Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
My guest today was a Protestant pastor. He's now Catholic. Helping others discover the riches of the Catholic faith. We'll talk about what brought him to Rome and how we can help other people come to Rome. Hello, Eric Simmons, your host, Eden chief of Crisis magazine. Welcome to the program. I just want to encourage people, as always, to hit that like button. Subscribe to the channel, let other people know about what we're doing here. Also, subscribe to our email newsletter. Just go to crisismagazine.com put in your email address and we will send you our news articles every morning, usually two articles a day. Also, you can follow us on social media risismag at all the major social media channels. Well, I'm very happy to have Keith Nestor with us today. Like I said, he's a former pastor, youth pastor with more than 20 years in full time ministry. He was in the United Methodist Assemblies of God in evangelical free churches in various roles. I am going to ask him about the flipping between denominations in a little bit.
After 2017, after a 20 year long discernment process. Sounds like he makes decisions about as quick as I do. Keith resigned from his full time ministry position and joined the Catholic Church. He's the author of the Convert's Guide to Roman Catholicism. Your first year in the church is the executive director of down to Earth Ministries. Welcome to the program, Keith.
[00:01:26] Speaker B: Thanks for having me, Eric. It's an honor to be with you. I've been following your stuff for, since I was on the journey here. So that's great to hear to, to get to talk to you is an honor.
[00:01:36] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, thank you very much. Yeah, it's great. You know, it's funny because not that long ago I feel like, I mean time melds together when you get our age. I know, but like I started, I started seeing you like on social media, seeing some of your stuff. I was like, this is great. This guy's got a great story. I really liked what you were doing. And I was like, this is somebody I really want to talk to introduce to my audience in case people Crisis have not followed you or kind of know your story. So I just thought what we do today is just talk about that kind of how you became Catholic, what you're doing now. So why don't we, I mean, I think we just kind of start at the beginning. So I was United Methodist. It sounds like you were United Methodist. So how did you grow up? Did you grow up actually United Methodist as well?
[00:02:16] Speaker B: Yeah. So my dad is a retired United Methodist pastor.
[00:02:18] Speaker A: Ah, PK I always have to explain.
[00:02:21] Speaker B: What that is to the Catholics because they don't have those.
[00:02:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:02:25] Speaker B: And at least not here in the West. But yeah. So I grew up going to church. Father was a pastor pk which usually means you're either the best kid in the church or the worst kid in the church. And absolutely I was. I don't know which one I would have been, but I, you know, typical mainline Protestant denominational upbringing, with the exception that I did get involved in a pretty.
It was a pretty life changing experience at church camp. I don't know if you went to church camp when you were a kid, Eric, but, oh, yeah, for us, church camp was huge. And our church camp experience was pretty, pretty bold about being a Christian. And so that's where I, you know, gave my life to Jesus and started down that road. And a lot of people said, oh, you should go into ministry and be a pastor like your dad, whatever. And I was like, I want nothing to do with that. I want to play music. I was a drummer, and that's the thing I cared about the most. And I wound up after my freshman year of college, or maybe my sophomore year of college, I dropped out of school, joined a rock band out in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. And so I was out in Philly and I started looking for churches to go to because I was feeling a little, maybe just kind of on my own. I was maybe 19 years old and far from home and thought, maybe this will give me more of a connection. So I started going to Calvary Chapel Church out there and really fell in love with the verse by verse expositional preaching, which wasn't something I'd ever been around growing up in the Methodist Church. My dad's a great preacher, but it was always topical, you know, and so I, I, as I was going to this calorie chapel, I found myself just getting more and more on fire for studying the Bible and for getting into the Bible. And our pastor out there was an ex Catholic, and he would, he would kind of get his little digs in against the Catholic Church every once in a while, as a lot of ex Catholics do.
So I didn't really have any understanding of what Catholicism really was other than hearing it from people who were against it, who had been there. And of course, we all know that when someone says, look, I was raised Catholic, what follows next is going to be an avalanche of garbage, typically.
But I didn't have anything to weigh that against. The only Catholics I knew when I was growing up were the kids in my school that were the Biggest partiers, really. So I didn't know any Catholics. And the more I was around these Bible people, the more I sort of adopted that worldview of Christianity is about a relationship with Jesus, not about a religion. All the same stuff that you kind of hear that was sort of the world that I was getting drawn into.
And as I was doing that, I started to feel a little convicted, like I needed to maybe run my life plans by the Lord instead of just decide, I'm going to just do this music thing. And I. I prayed about it at church one night, and I just told the Lord, I'm ready to go do whatever you want me to do, no matter what, I have to give up. And the next day, I got a phone call from another Methodist pastor friend of mine from church camp when I was a kid, and he was looking for a youth pastor back in Iowa, where I'm from. And I thought, well, this is the Lord put me to the test. So I ended up interviewing for that job. Tried to completely botch the interview, didn't want to do it, but was trying to be obedient to the Lord, you know, and they offered me this job. Well, while I was in Philly just getting ready to leave, I, you know, quit the band. I had started sort of dating this girl that I met out there. And I remember asking her, because I was pretty much a Jesus freak at this point in time, and I asked her, I said, hey, do you go to church? Are you a Christian? And she said, well, I'm Catholic. Does that count? And I said, absolutely not. You know, that's not real Christianity. Come with me to my church. She's like, well, I went to Catholic school for 12 years, but I don't really care. I don't know anything about it, you know? And so she comes with me to Calvary, and she's blown away. And she goes down front the first night, receives Jesus Christ, comes back. She's like, this was incredible. What do I do now? Like, do I just start going to the Catholic Church? I'm like, no, you. You have to leave that behind. That's not real Christianity. This is real Christianity. Well, I ended up just really, like, falling for this girl pretty hard and fast and convinced her to move to Iowa, you know, shortly after I did. And she was like, okay. So she came out, moved in with our. Our senior pastor's family, and then we got married about a year later.
[00:06:49] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:06:49] Speaker B: And started this little youth group with about 12 kids in this little neighborhood Methodist church in Davenport, Iowa, about 250 people, okay. And it was great. I didn't know what I was doing. They did. They did want me to go back and finish my education. So I was going back to college and seminary and stuff up at the University of Dubuque, which is a Presbyterian school, by the way, but they were fine with that. And this little youth group grew from about 12 kids to about 250, 300 kids.
[00:07:19] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:07:19] Speaker B: Within a. Within probably about two years. So it just began to explode. And then, of course, that led to our church starting to grow because a lot of these kids were coming over and they were Catholic. It was wild. They would come in because they were like, oh, my CCD class is boring. I don't like it. We love coming here. And a lot of the parents were just like, hey, if our kids come to come here and they want to be here, we should just go to church with them. What do we care? So every week we would. My other pastor and I would meet with these. With these families that wanted to join our church. And the story was almost always the same. Eric. Yeah, we're Catholic, but, you know, our kids want to come to church here. They always fight us to go to Mass, so what do we care? What's the difference? You know? And so I just got real used to easily bringing people in from Catholicism and other denominations too, you know, into our church because it was the, you know, exciting, happening church in town.
Well, I. I needed to get some graphic design work done for my youth ministry, and I didn't want a seventh grader to do it. So I went through the yellow pages and I just happened to find this guy in the yellow pages who was a designer. And I called him up. His name is Devin. And we talked a little bit and he said he would. He would like to show me some of his work. So I agreed to have a meeting with him and I went over to his house to look at some of his work. And when I was walking up to his front door, I noticed he had these statues on his. On his porch, you know, Virgin Mary, Joseph, guy with a parakeet, you know, on his shirt or on his shoulder, whatever, you know, St. Francis. And I, I went into his house and it was. It was like the most Catholic looking thing I'd ever seen in my life.
The bot, the bowl of water, you know, icons, statues, everything. I was like, where am I? You know, and we sit down and start talking, and it became very clear to me that this guy was on fire for Jesus.
And so then my mind starts working here. Like, wait A minute on fire for Jesus, but we're in this Catholic place. So I just started to grill him about it. You know, I said, hey, you know, tell me about your faith. I want to hear. And he starts telling me about his relationship with God, and I finally just stopped him. I said, hold on a minute, man. You love Jesus like I do, but what's with all this Catholic stuff? And he just laughed. He was like, well, I'm. You know, I'm Catholic. And I was like, I don't understand. And so we started having this conversation. So I'm thinking, I can convert this guy. Like, I've done with all these other people. So I start just going, well, you know, the gospel is about what God has done, not what you do. And, you know, we're saved by faith alone, and the Bible is the only source of infallibility. All the normal things, which. Which, honestly, I never even really had to go that deep with most people, and they were just like, yeah, okay. But this guy had an answer for every objection and every question. Everything that I was trying to say to him, he had. He had something to say. And remember, at one point, he was like, okay, Mr. Bible Guy, let's open up the Bible to John chapter six. And we start going through the whole, you know, the Eucharistic discourse or whatever in John 6. And I'm like, well, that's not what that means, you know, And. And he's like, well, let's look at what the earliest Christians thought. So we. We had that conversation, right? And that relationship led to my being exposed to Catholicism in a different way from someone who actually knew their faith and lived it out.
