David Currie is a return guest of the Journey Home Program. Son of a fundamentalist preacher, David followed in his father’s footsteps. In 1993, convicted of the truths of Catholicism,
I looked at the secular bookstore and found some things written by Clement, Justin Martyr, and a couple of other guys who KNEW THE APOSTLES!!! I was blown away! And here was the kicker, they mentioned the same things as the guy who wrote The Way of a Pilgrim. They talked about the Sacraments, and something else I had never heard, The Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. It was as if someone had slapped me in the face. What the heck was this? Justin Martyr described in detail what the Early Church gathering looked like. It was nothing like what we in Nashville were calling the Early Church! My curiosity began to germinate.
Fr. Fred Werth, growing up in western Virginia, was the son of a devout Presbyterian mother with Scottish roots, and a father was a probable deist who was opposed to
I also came across people such as Jehovah’s Witnesses and Christadelphians who questioned the deity of Christ. We both appealed to the Scriptures for our beliefs, my interpretation against theirs. I blew this off because I knew that Christians, both Protestant and Catholic, always had believed in the deity of Christ (looking back, it seems I was already appealing to Sacred Tradition, though I didn’t know it at the time). To me the Bible alone doctrine was the other side of the same coin as theological liberalism. It solved nothing, leaving everything in question, and nothing certain.
Cale Clarke grew up in the Halifax suburbs of Nova Scotia in a solidly-Catholic home. Despite his upbringing in the Catholic Church, it was, for Cale, a faith that did
Skylar Testa grew up in Columbus, Ohio as one of three sons of a Jewish mother and a father with Catholic roots. For his first eleven years, however, his family
So we either had to believe God protected His Church’s theology, or we have to cut the Church off right after its birth. Is it possible that these godly men, who were martyred for their faith, could have gotten it that wrong? In the end, we had to admit, that their writings didn’t actually conflict with Scripture; their writings were in conflict with our personal interpretation of Scripture, or rather I should say, the way we had been taught to interpret it.
Fr. Rohen grew up in Toledo, Ohio in a Catholic home. After hight school, he entered the Air Force. While stationed in Italy, through the influence of a Protestant chaplain,
Mark Mazza grew up in an Italian Catholic family with 10 children. It was a given that they would attend weekly Mass and attend Catholic school. This continued for Mark
My father is of Jewish upbringing, and my mother was raised Protestant, but both gave up the practice of any religion when they reached adulthood. Accordingly, I grew up without religious instruction, having limited exposure through relatives both to Judaism and to Protestantism. My fondest childhood memories are of Christmas at the warm and cheerful home of my maternal grandparents. The enormous tree, surrounded by endless presents, was the highlight of my existence, and the usual collection of Christmas carols, some with occasional references to a newborn king, afforded what seemed to be the most fitting orchestration for this annual event.
“I went and talked with a Catholic priest. As it turned out, he was less than encouraging. I don’t know if he was disgruntled with the Church or what, but he seemed to say, ‘Why would you want to go and become a Catholic?'”
Although David MacDonald was born into a Canadian Presbyterian family, it was in name only. It was a rough environment which led to exposure to drugs and stealing at a