Transcript

You all good?

Yeah.

Do you want to start?

You want to start?

Or I'll No, I think that was Start.

I'll start.

At age 17, I joined the, uh, local, um, Baptist church in my community.

My spiritual life began as a Baptist and then later, after uh, Guy and I married, we became Presbyterian.

I grew up Protestant, but really only attending church on occasion, acknowledging God, but it was much like being a good citizen.

My mother was raised Lutheran and my dad was raised in the Baptist Church.

I grew up in Central Indiana in a rural, farming community and I attended a Methodist church that my family has been in for decades.

I grew up in Hong Kong till I was 16 years old.

Um, the first time I had exposure to, to the scripture was back in high school when I, you know, had, we had Bible study in class.

I was a part of the Methodist, the Pentecostal, the Episcopalian, and I even had six years as an Atheist starting when I was 12, I became an Atheist then, until I was 18.

I grew up, uh, in a military family.

We would go into the city and I would see Habited Sisters and I didn't know who they were.

They were wearing black and honestly, without any information, I thought they were witches.

So, right away, there was a mystery.

I felt they had something that we didn't have.

And then there came a time when I really needed something more and couldn't find it in my Protestant faith.

For over 800 years, Dominicans have been handing down the faith to succeeding generations.

And we're blessed to be doing that with you, here in this program.

We won't be replacing your own pastor, catechist or sponsor, who have their own indispensable roles.

We're here to set the stage and frame your discussions.

The name of the program, Credo, it means I believe.

It was a hard decision.

It wasn't just simply moving from one church to another.

I was, I was leaving behind the tradition and the culture that I had been raised in.

And that was the hardest part for my family.

It is very admirable, um, of Ivan to make this decision as an adult.

Um, growing up, all I saw were babies getting baptized.

Um, it was a nervous feeling at first, but I knew that it was, um, something that was gonna help our relationship.

Nicene Creed says, The Church is one holy catholic and apostolic.

These marks of the Church are signs so that we can recognize the Catholic Church as the true church, founded by Christ.

My mom sent me an article from the newspaper and, you know, they would give the, the year that these churches were founded and, anyway, it must have listed like 25 different churches.

And you get to the Catholic Church and it says, Jesus Christ, year one.

And I'm like, Well, what are we doing then?

What is going on here?

Who is Jesus Christ?

Many, many people have asked this question in our contemporary context and especially in view of the historical study of Jesus.

But one of the things I began to understand more about Him, was the idea that Christ never lost His humanity.

He's one of us.

He knows what it's like to hurt, He knows what it's like to be joyful, He knows what it's like to sing and to dance and to have a mother and to love children and take 'em into His arms.

The Church's teaching on the Blessed Virgin Mary can be a stumbling block for many converts to the faith.

One of the hardest topics was the Catholic devotion to Mary.

And it changed my life.

And as a Catholic I, I turned to her every single day.

I feel her presence.

I know that she's with me.

I know that I can turn to her with any need and that she's going to be there to help me.

From the earliest times, the Apostolic community celebrated the Eucharist as the center of Christian life.

In the Mass, we are all invited to participate in the unique self-offering of Jesus by uniting our own lives to His in love.

I'll be honest, when I first became Catholic, a lot of it, I, I didn't understand.

I remember early on going on a vacation with his family and I was struck by the fact that they got up and went to Mass on Sunday morning at the beach, even though they were out of town.

I did try to convince him to go to church with me every Sunday.

Honestly, it was like pulling teeth because, uh, to ask someone to wake up early on a Sunday morning to get ready for church was, uh, very difficult.

If you want intimacy with God, in so much as you can be physically united to Him in the Eucharist, then you're gonna end up being a Catholic.

And that's what I ended up.

As a priest sitting in the confessional, you hear people who are trying to grow in holiness.

They want to leave their sins behind, to be closer to God.

I was terrified at the prospect of my first confession.

What I began to find out was that as difficult as it might be to have to say these things loud, that it was precisely that difficult thing that made the sin real to me in a whole new way.

And therefore, prompted me to pull away from it.

Even right now, I'm just halfway through RCIA so I'm not Catholic yet, but when I began to consider Catholicism, it looked like a big, safe ship.

A big arc where I would be safe because it has not moved on these cultural issues of the sanctity of life, the sanctity of marriage.

We have been married, uh, 57 years and it's the intent for us to be married until death do us part, so we do view marriage as, as sacred.

I know that the Church is extremely counter-cultural because every time I go in public with all of my children, I hear, Oh, my goodness.

Are all of those children yours?

Oh, you must be Catholic.

That actually brings great joy to my heart knowing that people outside of the Church also recognize her teachings and they see her stand up for values that the world no longer even admits exist.

Every day we wake up and we're faced with something political, something, um, challenging to our conscience.

And it's, it's very difficult knowing that we are flawed human beings and we're not always going to think right off the bat how we're supposed to about these things.

And we need a definitive, authoritative body, guided by the Holy Spirit to tell us this is right and this is wrong.

These issues can be very challenging ones, but Jesus gives us the promise of the aid of the Holy Spirit so that we will be able to bear witness to them.

Open your hearts to His grace.

He's already taken the initiative in your life.

He's called you and brought you to this point.

I see people of every color, ethnic background, and they're all there worshiping together.

They worship the same God, the same Lord Jesus Christ.

It's a beautiful, powerful thing and I'm reminded again and again just what the meaning of the word Catholic is.

It's universal.

The Catholic Church is universal and I never found that anywhere else until I became Catholic.