[00:10:48] Speaker A: Right.
[00:10:49] Speaker B: And that relationship, you know, led to a lot of. A lot of things.
And, you know, there were a lot of zigs and zags with that, but I thought I was going to convert him, and he thought he was going to convert me.
[00:11:01] Speaker A: Yeah. First of all, that guy obviously went to Catholic Answers website a lot or something.
[00:11:08] Speaker B: He. He's been on Catholic Answers, Right. Like, I mean, okay, okay.
[00:11:12] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:12] Speaker B: So definitely he's one of those guys. And this was, like, pre Internet, so this was like, 1997, 98, something like that.
So. So we're young guys. We're both in our early 20s. We're both full of, like, you know, all this fire for our faith, and we would get in these knockdown dragon arguments. But he's given me all this material from Catholic Answers. He gave me Scott Hahn's conversion story. He gave me, you know, born fundamentalist, born again Catholic by curry. He gave me all these different things, and I start devouring this stuff, honestly, Eric, looking for how I could defeat it, right? And I would go up to my seminary professors after. After class, and I would say, hey, I got this Catholic guy I'm talking to. Help me destroy his arguments, you know, help me. Help me in my conversations with him. And the things they said to me were anything but helpful for what I wanted to do, you know? So ultimately, I came to a point where I was trying as hard as I could to disprove all this Catholic stuff. But then there was a point in the journey where I started to kind of go, okay, this. This isn't unbiblical. This isn't without biblical merit. Because every time he would tell me about where something comes from in the Catholic faith, he would always begin with the scriptural foundations of it, right? And that was important to me because as a Bible guy, you know, that's what I called myself anyway. I wasn't really that. That's what I thought of myself as at the. At the time that that mattered to me.
So he's showing me these different things, and I'm, like, looking at this, and then I'm starting to go, wow, you know what? This stuff kind of makes some sense, actually. This is really amazing. And then I went on a pilgrimage with him. I got kind of roped into this pilgrimage. We went to. To Rome and went to Medjugorje. I didn't know anything about any of that stuff, but I'm a Protestant youth pastor guy, you know, and taken over to this place, and it really had an effect on me. I got to see actual Catholics in community worshiping Jesus in, like, an authentic way, and it really made an impact on me, Eric. And. And when I got home, I was sort of like, what am I going to do with this now? My wife, as I started to sort of have these conversations, she. I remember she was like, really leery of this. What are you doing? You know, just promise me you're not gonna become. I'm like, you're not gonna become Catholic, are you? I'm like, of course not. Never would that ever happen. You know, I would never do something like, I'm gonna make Devin a Protestant. You know, that's what this is all about. So I was. I was like, okay.
I was kind of keeping all this on the inside, but some of these things that he was saying were starting to make a lot of sense to me, and I think that people's journeys, maybe you could relate to this when you, when you, when you have this, this journey towards the Catholic faith, there's a point that you usually start with either I don't know anything about it, or I think I know things about it, but they're wrong. Then you start to learn the reality of the Catholic faith. And then you sort of move into this, this place where you start to, you start to almost appreciate it, even though you're not Catholic and you say you'd never become Catholic. And then you get into this weird place where you defend it against other people. Oh, that's not what the Catholics believe. They don't really believe in that Mary's divine. They don't really believe that the Pope is a perfect person or whatever. And then you find yourself arguing on the Catholic side with your Protestant buddies about that stuff. And then you get to a point where you really want it to be true.
And I be, I got to that place, but I was still not sure what I could do about it, Eric, because this was my job. I had all of this stuff happening. My ministry was blowing up my fam, you know, everything. And I had a moment where I really felt like I was being called to the Catholic faith.
And I, I, I bailed on it, you know, like I had, I was at a church camp service that we were running and they were doing the, the communion service. And the Lord just hit me with this, like, no, this isn't, this isn't the way this is supposed to be.
And I, I just had this moment where I felt like, okay, I'm supposed to become Catholic, but I was too afraid, right? So I shut it down. I ran the other way for a few years actually. And I got really involved in like the young, restless and reformed movement of theology. You know, guys like Mark Driscoll and Matt Chandler and, and that, that acts 29 crew. I never was part of that officially, but that was what I was listening to all the time. And that was the theological school I was coming from. I never would have considered myself like a 5 point Calvinist or anything like that, but that was the, that was the type of, of worldview I was aligning with in terms of ministry. And I, I stepped away from the Methodist Church for a while and that's when I got into the evangelical free situation sort of by accident. And then the, the Assemblies of God thing was sort of another fluke thing that happened. I could tell you about that if you want to hear about it, but after a few years, after a couple years of doing that, I got offered another job in A big Methodist church in the town I live now, and I moved up here to be the associate pastor of Youth and Mission. I was in charge of a lot of different things at that church. And I was also the, the, the co preacher, so I would preach to the adults every other week. And, well, as you know, the United Methodist Church has been in a crisis, you know, for a long time and was, was really, really, it was coming to a head. This is about 2015ish.
[00:16:43] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:16:44] Speaker B: And I'm, you know, I'm still in the whole Bible, Bible, Bible, theology, theology, theology mindset. Right. So my time away from the Methodist Church, I get into this, like, super conservative theological stuff, and then I come back in the Methodist Church and I have zero tolerance for like, this liberalism that's going on in the Methodist Church.
And I start getting into all of these debates and discussions with people in our denomination that are trying to take this thing sideways. And all of the arguments I'm making started to sound pretty Catholic. You know, I, I, I, I couldn't argue from Scripture alone because they were like, well, that's just your interpretation. Right. You know, what makes you so smart? We've got our scholars that say, you know, two men can get married or, or whatever this or whatever that.
So then I started thinking about, well, okay, I got to start talking about church tradition. You know, what's the tradition of the church to which they would say things like, well, you know, which tradition are you talking about? The church has been wrong over the years. And, you know, that's what we're trying to do is correct the errors of the church. And besides, our, our denomination is only 40 years old anyway. We can do whatever we want. Right?
[00:17:52] Speaker A: Right.
[00:17:53] Speaker B: So then I start talking about church authority. What gives us the authority to, to do these things when the Bible says all this? And, and I remember one of my, one of my friends said to me, if you believe in all this church authority stuff, why aren't you a Catholic? And I hadn't thought about Catholicism for years. I had done my best to push it aside, and I'd even argued against it a few times to some people that I knew that were thinking about becoming Catholic, because I'm still, all the, the reform stuff is still ringing in my ears, you know, and, but yet I just couldn't, I couldn't shake this feeling that what we, what we need is not another denomination. You know, I was, I was recognizing the problems with that. And just kind of by a fluke chance, I got reconnected with some of my old Catholic buddies and we start talking and I revealed to them where I was at. And one of my friends, he said to me, hey, would you be willing to meet with a priest in your town?
And I said, you know what, that's fine, I'll do that. And I went to mass to meet with this priest. I called him and he said, let's meet after the daily mass.
And when I went to the daily mass, as the procession comes walking in, you know, the deacon's holding the gospel, right? He's holding the big red book and he's doing this with it. You've seen it a million times, right? That was like this huge moment for me when I realized, like it was as if he was saying, this is our book, this is important here. And as a Bible guy who was, who was rejecting this crazy mainline liberalism. But I also didn't want to become like a weird fundamentalist or something like that because I knew that denominationalism wasn't the right answer. I wanted the truth. I wanted the fullness of the faith. And all of my previous exposure to Catholicism was still, it was, it was there, but it had just been buried and it started, was starting to come out again. So I met with this priest, we had a great conversation. And I started, you know, at this point in time, this is about 2015, 2016. YouTube is now a thing. So I start digging into like Catholic YouTube and listening to people and reading. And that's probably when I came across some of your stuff and others, you know, and, and, and it was all starting to make a lot of sense to me, Eric. And this time I'm, you know, I'm sharing all this with my wife now and I'm just like, okay, this, you know, this is, this is something that I'm thinking about and digging into it, praying and reading and really, really just wrestling through. Now the issues about the practical realities of my life and ministry are still there. We're building a 10 million dollar new building in town and our church is great. I love what I'm doing there. I love the people, I love our local church. But this denomination thing is, is an issue. But what am I going to do? You know, I was in my mid-40s at the time. This is the only thing I'm trained to do. I don't like what's, what's my life going to look like without ministry, But I got to a point where I was saying, okay, you know what?
