That's right,
but at the same time,
Aquinas is also
an Augustinian
in a manner of speaking.
He quotes Augustine more
than any other thinker,
including Aristotle,
than, except Scripture.
Scripture is the only thing
he quotes more
than Augustine.
And so, you know,
you're right.
There's a diversity,
but there's also
a unity as well.
And so, you can see
this, the trajectory
that they both are on,
even as
they give expression
to different kind of forms
and different
understandings.
Now, I'm assuming your wife
came home with you?
Ah, well, yeah, well,
she was already Catholic.
So, she returned.
So, she's returned.
That's right.
What was the hardest?
What was the biggest
barrier for you two,
as you were, you,
for the first time,
thinking of Catholic,
and her coming back?
Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, well, there's
kind of doctrinal barriers,
but I'd say more, again,
once I said,
as I said,
once you determine
that the Magisterium
is true,
then that part
kind of goes away.
And I think the,
at least for me,
I think the hardest part
was learning
to think liturgically,
sort of learning to
structure your life
around the Church,
the life of the Church.
You know,
learning to understand
the different seasons.
And it wasn't so much
a barrier,
it was just; and it's in
trying to shift your mindset,
and to understand the way
that the Church
sort of understands
how time works,
and the rhythms
of the season,
and that sort of thing.
You know, the moral,
the moral teachings,
you know, I was already
in agreement with them.
I only needed the resources
to determine how to defend,
how to rightly
think about them.
And so, yeah, I mean
I think the hardest part
has been to learn to think
with the Church,
just in terms of how,
how to structure our lives
and that kind of thing,
which I will admit is,
can still at times
be a struggle.
I've talked to many converts
over the years,
and, obviously.
Yeah, right.
With kind of
what happened.
But there's that
old phrase,
you know, "I believe,
help my unbelief."
You know, that long
journey of that,
because we come
from different traditions.
Yes, yes.
Sometimes, I think
for converts,
seems that one of
the hardest times
is when you're alone
in your prayer closet.
Yeah, yeah.
And now, it's not just
all the show,
it's 'Here I am, Lord."
Or, "Here I am, Our Lady."
Or, St Joseph.
And moving into
that spirituality.
How was that for you
in that journey?
Yeah, I mean I think it's,
well, I mean...
I was going to say,
it's one thing
for the Magisterium to say,
'This is true.'
Okay, that's up here,
but now?
Getting it in your heart
and your prayer life.
Yeah, you know, I think;
yeah, I don't;
I never viewed my conversion
into Catholicism
as a rejection
of anything before.
I viewed it as
a continuation, sort of.
There's a book that I read.
Actually, on my sort
of conversion journey
by Fr Dwight Longenecker,
it was called,
"More Christianity:
Finding the Fullness
of the Faith."
And, you know, his story
is not the same,
but, you know, he had come
from a somewhat similar
background, I gather.
And so that was
very helpful
for me to sort of
developing it as, you know,
this is, this is,
this is not,
it's not a rejection.
It's a fullness,
it's a fulfillment
of all that sort of thing.
I do think that I;
prayers to the saints was,
was a bit of,
and even our Lady,
was, now I wouldn't
say a hurdle,
but understanding
how that was important,
how that works.
And I understand
now there's two different
understandings.
Yeah. I remember
when I was learning
how to pray the rosary,
I kept asking,
'Where is my mind
supposed to be...'
Yeah, yeah.
'...as I'm doing this?'
You know.
Exactly, exactly.
Yeah, because, you know,
then, there is a lot
of focus
in sort of evangelical
Protestantism
on the centering of;
you know, 'every head bowed,
every eyes closed,'
is sort of the phrase
you hear a lot.
And the idea is,
I suppose,
you're supposed to be
focusing your mind
on something or other.
And so, right, and so,
the sacramental aspect of it.
