Transcript

With regard to sacred scripture, becoming Catholic helped me to understand that there was a much larger picture to look at.

I began to, to take scripture a little bit more seriously and to delve into it when I ran across issues that weren't readily apparent in sacred scripture, issues like, uh, Our Lady being immaculately conceived or- or her assumption into Heaven.

What I come to, came to realize was that sacred scripture didn't necessarily cover absolutely everything that, that we believe as Christians or as Catholics.

And it was then that I began to realize the importance of tradition, that, that sacred scripture and, and tradition, that they, that they fit together, that they were together combined to create this larger whole that we call the deposit of faith.

And certainly as I went off to the seminary and- and I began to study sacred scripture, this became more explicit in my mind, and I learned over time that, that scriptures are actually a product of tradition, that if it weren't for tradition that we wouldn't have the Bible as we have it today.

When I became a Christian, I was in a setting that was, was pretty much me and Jesus.

Uh, we had Of course, church is great fellowship and that kind of thing.

But especially in reading the scripture, we were, we were taught the principle of sola scriptura, that it's, scripture is the only source of, of faith and morals for us.

And yet early on, I, I began to question how that could be when, when there were so many thousands of denominations that interpreted scripture in so many different ways, uh, some of them contradictory, and some of them very important.

You know, for some to say, Well, scripture requires baptism for the forgiveness of sins and for salvation, and others saying, Oh, you don't have to be baptized, things that I knew were very important.

And so I, I began to think more about, how do we look at scripture?

How do we interpret it?

How do we know which way is the way to interpret it?

The first time I had exposure to, to a scripture was back in, um, middle school and high school, when I, you know, had, we had Bible study in class.

And, um, my Back in the days, you know, when you read a story, um, it, it really hit you because it's, it's a good moral story.

It's always a good moral story that it's mo- almost like a verification.

Um, since I've converted, uh, and became a Catholic, uh, things have changed a little bit.

Um, a lot of the time, I can apply the story in real life.

Um, going to church, listening to, to the priest, um, I can apply those stories on a, on a day-to-day basis, e- from work, for, for our family lives, and, and something that, you know, sometimes helped me overcome challenges and, and also helped me gui- guide myself to the right path.

My, uh, pursuit of God, looking back, was a pursuit of intimacy with God.

And, and in that way, becoming a Catholic I mean, ultimately, you're gonna be a Catholic if you want intimacy with God.

So after I was received into the Church, and, and since, I, um, have become, uh, have appreciated in a new way the opportunity to be intimate with God in the Eucharist and in the sacraments.

That's what I wanted.

That's why I left the chaplain service.

Um, I'm, I'm deeply indebted.

That said, I'm deeply indebted to, uh, my tr- Protestant tradition and, in particular, United Methodist Church, the church that ordained me and, and, um, endorsed me to serve as a chaplain.

Because I did come with an understanding of the tradition is important, um, and scripture is important.

I, I came with a sacramental theology, perhaps not one of great depth, but I had all those pieces that are certainly present in the Catholic Church.

So what I've experienced since is, is the depth and, um, an intimate union with God that I truly sought.

The, the Methodist Church, we valued, or at, at the time, um, we valued the tradition and sought, uh, some sort of authority as a guide in the church.

Didn't work particularly well, from what I, um, observed and experienced, but that certainly was there, so it wasn't new.

And as I studied Church history in my doctoral program, I, I began to see one thing very important, and that was that scripture was not something that stood on its own from the beginning, but that it was what you might call a crystallized portion of a wider tradition that was oral, that so many things that, uh, were essential to the life of the Church from the beginning, the preaching about who Jesus was and what he did and how he rose from the dead and ascending into Heaven, and about who the Church was and the authority of the apostles and how you go about having a baptism, uh, how you go about, uh, having, uh, worship together in, in what was eventually called the mass, that all those things were a part of a greater oral tradition.

And scripture was one portion of that that was written down.

And so I, I began to see that tradition really was essential for understanding and for rightly interpreting the scripture, that the scripture is a part of the tradition, that so much of, of what I knew to be true about the faith had come to me because of the wider tradition.

Even which books belonged in the Bible had come to me as part of a wider tradition.

And I knew that someone had to have the authority to, to establish that tradition.

Someone had to have the authority to say, for instance, which books were in the Bible and which were not, that if it was every man for himself, every woman for herself, then we'd end up with, uh, multiple scriptures and texts, and that's exactly what had happened in Church history.

But with the Catholic Church, we have the authority given by Christ Himself through the apostles to know the truth about how to interpret scripture.