I can't live my life with these conditions around my obedience to God and If. If Catholicism is indeed the truth, then that's what I need to pursue, no matter what it means for me as a. As a guy. Right? And I'll tell you one quick story, because this is the end of this. And then you can ask questions, whatever, but I was having this. This prayer time in the morning one day, and the Lord just kept pounding into my head, steve Ray, Steve Ray. You need to talk to Steve Ray. You know, I had. I didn't know Steve Ray. I. I had just seen, like, a couple of his videos. You know, the one about the papacy or whatever, the one about the Eucharist, but I didn't know anything about him. I didn't know. I thought he said he lived in Michigan. But I have literally no connection to this man at all other than I watched his YouTube video. And yet in the. In my mind, it's just pounding. Steve Ray, Steve Ray. Steve Ray. Well, that. That afternoon, evening, I was going to meet one of my Catholic buddies for dinner who lives about, you know, an hour and a half away from me. We met in the middle, and right when he comes into the restaurant to sit down with me, before he even sits down, his wife sends him a text and says, oh, tell Keith Steve Ray is in town and he's giving a talk tonight, and you guys should go.
And I was like, okay, dude, we've got to go. Like, yeah, miraculous things were starting to happen, man. I mean, I had had some. Some kind of interesting, semi mystical experiences around the Blessed Virgin Mary throughout this time where. Where I was, like, getting like she was after me, you know? And so I. I was already starting to feel this towards the Catholic faith and towards especially the Virgin Mary was really strange. And now this whole Steve Ray thing is happening. So I said, we have to go. We have to go. So I go, we take off, we drive to this church in Silvis, Illinois, and we walk in, they're having Mass, and I go up front to get my blessing, and I just take a step to the right, and I just fall on my knees, and I look up at the crucifix at this church, at Our Lady Guadalupe. There they have this big crucifix that hangs above the altar. So you're kind of underneath it when you're receiving the Eucharist. And I just looked up at this crucifix and I prayed. I said, God, if you want me, Jesus, to be Catholic, I will do it, but you've got to make a way, because I don't know what to do.
And I mean, I'm not one of those guys. It's like, oh, the Lord spoke to me today and told me to, you know, take a left instead of a right. But the. From the crucifix, like, he spoke to me, Eric, and he said, I am the way, the truth, and the life.
[00:23:24] Speaker A: He.
[00:23:24] Speaker B: You don't need me to make a way. You just need me right?
[00:23:28] Speaker A: Amen.
[00:23:29] Speaker B: And what I realized was I had placed my willingness to follow Jesus before my own comfort and my own understanding. It's like I had to, I had to hear from God what the plan was going to be first and how is this going to work out and was it going to make sense to me and could I be convinced of every little thing in Catholicism? And yet what he was showing me, there was no, you don't get to do it that way. You have to walk by faith and not by sight. And you have to, to understand that if you can receive me, and I have believed at this point in time that he was truly present in the Eucharist. And if you get to receive me and you lose everything else, you still win, right? To get me to that point. And that was the night where I got to that point. And I went home that night and I, I told my wife, I said, hey, I. I have to do this, you know, and I don't know what that's going to mean for you. I don't know what that's going to mean for job, anything, ministry. Like, I, I have zero answers, except for I think I have the best answer of my life, which is I need to become Catholic. And. Yeah.
[00:24:44] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:24:45] Speaker B: That's how it happened, man.
[00:24:46] Speaker A: Yeah, it's amazing. I mean, it's funny, I was never a. Passionate like that, and mine was a little bit quicker. But like, I had very similar experiences. Like, I, I received Jesus as my savior at a church camp. I took it very seriously.
You know, I, I had the same just kind of experience in the Methodist Church and, and just some of the other things you were saying, it just like it resonated with, with some of the similar experiences. Me especially my attitude towards Catholics. Like, I didn't really have much of an attitude towards Catholicism, but I knew the Catholics were the ones who partied. You know, they weren't really serious about their faith. But it was actually when I was in college and I was in the pro life group and I was with a bunch of Catholics who were mostly charismatic Catholics, very serious about their faith. And it was the same thing where I was like, wait a minute, these people love Jesus.
[00:25:35] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:25:36] Speaker A: And like. But yet they're also doing these weird things like praying a rosary and praying in front of a statue of Mary, but yet they clearly love Jesus. How is this reconciled together? And so fortunately, like I said, I didn't have the being a pastor thing to hold me. Yeah, I think I not hold you back, but you know what I mean? Like, kind of.
[00:25:53] Speaker B: It would 100 held me back.
[00:25:54] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just being the pastor, so I was able to come to church. I didn't have to give up that type of stuff. But like, yeah, I. And it really was. And it reminded. It always reminds me that for Catholics with evangelization, because that's something I've talked about a lot. It is that personal witness is a lot. Like just seeing Catholics who are very serious about their faith. What it did was like for you, it just, it. It removes a barrier where you don't really think. You now consider Catholics part of Christianity. And it's not even like, I don't know about you, but like in our Methodist Church, we weren't anti Catholic and my family wasn't anti Catholic. It was just simply a matter of like, they're just other. They're. They're not really serious and whatever, but we're serious. And so seeing Catholics were serious, like, whoa, whole second. This is all different now. So I would take back a little bit then when you were still Protestant, like, for me, I don't know about. For you. I want to see if this is true for you.
One of my frustrations as a Protestant was the doctrinal chaos, that I had very firm beliefs about this. I remember, like when I was in college, in high school, I didn't know this because I was just ignorant. I just thought everybody believed. Like we did our United Methodist Church. Every Christian, every Protestant Christian believes the same. Then I went off to college and all of a sudden I'm like hanging out. I'm part of Campus Crusade for Christ. And so I'm hanging out with all these different types of Protestant Christians and some Catholics who are not really doing good at Catholic, but they're trying to be Christian, all that. And I just found out that like, almost every single belief I had as a Christian, at least one of my friends did not hold to it. I mean, I even had a friend who did not believe in baptism at all. Like, not only like, like, he was just like, no, I'm not getting baptized. And I was like, whoa. And I. And this was just crazy to me. And that was a big frustration for me, at least as a Protestant was that I just, you know, even my best friends who were Protestant had some pretty seriously different doctrinal beliefs than I did. And we consider ourselves like brothers in Christ and basically similar attitudes. But then when we really got. Because you know how it is in college, well, you dropped out, so maybe you don't know.
[00:28:05] Speaker B: Well, I ended up finishing.
[00:28:06] Speaker A: That's right, you did finish. Yeah, yeah. You know, you spend a lot of time hanging out and talking. You'll spend, you know, stay up till two in the morning talking about these type of things. And when you find out everybody believes something different, it really does it, it. For me at least, it kind of cut the foundations out from under my legs and I was kind of like, I'm swimming here by myself. And that was something that, a lot of other factors kind of made me look towards Catholicism. Did you have that experience as a Protestant as well? Just like the chaos of the doctrinal chaos that it involves?
[00:28:37] Speaker B: Oh, big time, Big time. And it's funny because when I was going to Calvary Chapel, they tried to make it sound so simple, okay, you know, just open the word of God and read it. It's right there. It's so simple, it's so easy. But yet. And they, they tried to create this thing where all you, where anybody could just open the Bible and read it. But I quickly learned, you know, it was like, well, what about baptism? What about end times? What about the sacrament? I mean, you name it and, and you fall into this place where you, you go, well, we're going to try to have unity in the essentials, but in the non essentials we can sort of have, you know, we can bounce around. But the problem was always, well, who gets to define what is an essential, right? So there was a lot of struggling with that. And especially once I got into. Once I sort of rubbed up against the reformed crowd because I had a buddy of mine who was super. He became a Calvinist. He wasn't a Calvinist when I met him, but he became a Calvinist. And you know how that goes. Like once, once you read Chosen by God by R.C. sproul, you just become a freak, right?
He, he just, he went that way. And so every time we would talk, it was all about the doctrines of Grace and Romans 8 and all these different things or whatever. And, and I remember thinking, well, I don't believe that. You know. And then it was like the more I got into that young, restless, reformed kind of crowd, the more they wanted to talk about doctrine and doctrine and all this kind of stuff. And you know, I remember where Mark Driscoll wrote his, his big doctrine book, you know, but I got like Wayne Grudem, systematic theology. You know, I mean, I started to try to figure this out, but I remember thinking to myself, what makes these guys so smart? Because even within that movement I was recognizing there were fractures. I spent a little bit of time in the E Free church, okay? And in that church, for example, when it comes to baptism, they don't have a clear stance on infant baptism. So if you're. What they, what they say is this. And this just threw me off. Like if you're a pastor who doesn't believe in infant baptism, you don't have to perform one, okay? But if somebody in your congregation wants their baby baptized, you have to find someone who will do it.