But in another sense,
I would say,
I found it liberating,
in this way,
that I sometimes struggled
with focusing my mind,
and I would find myself
beating myself up,
because I said,
I wasn't focused enough
during that moment.
Just thinking
about the football game.
[laughter]
Exactly.
And so, I realized
the sacramentality of it
means that it's not
about me.
It's not about
how focused I was
at that particular moment.
It's about what's happening,
you know, ontologic...
in an ontologically
real way on the altar.
And I'm privileged
to participate in it,
but it doesn't
depend on me,
you know,
focusing enough or...
It's interesting
you brought that up.
I was just talking to
our producer, Matt Swaim,
earlier about
this other issue;
and even though
the Magisterium says this,
it sometimes takes
converts a long time
to fully realize
that worship and sacrifice
are synonymous.
That's right. Yeah.
You know what I'm saying?
Because your previous
worship, evangelical,
there is no
sacrifice there.
And so, when you
become a Catholic,
we think, well,
it's a part of it,
that's what worship is.
That's right.
At its core.
I mean, for yourself
coming to that journey.
Yeah, I mean this,
this, you know,
the understanding
of the Mass
as the summit of the,
of the Christian life.
And, of course, of every
worship service, you know.
And understanding
that, you know,
what the Mass,
and taking seriously,
you know, actually,
now that I think about it,
probably; it wasn't, again,
it wasn't an intellectual
sticking point,
because I had read
Thomas Aquinas
on transubstantiation,
and so forth,
but it was kind of
a learning
to have this disposition
toward it.
That the reverence
that it deserved,
based on what I already
knew intellectually.
So, again, a lot of it is,
a lot of it is, you know,
going all the way back
to my kind of
intellectualization
in the, the split,
I guess you might say,
between my personal life
and what I knew to be
or thought to be true
at the time
in my mind, you know.
I guess, in some sense,
the Church brings you,
because of the sacramental
nature of it,
it brings you in
and shows you how to act
in accordance with.
And so, that's, to me
that's what the Mass
and the Eucharist is.
It takes time to
fully appreciate that,
which I think is
one of the reasons
the wisdom of the Church,
for example,
given the work we do
in The Coming Home Network
when we help
a non-Catholic clergyman
come into the Church,
it may be
that God's calling
that man to be a priest,
but it ain't tomorrow.
Right, right, right.
It's, well, let's give
this time to ferment
for you to really
truly understand,
first, what it means
to be a layman
in the Church,
and to appreciate
all these things
you're talking about.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I mean because
it really is a;
and it's not just
a changing of the mind.
It's a changing
of the habits.
You know, the disposition.
It's, it's, you know,
it's all of this;
again, that's why I talk
about the liturgical
calendar
and understanding
the different times
and seasons
throughout the year.
And even the way
that the Scriptures,
Scripture readings at Mass
are carefully laid out,
which, you know,
often is the case
in evangelical
Protestantism
that, you know, whatever,
the sermon is just about
whatever the pastor
happened to be
thinking about that day,
or that week,
which is, which is fine
as far as it goes,
but you know,
when you understand
that all these things
are carefully laid out
in accordance with this,
this liturgical calendar
that has meaning,
deep meaning,
not only for our,
the way we think,
but the way we live
in a particular moment.
Yeah, if the congregation
is just waiting
to hear what happens to be
on the priest's,
well, the minister's mind
this week,
he may never get around
to John, chapter 6.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But when you have
a liturgical calendar,
there's your whole flow.
Sure.
You were talking a bit
about your PhD work.
Yeah.
When my father was alive,
he wasn't
a practicing Christian.
And I remember,
I'm always trying
to figure out ways
to get him open
to the faith.
And I remember one day
asking him,
"Dad, if you lived
in the 16th century,"
so back in
the Reformation year;
he was a real reader
in history,
"What man of that time
would you, you know,
rises to the occasion
for you,
rises to the level
of importance of that?"
And so, I'm wondering,
if he's going to go
Luther or Calvin.