And you don't have to do it, but you have to find somebody else who will. But if you are a pastor who does believe in infant baptism, then that's fine too. And I remember thinking to myself, well, is it either good or is it bad? Like is baptism one of those non essentials and things like that? But ironically enough, the people that convinced me of this doctrinal circus and how it wasn't working were not the conservatives, it was the liberals. Because the liberals were the ones who could take the scriptures and turn them inside out with their scholars, with their act, with their experts, all of that. And also they could challenge anybody. I remember listening to, I don't know if you know who Adam Hamilton is. He's the big Methodist pastor in Kansas City at Church of the Resurrection, it's giant mega church. He was a conservative that became a liberal and he wrote a book about, about, I can't remember what it's called, but it's basically a book about how you read the Bible. And he created this system where you put every scripture into four different buckets. You know, verses that are for all people at all times versus that for some people for some time. You know, some people all the time. And all the people all the time, right? And you know, of course the verses about homosexuality he put. For some people. And some of the time, you know, and I remember reading that going, where does this get this? Like, right. How does he know which buckets. Buckets things belong in? So but he would challenge the conservatives in our denomination when we would talk about biblical truth and things around these issues. He's the one who would say, well, what gives you the authority to hold that view? And then of course, once you start down that road, you, you you have to. You either wind up in, in my opinion, you either wind up in Catholicism or you wind up just becoming not a believer at all because you can't live in that place where everything goes. And I, I certainly lived there. And for me, when I became Catholic, one of the things that has been so refreshing to me is that I don't have to solve all this stuff anymore. Right. You know, I don't have to figure it all out. And I don't have to also worry that some, some new pastor is going to write some new book that's going to change everybody's, you know, mind about everything. It's, it's. No, we go back to the deposit of faith that was passed down from Jesus to the apostles, and we're faithful to that.
And that's been such a blessing to me. I don't. You probably understand what I'm talking about.
[00:33:29] Speaker A: It really, it's, it's, it's a relief because it really does become something. I mean, I don't know about you, but I, I almost got like, over scrupulous about my beliefs, like, okay, I have to make sure that I really do believe this. So make sure I read this guy on this. Make sure I read this guy, you know, let me reread Romans on this. May. Look at this and like, and. But then I'm like, I'm literally just picking whoever I've heard of, whoever my pastor happened to recommend to me. And then that's when I started thinking, like, but hold on a second. You know, my, my friend George, he goes to a Presbyterian church account, maybe a Reformed church, something like that. And he's got different people he's looking to. And like, why is my guy better than his guy? Why is Wesley better than Calvin? And. And it really does.
It just gets to be very stressful, frankly, spiritually too, because you're just like, I don't know really what to do. And there is a certain. When you become Catholic, there is this relief of just like, oh, thank goodness, I don't have to figure this out anymore. I just go to the sources and I just say, okay, this is what the church officially teaches. That's fine with me. Now I will say, and I do want to bring this up.
[00:34:35] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:34:36] Speaker A: And that is there is a danger, and I've fallen into it myself at times, of starting to get that kind of Protestant mindset when there's debates within the church.
[00:34:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:34:47] Speaker A: And I think that's a danger. We all have to kind of check ourselves on that. We don't get that kind of process mentality of let's debate doctrines. There are things we can debate. I mean, let's be clear about that. It's not every single thing is defined by the Church. It allows for, for some flexibility in certain areas. It hasn't defined everything. But I do think we have to be careful and just say, okay, what is the Church always taught? I'm just going to go with that. I'm not going to try to figure out, you know, reinvent the wheel and. But I think we have to keep that attitude. It's a, I mean, I was going to say it's very Catholic attitude. Of course it is, but just, I think it's very Christian attitude is a submissiveness to the Holy Spirit. And the way the Holy Spirit does speak to us, not through the latest person who wrote the latest book, but through the institution that he himself, you know, the Holy Spirit founded, which is the Catholic Church. So.
[00:35:41] Speaker B: Yeah, and that's, see, that's the key right there, you know, and it's almost like what you just said is sort of what we used to say before, unity in the essentials, charity and the non essentials. Right, but within Catholicism, we have a definition of what that means.
[00:35:55] Speaker A: Yes, we know what the essentials.
[00:35:57] Speaker B: Actually there's guardrails around that conversation. Okay. Which I think is so important because, yes, the Church has not defined every, you know, nuanced idea within Christianity or within, within everything, that there's not official dogmatic teaching about every little single thing in the world, but there are things that have been dogmatically defined. So that's our guardrails. Right. You know, to say what the Church teaches about this, I'm, I'm buying into that because this is Christ Church. Now on these other issues, sure, we can find Church fathers that teach this about that, we can find saints that said this about that. And we can, we can go back and forth on that. But what we have to do is like to avoid that Protestant mentality that you're talking about, which puts us in the center of that right to say, okay, well, really it's up to me to decide one way or the other. As Catholics, we submit to the teaching of the Church and we, we, we let the Church speak. And, and I think, you know, sometimes people say things to me like, well, can I become Catholic if I don't, if I don't agree with everything, you know, and I don't say to people, you don't have to. What I say to him is this, you don't necessarily have to agree with everything, but you have to accept everything. And what I mean by that is you might struggle with some of the things that the Church officially teaches in your own flesh, in your own mind, but you must accept them as authoritative and submit to them. Okay, so you can't join the Catholic Church and go, oh, well, you know what? I want to be Catholic, but I don't believe that Mary was a perpetual virgin. I'm not doing that. You can't do that. But you can join the church and you can say, you know, I really struggle with, with what some of the things that the church says about Purgatory. For example, as a, as a former evangelical, I don't quite figure all this stuff out. You know, why this? I don't, I don't get it all. And it's hard for me, but the Church teaches it, therefore I accept it. You know, because sometimes the understanding. I shouldn't say sometimes. Usually it's usually this way. In my experience, the understanding comes from the grace of acceptance. Right. So when you submit yourself to the authority of Jesus Christ and his church, the Holy Spirit, what's the job of the Holy Spirit? To guide you into all truth and remind you of what Christ said. Well, that doesn't all come to full fruition the second that you go, oh, I think the Catholic Church is true. But as you receive the sacraments, as you go down that journey of faith and obedience, the grace that you receive. I've seen this happen in my own life, Eric, where, like, things that I sort of struggled with in the beginning or on the journey have completely worked themselves out. But I had to work them out from the inside, not the outside.
[00:38:47] Speaker A: Right. Yeah, it really is. I mean, I mean, a great example for me was the Blessed Virgin Mary. I mean, it was through praying the rosary that I became Catholic. But I struggled for a long time to really understand the role of Mary in salvation history, to really kind of, to really feel comfortable with Catholic devotions to her. I mean, it's not that I didn't do some of them. I just, I honestly. Okay, I'll admit this. I had times where I would pray and I would say, lord, if this is not okay to do, let me know somehow. But I'm going to ask your mom for some help here because I'm not supposed to be doing this, you know, give me a sign or something. I mean, that's, I mean, that's just, that's just natural. Now, of course, after 30 plus years, that doesn't, you know, I don't I don't make that stipulation anymore, but like, it's much more natural. But I think that's, that's like you said. But it was an accepting. I did accept, though, before I became Catholic, you know, was the idea of, okay, the church says this is okay, and so therefore I'm going to accept that it is. But I don't. I mean, baptism was the big one for me, that it was beautiful not to have. There's zero debates within Catholicism about baptism. We know what it's been defined. Exactly.
[00:39:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:39:59] Speaker A: What does it do? How do you do it? I mean, sometimes you'll get priests who or whoever will do a baptism wrong, but that's even clear cut. Okay. They just didn't follow the rules, so therefore they did it wrong. But it just, there's, there's no debate about that now. Okay. Something I, I gotta ask about is when I became Catholic. Okay. So my dad, he was very much the old school, from the, you know, depressed. Grew up, you know, in the 40s, 50s, very quiet, didn't, you know, like that. And when I was at college, he never once called me. He never once, there was no texting like that. He never once came to visit. And that was fine. It was my responsibility to call him or to come visit. You know, he just was like, okay, you're on your own, dude. He, he called me up and came up for lunch one time and that's when he found out that I was becoming Catholic because I told my mom and, and he was like, you know, he's very concerned. Talked about how he almost joined a cult too, when he was in college.
[00:40:49] Speaker B: And he called it a cult.
[00:40:51] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, my dad's a good man. But yeah, he grew up in the South. I mean, there's. He grew up in Kentucky and to his credit, he never disparaged the Catholic Church ever. Growing up, you know, in front of us, he never say anything. But clearly when I said I was going to join the Catholic Church, that's when he was like, you know, he thought it was like a cult and he wasn't a pastor, anything like that. So I have to ask, like, your dad's actually a, was actually a pastor.
How did your parents, your dad feel about when you said, hey, I think I'm going to become Catholic, or have you told him yet?
[00:41:24] Speaker B: We had conversations about this over the years because when I first was starting to get into those fights with my friend Devin, I would talk to my dad about it and I'd say, hey, how do I defeat this Catholic Guy, you know, my dad is like a pretty brilliant guy, you know, and he would talk about this deep theology and stuff like that.
But when I. So, you know, we'd have these conversations. But then when I started to get to that point where I was like, defending the Catholic faith to him, I'm like, yeah, but this, this, this, like, he's just like, no, that's not true. This, this, this, this, you know. No, no, no, no. You know, but when I finally became Catholic, he, he was more worried about me and my life, you know, it was, it was kind of a hard time for our family. My mom had passed away from cancer right around the time I was making this decision. So our whole family was sort of going through this big upheaval. It was really, really hard, you know, so he had a lot of things on his mind besides what I was doing. But over the years, it's. We talk about it sometimes, but we never had like a big knockdown, drag out.
You better not become Catholic. We've had some pretty heated conversations in the aftermath about theology here and there. But, you know, my dad, he loves me, I love him. We get along and, you know, we're at the point now where we just. He'll say, well, what's going on with Rome, you know, or what's happening over here? But not. We're not like, adversarial about it as much anymore.
[00:42:54] Speaker A: Yeah, for my, my parents, it was when they saw I still love Jesus after I converted, and they, that's when they, you could tell, they were like, okay, this guy's still about, you know, it's still about Jesus. And of course, when they had grandkids that were Catholic. He can't not love your grandkids. As you and I were speaking beforehand, we both now have our first grandchild recently, you know, you got to love your grandkids. And, and it's funny, my first book was about Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew. And it's Catholic, you know, it's not. But it wasn't like, it wasn't about, like, Catholic action, that was just about Jesus, how he's presented in the Gospel of Matthew. And I bring in a lot of church fathers like that. And my mom was just so proud and she was so happy. Even though it was like, Catholic, she, she gave it. I mean, she would give it to her friends and, you know, everything like that. So that, that was a good thing that, you know, over time. Now, the one. Something I'm always admire when the pastors become Catholic is that, like, when I Became Catholic. Yeah, I had some issues with some friends and stuff like that, but I was a computer programmer. I mean, I was in school still, but I was about to become a computer. Who cares if you're Catholic or processing? You're a computer programmer. You literally had to leave your jobs. I want you to kind of step through. First of all, I want you to set the scene of like telling your church, by the way, I have to quit because I'm no longer, you know, your denominator, whatever it was at that point. And then, and then what did you do? I mean, you have to feed your family. I mean, you're a dad and a husband. You got to provide for him. What did you do?
[00:44:17] Speaker B: Well, okay, so I'll start with the first part.
The, the other pastor at this church is a. Is a long friend, longtime friend of mine. And I had told him when I had first kind of started going down that road, after I met with that priest and I was feeling drawn towards Catholicism, I sat down with him and I said, hey, his name's Mike. I said, hey, Mike. You know, I'm feeling, I'm feeling the pull to, to become a Roman Catholic. And he was like, what? He's like, that's, that's crazy. You know, his wife is an ex Catholic and her whole family's Catholic, so he's got kind of the bad view of Catholicism, even though his, his wife's family's super devoted, but he's, he's too smart for that, you know, or whatever, but in his mind, so he's like, oh, Keith, you know, we'll, we'll. We'll get you out of this. And he. So he challenged me to preach a sermon series on the history and nature of the Christian Church. And I told him, I said, you might not like the stuff I'm gonna say. And he was like, hey, man, just say what you're going to say. You know, if it's true, you. You should tell us, you know. So I was preaching these like, super Catholic sounding sermons to my Methodist church, man. I preached a sermon about how Peter was the first Pope. I preached. Sermon about apostolic succession. I preached. I mean, I had a, the, the mystical experience I was telling you about that I sort of have around. The Virgin Mary came in 2016. I was preaching an Advent sermon on, in, you know, Luke. And when I was in my office writing, I was, you know, going to preach on Luke 1, the Annunciation. Or we, you know, we just called it Luke 1. But she, like, came to me, man, like in my office. I was writing this sermon, and whenever I would, like, see anything about her or read what she would say, I just began to cry like a baby. I'm sitting in my office like a baby, bawling my eyes out, writing this sermon about the Blessed Virgin Mary. And I got up that Sunday and I preached about how Mary's the new Eve, the new ark of the covenant. I talked about church. I quoted church fathers on that. I mean, I talked about how she's the woman of Genesis 3:15, the woman of Revelation 12. Like, I mean, this was a Catholic sounding sermon, but I never said, this is Catholic. I just said, this is what's in your Bible.
And so when I. When I finally went and told him, hey, I'm doing this, I'm becoming Catholic, he had a little bit of a Runway. But they still were very much in shock. You know, I wrote a letter to my church about what I was doing, and the church council rejected it. They were like, we can't say that, Keith. You need to redo that. Because it was a little. It was a little aggressive on the. You know, the United Methodist Church has become apostate, unbiblical. You need to get back to the church founded by Jesus Christ, the Catholic Church. Therefore, I quit to join the Catholic Church. You know, they're like, we can't quite do that.
But I stayed there for a couple of months to help with the transition as I was on my own journey into Catholicism. And it was hard, man, because I love those people and they love me and I love what's going on. I mean, my last Sunday there was the day that we put shovels in the ground for the brand new building that we were building on the outskirts of town. And it was all this excitement around that, you know, and I'd helped with that building, to design it and all of that. And now I was leaving. And they were hurt, they were sad. You know, they were like, what are you doing? You know, And I had to have lots of conversations with people about it. And some of them were willing to do that, and some of them just thought I'd lost my mind.
So it was. It was hard to walk away from, yes, the income. I mean, that was my job. That was. That was everything. I mean, 22 years in ministry was my career. And it was hard to walk away from the people and from the identity. But what I was walking into, I knew, was the truth. And I just had this overwhelming sense that everything was going to be okay. Not from a financial perspective. Like, I wasn't Sitting here going, all right, God's going to bless me with all this money or whatever. But I came to this place where I was like, I don't care anymore about that. Like, I. I wanted to follow Christ into his church. And if that meant I had to go work at a gas station pumping gas, if I got to be a Catholic, that was a. That was a win. So I let that go. And then. So what did I do practically? Well, my wife, she has been a professional photographer for a long time. She's an exceptional photographer. And we had started our own photography business in, like, 2010. And, you know, that's what she was doing while I was a pastor. She was, you know, taking photos, and I would help her with that. I was getting into that a little bit too kind of on the side, but I just rolled right into the business and I started doing photography full time.
You know, after I became a. A Catholic, I didn't do YouTube. I wasn't. I. I never got into this. I always need to say this to people because of what I do now, but I never once in a million years thought, hey, how can I turn being Catholic into a job? That was the last thing on my mind. My priest sat me down. He told me, he said, keith, people are going to try to get you to do stuff because you were a pastor. Keep a low profile. Don't do anything. Just give it a year of just being Catholic before you do anything like that. And I was totally cool with that. Right. I didn't want to do that. That's what I let go of, to be Catholic. So I was just like, the, the dude just. I was working on my business all the time. Honestly, like, I had to try to build that up. And then I ended up taking another job at the same time, working for one of our, like, our photography lab that makes all of our, like, albums and canvases and stuff.
They hired me to basically be like, a consultant to other photographers. So I would travel around the state of Iowa and, you know, meet with photographers and help them with their business and their, their process and, and teach them how to sell stuff. And hopefully they would buy it from our company if they, if I was teaching them how to do that. So I just went into the business world, you know, and that's what I did. And, you know, but it was so weird. People say, oh, do you miss being a pastor? Did you miss that? The truth is, I didn't miss it at all because, like, the Lord gave me a new identity. And it was, it was, it was Beautiful. I got to go to mass and just, just receive.
And I'm not trying to, like, make it all about me, but I felt like I'd been on this journey for so long and now I was finally home and the Lord was just saying to me, come sit and rest.
There'll be work for you to do later. But for now, this is what you, this is what you need to do. Just be. And, and, and I, I had such an incredible time in that year. I had no idea that a year later I was going to be writing books and traveling all over the place and speaking and making YouTube. I had no idea of any of that. But that first year was all about just resting and being Catholic. And man, it was amazing.