And he said, "Thomas More."
Yeah.
And I said,
"Well, why was that?"
"Because he was
a man of integrity."
That's right.
How much did Thomas More
have to do
with your own journey
and your growth
in the faith?
Well, actually, I only
discovered Thomas More
in my doctoral work.
So, as you mentioned,
I'm doing a PhD
at Catholic University
in Political Theory.
And so, I'm working,
I'm examining the book,
'The Political Thought
of Thomas More.'
But I sort of knew
who he was,
but, you know, I hadn't
really read him.
You know, the thing
that most people read
of Thomas More
is 'Utopia',
which is
a very weird book.
A lot of people read it
and go,
'What the heck
did I just read?'
And yeah, absolutely.
But, you know, the thing
about More is that,
yeah, he was a man
of integrity,
he was a powerful
man in his time.
I mean, Lord Chancellor
of England,
second only to the king.
But he was a man of
integrity, as you say,
who challenged the king
on a point of a,
political point that was also
a point of Church doctrine,
which caused lots
of consternation,
and ended up with him
losing his head.
But even in the face of that
he was, he was unbending.
But not, see, here's the
thing about More, though.
That there's a kind of
a 20th-century narrative
that developed about him
in a thing like,
"A Man For All Seasons"
the play,
which is a great play,
by the way, and a great movie,
but the notion
of conscience
that's portrayed there
is not right, I think.
The notion of conscience
that's portrayed there
is almost; he says
at one point in the play,
"It's not that I believe it.
It's that I believe it."
Right?
The 'I' is put
at front and center.
But conscience means
"knowing with,"
if you look
at the Latin root,
'conscientia,'
so it's a knowing with.
And so, More's idea
of conscience
is not this sort of
postmodern willfulness.
It's a knowing
with the broader Church.
And this is, I think,
rightly understood,
this is what the meaning
of 'Utopia' is.
It's also the core
of his works
against the writing against
Luther and Tyndale,
and the other reformers.
And so, not somebody that was
crucial to my conversion,
but somebody
who has become
very important to me later.
Affirming it later.
Yeah, it's like
what you said,
too many people
begin with 'Utopia.'
The book that I most like
by Thomas More
is the only book
he wrote in English.
It's called
'Dialogue With A Heretic."
That's right.
That's right.
And it's the same
exact apologetics
that we use today.
He was using 500 years ago.
That's right.
That's right.
CS Lewis calls that the
greatest Platonic dialogue
written in English ever.
Yeah, I recommend it.
Yeah, absolutely.
That's an awesome book.
Yeah, sure.
Let's say
someone's out there
right now watching,
who was, who is
at where you were.
Why should they make
the same Journey Home
that you made?
Well [sighs] I think that,
well, the most
fundamentally,
because the teachings
of the Church are true.
That's the short answer.
The longer answer would be
that if you are;
the teaching of the Church,
the teachings
of the Church help give,
again, structure
to your life.
It gives moral meaning,
and it gives truth.
And there really is;
almost as shallow or as deep
as you want to go.
And the beauty
of the Church is that
the person in the pew,
who receives the sacrament,
receives the same sacrament
that the philosopher,
the learned
philosopher reads.
And so, we all have
access to this.
And so, you know, you can
go as deep as you want with it,
but you have access to it,
you know, at any level.
All right.
Thank you very much, Shaun.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate you having been
on the program.
I appreciate it.
And God bless you
as you finish
that PhD program, right?
Thank you.
Thank you.
Got that paper to write.
Yes, working on it.
Working hard. Working hard.
All right, very good.
And thank you for joining us
on this episode
of 'The Journey Home.'
And, once again, I remind you
about going to a website,
chnetwork.org,
where there's a whole bunch
of conversion stories,
but also,
as I mentioned earlier,
a number of our signposts
and insight videos
that feature more
about Shaun's journey.
So, thank you
for joining the program.
God bless you.
See you again next week.
[music]