[00:51:07] Speaker A: Yeah, I think, you know, the St. Paul model is a good one for converts and just not to be too quick to be telling everybody else things until I, I always joke. I have my five year rule. I don't really talk to converts, you know, until they're in Catholic five years. I mean, as far as like publicly promoting them or talking about their, that they talk about their story, I'm not saying they can't say anything. I'm just saying that, yeah, there should be a certain sense of. Okay, I'm just learning the ropes here. I remember I gave a talk at my parish, like, think it was like two years or three years after I became Catholic. And even then I was kind of like, I don't really know what I'm talking about here. It was a Bible thing. And I was just like. And I wasn't really that comfortable. It took me some time. And because you really do, and I want you to actually talk about this, is that there's a huge difference. At least I found there was a huge difference between thinking about Catholic and Catholicism, looking at Catholic outside and then living as a Catholic. Like, I really, when I became Catholic, 1993, compared to, I knew nothing about Catholicism, I feel like. And yet I still became Catholic. I mean, at the time I thought I was an expert on it because I read, you know, this rock magazine, Catholic Answer. I read Carl King's book, I listened to Scott Hahn's tape, all this stuff. But like, really I knew nothing compared to, you know, and I still know nothing in the grand scheme of things. But compared to then I know a lot more. Did you have that experience too, where it's like, you know, actually living as a Catholic is, is not really. It is, but it isn't. I don't know how to explain it. It is, but it isn't what you expected.
[00:52:38] Speaker B: Absolutely. That's. I mean, honestly, that's what my first book was about. Because I. I realized that the Catholic Church, it's kind of like. It's kind of like a church building with beautiful stained glass windows. You don't really notice how beautiful they are until you're inside, you know, because that's when the light shines in and you're looking at from the inside, you see what they were intended to look like. The Catholic Church looks completely different from the inside than it does from the outside. You get enough grace to bring you in. But living as a Catholic, it's something completely different. And unfortunately, I think people are oftentimes ill equipped for that with whatever preparation they go through to become Catholic, whether it's through some kind of RCIA or OCIA program or whatever it might be, that that's not going to be sufficient for you. You know, you have to, like. You have to just live into it. And there are going to be things about it that are going to surprise you in good ways, and there are going to be things about it that are going to surprise you in not so good ways. And I certainly had plenty of those. But the thing that was so interesting to me was it felt like I was entering into another universe. It wasn't like I just joined a different church.
Things meant different things. You know, like, words have different meanings in the Catholic Church and people talk differently and people say so. Like, it took me probably, like three months before I knew what someone meant when they talked about a prayer intention.
Because I'm like, what do you mean?
[00:54:02] Speaker A: It is hilarious how the vocabulary is completely different.
[00:54:05] Speaker B: Yeah. I'm like, oh, you mean like a prayer request? Well, that's, you know, my. Will you pray for his intentions? I'm like, I don't know what his intentions are. You know, like, what does that. Like, what does he want me to pray for? You know, just some of the cultural things. So when. When. When the Lord really put my heart to write this book and when he had done that, I hadn't given a talk. I hadn't done one. I think I'd given one talk in a church in Davenport to my buddy's church who was like, you gotta become. You gotta come talk to us. Because they were all with me on that first pilgrimage, and they wanted to hear the story. So. But. But the Lord just liked. And the people said to me, are you gonna write a book someday? No, I'll never write a book. I'm not that smart. I'm not an academic guy. I don't even like to read books, you know, so it just downloaded into my brain, this idea of the Convert's Guide to Roman Catholicism, your first year in the church. And what that book is about is what it feels like to be a new Catholic. It's not an apologetic to convince someone to be Catholic. It's not a theology handbook about the deeper meaning behind all of the different dogmas. It's kind of like, okay, you just got dropped off at your AT after rcia. Now what do you do? You. You know, how do you. So it's. It's topics like coming out as a Catholic. How do you tell your friends that you became Catholic? Like, what do you do about that? How do you. How do you look for a parish church? Shopping looks a lot different in the Catholic world than it does in the Protestant world.
[00:55:25] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:55:26] Speaker B: You know, lots of different things, like which devotions should you do as a new Catholic? How. What. What's the Mass all about? Explaining the elements of the Mass, but really, ultimately, like, what's it like to be part of this ancient family that is full of all different kinds of people that now are your family? So to me, that's been. That's been so much fun to experience. But, you know, there are a lot of things from the inside that you see differently than you did from the outside.
[00:55:54] Speaker A: Yeah. When I became nothing. I want to ask you about a challenge because it's a little different for you than it was for me because I became Catholic in 93. John Paul II was the Pope, and there was a real energy behind him. He was times man of the Year. A couple years later, he was putting out things like Evangelion Vitae and all this stuff. And there was a ton of converts in America. I think it was like 150,000 a year were happening at this point. We were like, okay. We knew that there had been some issues in the 70s and 80s with Catholicism and not that great. We knew there's some lingering, but we're on the ascendancy. We're taking over. And then like two. And so then 2002 comes with the. The scandals and everything, and there's a real revelation that, okay, all isn't that great inside the church. After all, I had been Catholic for. At that point for nine years. And so for me, I was kind of prepared for it. I was like, okay, I can handle this. You know, whatever. I. I never really shook my faith at all. I didn't really think, oh, my goodness, you know, this invalidates the claims of the church and like that.
But since then, I mean, frankly, 20 some years since then, the church has been in turmoil outwardly. I personally think in the 90s, it wasn't so great. It just. We kind of had a cover over it at the time, but it's been in turmoil. A lot of divisions within the church, a lot of scandals happening. There's doctrinal confusion. I know you hear it from your Protestant friends about this, and they throw it in your face, I'm sure.
[00:57:18] Speaker B: And stuff like that all the time.
[00:57:20] Speaker A: Yeah, but you're becoming Catholic right in the middle of it. Do you feel like that kind of made you kind of prepared for it because you already knew what was going on? But I mean, how do you navigate that, The. The crises and, and the scandals that. That seem to pop up all too often within the church today?
[00:57:36] Speaker B: Well, okay, so. So I'll talk about how I. How I dealt with it then and how I deal with it now. Okay.
When I. When I was coming into the Catholic Church, I wasn't studying modern, you know, and I know people hate to say it like that, but I was like. My eyes weren't looking around, okay. My eyes were looking up. Okay. So. So I was focused on. On Jesus Christ and what was true and what was real. And I came to believe in the Eucharist. I came to believe in. In the validity of the papacy and in Christ's holy Catholic Apostolic Church.
It was. And people would say, oh, well, what about the scandal?
[00:58:14] Speaker A: This.
[00:58:14] Speaker B: What about, you know what? Here's the deal, man. I'm not a stranger to scandal before I became Catholic, so I've been around that stuff. As a Methodist, I've been around that stuff is about everything. So to me, the fact that there's scandal in the Catholic Church, I would, I would have been shocked if there wasn't because I understand that human beings are. Make it make up the Catholic Church and human beings are sinners. So, so to me, I had seen enough of that in the. In, you know, outside of Catholicism to just understand that human beings are gonna. Are gonna be human beings.
So I didn't have this fantasy land, pie in the sky idea that everyone who's Catholic is somehow impeccable and, and that there's never any scandal or whatever like that. So I already understood that part of it. So to me, that wasn't as. As, like, it didn't shock me. Okay.
Since I've become Catholic, here's what I've. Here's what I believe.
And I wonder. I want to hear Your take on this.
I believe that God is bringing in. You know, you talked about all the converts that came in the 80s and 90s. Whatever. There's a, there's a crew of converts coming into the church as we speak. Despite the crisis in Rome, despite the crisis in the scandals, despite the crisis with the liturgy, all that kind of stuff, there's, There are a group of people that God is bringing into the church for such a time as this because he is preparing to renew the church. I believe this with all my heart. Okay. You could, People could say you're an idiot. And I'm not saying it's about Keith Nestor. I'm. Because I'm seeing it in lots of people. But the, a lot of the converts that I know and that I see are coming in so on fire for the church. Their heart's desire is to be part of God's renewal movement in the Catholic Church. And really, when I say renewal movement, I don't mean something new. I mean something old. I mean a, a revival of, of the apostolic faith. A revival of what? Christ? Holiness? Of what God? Just being Catholic. And so to me, I kind of go, why did God bring you in at this? And I just go, well, I guess he brought us in because he needed us, you know, which, I know that sounds kind of like selfish or like, wow, we're so great. I don't feel like that at all, personally, but I feel like, I feel, you know, like when God went to St. Francis Assisi and said, I want you to rebuild my church, you know, my church is in ruins.
I, I, I, I feel like he could have said, no, I'm not doing that. This is a disaster. I'm just gonna leave. He didn't. I think there's something like that coming, Eric. And I think that there's. There's a group of people coming in that are so on fire for their faith, and they're not deterred by all of the junk that the Catholics are arguing about.
[01:01:00] Speaker A: Right.
[01:01:01] Speaker B: They're not deterred by all of the things the Protestants are saying. They're just going, let's do this Catholic thing, you know?
So that's kind of how I look at it.
[01:01:09] Speaker A: Yeah, I think it's interesting because I feel like there's a certain. The vibe is similar to the 90s, but in a very different, but yet in a different way. Let me explain. In the 90s, like I said, we had a lot of confidence, a lot of people coming to church. There's this vibe like we're on the Ascendancy. And a lot of it, a lot of it was based on John Paul ii.
[01:01:31] Speaker B: Okay.
[01:01:32] Speaker A: And John Paul II admire greatly. But he is just a man ultimately. And it was all kind of on his shoulders of like, okay, because of his charisma, him, you know, striding on the world stage and basically being this major figure. He was like, he's our guy, he's our leader. People were becoming Catholic. I mean, he was instrumental in me becoming Catholic as well. And so there was like this, okay, this is happening. You know, this is happening. We're gonna turn. We know things got a little bit off kilter in the 70s and 80s. Now we're going to straighten it. Then, of course, everything fell apart in the 2000s, and it's kind of stayed that way in the 2000s, 2010s. And then though, I do feel like I don't. I can't explain that. I feel, feel like comforts are coming out of the woodwork all of a sudden in the past five, 10 years, something like that. Especially in the last five years, where it's like. And, but here's the key difference, what I'm going to say. So it's kind of got that vibe of the 90s. Here's the key difference. It's not based upon the Pope, whoever he may be. It's not based on Pope Francis. It's not based upon a certain figure in the church. I mean, you know, in the 90s also, Scott Hahn, whom I love, you know, was a big part of that. And, and he was leading a lot of people. He helped me lead me. And so. And he would be the first to say it's not about him, but like, it's not. There's not like a figure, a person, that it's. There is a person, but it's, it's, it's. But they're not a human person. Let's make it that way. That's all dependent upon. It's not because we have a super charismatic Pope or because we had this bishop or that bishop or a priest or some figure or something like that. It's because of Jesus. And I really think it's because if people are able to see. Yes, if people were able to see the truth, I mean, it was easier for me, let me be honest. It was easier for me to see the truth of Catholic faith in the 1990s because of kind of the facade than it is today. I really do think that. Yet people are seeing it more clearly because of that. Because here's the other reality that we don't like to talk about. In the 90s, a large percentage of those converts left the church.
[01:03:33] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:03:35] Speaker A: And now I think there's something about, like, when you join, when things are kind of a mess outwardly, you're not going to be, you're not going to easily leave when you, when new messes arise. Because, like, no, we're, we're here to not, we're not here to fix it. We're here to, you know, serve God and be his servants. But part of that will include fixing some things.
[01:03:55] Speaker B: I think. I think that's a huge point that you just made there. And I honestly do feel like, like, I agree with everything you just said. You know, I, and I'm not, I'm certainly not the center of all this, but I do talk to a lot of converts, and I can't think of anybody who's came to me and said, hey, I'm feeling called to become Catholic because of something Pope Francis said or did. No, I'm not disparaging Pope Francis, but I'm not. Like, I understand the whole, the whole JP thing. I mean, we just got back from Poland, we went to all of this stuff, and, and he was amazing. I remember as a Protestant, just being like, wow, you know, when I was in Rome, we saw him, you know, and, and I'm sure there are people out there who love Pope Francis and they, and they would say, oh, I became a Catholic because of him. I'm not here to argue with them. I'm just saying that wasn't the case for me, and it's not the case for anybody I know personally that has told me that. And in fact, some of, some of the, the difficulties that, the, that the, that people have with, with this pontificate and the different things I think have prepared us to be better Catholics because we have, we, we're not hanging our, our Catholicism on a man.
[01:05:02] Speaker A: Right.
[01:05:02] Speaker B: You know, and, and that's huge because, like, like. So, for example, here's how this plays out in my life in conversations I have with people who are telling me, because I hear this almost every day, well, I can't be a Catholic because of Pope Francis. Right. Okay. I will say to that person, well, let me ask you this. If Pope Francis were better, according to what you think better is, would that make the Catholic claims true? Would you be Catholic if the Pope, if Pope Francis was more based or whatever you think he's supposed to be, you know, or if they say things to me like, well, I could never be Catholic because of the sex Scandal. I will say to them, well, okay, if the sex scandal had never happened, would that make Jesus Christ truly present in the Eucharist to you? Like, would you believe the doctrines of. Because what I'm trying to do is we have to separate what the Catholic Church is and teaches from the human side of it. And the objections, primarily when it's about the Pope and when it's about the sex scandal are about human side of it. They're not about the claims of the Church, because the Catholic Church never makes any claims that are invalidated. I mean, some people disagree with this by the Pope or by the sex scandal. So to me, I feel like if. And there's been times in history when this has been true. Also.
If you can come into the church on fire for the Catholic faith and be as fired up when things are kind of on fire, then how can you be stopped? You know, you're never going to leave. It's only going to get better for us, you know, because I feel like if some of those issues get worked out and there's more clarity and there's more orthodoxy or whatever you want to call it, then it's, it only emboldens us even more. But we have to, we have to separate that from, you know, the, the human side of it when things are bad. And, you know, like, you talked about when things are good. Because like you said, a lot of those people that came in so fired up about JP2, you know, maybe they haven't been so fired up lately. So they've been like, oh, well, I can't be here anymore.
[01:07:04] Speaker A: Yeah, it was. I, I knew people like, like that as well. And like, it's not. And that's not. Same thing against JP2. He's doing his job. He's. He's. He's just. His personality, everything like that. But there, there was that, that imbalance in, in that. And I'll be honest, I was part of that, too, because I would, like, use JP2 as my defense against any argument. It's like, well, that's not how it works. That's how Catholicism work. And it took me some time to realize that, but nobody does that today. Nobody uses Pope Francis as their defense of Catholicism to some Protestant or something like that. And I think that's a good thing.
[01:07:37] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't think I've ever heard anybody do that. I don't know.
[01:07:39] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't think. I don't think that's happening. But. So my question then for you now is to Catholics who are listening to this like they have Protestant friends and maybe they have Catholics who fell away the church. From what you're hearing about people who are converting come to church, what are the things that kind of like, you know, what, what do you do when, you know, like, I guess what, what is. I'm trying to not be crude. I want to say the sales pitch, but I don't really want to say that.
But what are some things that, that the average Catholic should be kind of in their mind when they're talking to a fallen away Catholic or a Protestant who's maybe interested in the Catholic Church about? Hey, you know, I know things kind of might from the outside look like it's a mess, and from the inside it does too. But here's why. It's not actually a mess. It's actually a divine institution founded by Christ.
[01:08:25] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, first of all, I think we have to, sometimes we have to reject the premise. Okay. And I know some people might not agree with me on this, but when someone approaches me and all they want to do is bash Pope Francis and say all these horrible, horrible, awful things about him, you know, he's this, he's that, he's whatever. I don't, I don't always accept that premise. Okay. Now I, I also don't feel led to become like, you know, his apologist and Pope explain everything that he says. But what I want to do is get to the truth on those things. So if somebody comes to me and says, oh, you know, yeah, the Pope Francis, you know, he, he wants to start having gay marriage in the Catholic Church, you know, I'm not going to go, well, yeah, you know, you just got to look at St. Ignatius of Antioch and what he said. I'm not going to do that. I'm going to say, well, hold on a minute here. Let's. That's not exactly true. We'll point to the, we'll point to the reality of what, what is said and we can say, you know, there are things about this that we like, there are things about this that we don't like. But sometimes the things that are put out there are so outlandish and they're just not true, to be honest with you. So we have to be willing to give a defense when it's appropriate. So I will defend things that I know are false. Okay? I'll defend against things that I know are false. But at the same time, I would also say to someone who is, you know, attacking the Church because of, of a man or whatever, I, I would say, well, here's the deal. Our faith is not about one person other than Jesus Christ. And there was never a promise that, that Christ's servants weren't going to be, you know, problematic. We've had plenty of that. We had that in the Gospels. We had that in Acts. We've had that throughout church history. And you certainly, whoever's arguing with me can, can to me that in whatever group you come from, there's the same issue. So if you're going to make truth claims to me about your particular, you know, version of theology, and you have people within that sphere, even in leadership, that aren't always the best examples of that, then, you know, you have to explain that too. Well, we don't make the same claims about the Pope that. Let's talk about those claims, right? Let's talk about what we claim about the Pope and then we'll get into that stuff because oftentimes I find out there is a misunderstanding, you know, well, you guys, don't, you guys believe the Pope is perfect, you know, and then you can start having that conversation, then you can talk about what that means, and then you can even, you can even point back to some things Pope Francis has said that bolster that claim. You know, you can talk about when he said that, look, I don't have the authority to ordain women priests. You know, you can talk about some of those things and, and help people to understand things, hopefully. But I, I always go back to what does the church teach and what are the claims of the Catholic Church? And I try as hard as I can. And unfortunately, you know, it's hard because a lot of people, their experience of Catholicism initially is what they see in their local parish, right? And sometimes they walk into their local, you know, parish and it looks anything like or nothing like what they've heard. Guys like me and guys like you talk about Catholicism, you know, we're talking about this ancient church full of truth and power and the Holy Spirit, and they walk into a, you know, run of the mill Catholic parish in their neighborhood and it feels like a, you know, something completely out of the 70s or whatever. And they're just like, you know, and the priest says something goofy and the music's weird and people are just like, this isn't what I'm into, you know, so we have to figure out, like, how do we navigate? And some of that stuff is stuff that, that the Church has to figure out. And then some of the stuff is what we as human beings have to have to deal with in and of ourselves, right? But I always try when people are attacking, you know, the. The institution of Catholicism based on what human beings are doing to. To. To get them to make that separation.
[01:12:32] Speaker A: Yeah, I think. I think there's no question in my mind that the. The biggest thing that keeps. That we do, that keeps people away from the church isn't anything that happens in Rome or online. I think that it's just the way a typical parish celebrates Mass. And. And I'm not even talking about tlm, Novus Ordo. I'm just talking about the fact that you walk in.
Like, here's always been my kind of thing I say is when I walk in, do I think the people here actually believe what they're saying?
And the fact is, a lot of times when you walk in your typical, like, suburban Catholic church, it's hard to say that because it seems like everybody's going through the motions. You have this, you know, just a weak habit. Homilies you have, you know, just like, they don't really seem to care. And so many people there just go in and out. And I'm saying this like, as from Protestant eyes. The thing that scandalized me the most when I first started hanging out with Catholics and I. And like, hey, come to Mass. Okay? I go to Mass.
Things like people showing up in shorts and a T shirt, and it's not even a dress code thing, but they. And they leave early and before it's even over, to me, I'm like, okay. They don't really take this seriously. And like, okay, this is a funny pet peeve. I don't know if you ever had this, but, like, when I became Catholic, one of those cultural differences we talked about.
[01:13:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:13:46] Speaker A: Drove me crazy that Catholics in the winter kept their coats on during Mass because I'm like, you don't do that. When you go to somebody's house, you take your coat off to say, I'm here to say. I'm not just, like, stopping and then running out. Unless you are stopping in and running out, you're showing a sign of respect by taking your coat, saying, I'm here to stay. I'm with you. I'm, like, serious about this. And yet these Catholics would show up. They all have their coats on. Now, I know Catholic churches don't have coat rooms like Protestant churches do, but still, it bugged me.
And my wife thinks it's hilarious how I go off on this all the time, how, you know, Catholics do this. Now our. Our church doesn't have that great of ventilation anymore. So I understand why people in my Parish don't wear their coats. It gets pretty cold in the winter. But my point is just simply that the witness of, like, we both had where we saw Catholics who were serious about their faith, and if the parish doesn't really display that, that's far more likely to keep people away or send people away than anything they do in Rome or anything we do or anything like that. So I do think that's something that we have to recognize. And so when a Protestant today becomes Catholic and knows, I. I do think, I feel like there's something like, here's the challenge I've had.
I'll have somebody who's not Catholic who's maybe interested, and they want to check. Maybe they live in another town, something like that, and they want to check out a Catholic church. And I'm like, I don't. I have a hard time just saying, go to the local one.
[01:15:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:15:10] Speaker A: I don't know. And, like, sometimes I'll have people reach out to me, like, online. They'll be like, I'm interested in their Protestant, and they'll tell me what town they're in. And I have to do a search to find out, okay, where's the good parishes?
[01:15:22] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:15:22] Speaker A: Which I almost feel bad saying. But I have to say it, and I have to look it up and tell them, well, go to this one and not that one. And then you have to explain why you're saying that, because they are told, hey, Catholic Church is. It's all one big happy family. It's one. It's not like Protestantism where you're church shopping, you just go to your local parish.
[01:15:38] Speaker B: Right.
[01:15:38] Speaker A: I'm like, well, it's not exactly true.
[01:15:41] Speaker B: And that is. That is honestly, like, what you just talked about there. That's the biggest challenge. Yeah, that. That's more. And like you said, I like how you said that, that that's more critical to the everyday experience of. Of Catholics and stuff than what's going on in Rome. I believe that. I mean, sometimes one informs the other, but. Yes, but. But I think that that's so true. But here's the other thing. I always. I always wait Whenever. Whenever I. And this. Maybe I don't know if this is a good idea or a bad idea, but whenever I run into something in my Catholic life that bugs me or rubs me the wrong way, I always think back and I go, did I experience that as a product too? Or is this just because I'm Catholic? And most of the time, I experienced that in Protestantism, too. So, you know, in. In all the churches I served, I, you know, and I'm not trying to be judgmental, but there were plenty of people who were just going through the motions there, too. There were plenty of people who were Methodist because that's what they grew up as and they moved to a new town and just like you get a library card and a Y membership, you got to join the Methodist Church, right? So there were plenty of people who, I like the way you put it, who kept their coats on there as well. And so I, I, I have to be careful not to apply a standard to the everyday Catholic layperson that I didn't apply to the everyday Protestant layperson person because it's the same everywhere. Okay, having said that, there should be because of what you said about do the people here believe what is going on here? That's what should make us different. But unfortunately, and let's just be honest, sometimes because Catholics believe certain things, they make it harder on new people. Okay, I'll give you a great example.
When you, when you're, when you're a non Catholic and you're exploring Catholicism and you're like, I'm just going to go to Mass, I'm just going to go check it out, you're used to walking into a Protestant church and everyone's, hey, how's it going? It's good to see you here. You know, the people are happy, they're excited to see you, and there's life and there's energy and it feels like a place where you walk in and, you know, it's kind of like, oh, this is, this is exciting.
Whereas you walk into a Catholic Mass and it's like you walked into a funeral sometimes. You know, everyone's quiet, no one's looking at anyone. People, people are praying. Right? Which is a good thing. Right? But the, the vibe is so different because people are like, that's Jesus. That's the Eucharist. You can't, you know, and I've been in arguments with people about, is it really sacrilegious to greet someone, you know, in, in when they come into the, to the church, when Jesus is truly present on the, you know, in the tabernacle? Because he's really, and I'm like, well, I'm pretty sure Jesus greeted people every day when he walked the earth. So I don't think that's going to be offensive to him. I think he's probably more offended when you're, you know, a jerk to someone than he is because you said hello to a new person. But some people are so like, you know, that they just tune everybody else out now. So it's just one of those things that if you don't know, you don't know. But I think that, by and large, what we have to come up with is two things. This is what I think is so important.
We have to be joyful and we have to be devoted. We have to have both of those things. We have to be devoted to our faith so that when we walk into Mass, we have the most reverent attitude and mindset. We're there, and we can pray and we can be tuned into Christ and we can be, you know, dressed appropriately, and we can be, like, fully zoned in. And we've prepared ourselves to celebrate the liturgy. We're ready. And yet at the same time, people can still feel this incredible amount of joy when they come in. I'll tell you a quick story, you know, so we go to the TLM at our parish as well, and that's a whole nother deal how I found that. I didn't even know there was a TLM when I became Catholic. I didn't know there was a difference. I was completely ignorant of the liturgy wars when I became Catholic. I had no idea that. That there was a difference.
[01:19:41] Speaker A: Sometimes you wish you still were ignorant of them.
[01:19:43] Speaker B: Sometimes I do, but. But, you know, we found the Latin Mass because my wife.
I was. I was out of town for something, and she needed to go to church super early that day, and there was a Latin Mass at 7am and she went to it, and she called me later in the day, and she's like, hey, I went to the Latin mat. I'm like, what's that? And she took. She's like, I think you would really like this, you know. So I was like, really? It's in Latin. What's the point? So I. I just went. Never had been to a TLM before, and I was just like. I was instantly hooked on it. You're right. But we went to this. We went to this other TLM in. In a church in Des Moines for a trip we were on. And we were there early because we did the rosary with the people there. And then we. We were sitting there in the service before this, before the Mass started, and. And everybody was walking in from the front because they were. The church was being remodeled, and there were all these young families coming in and all these people coming in, and when they walked into the parish, people were, like, excited. All these little kids, they had big smiles on their faces and people were giving each other hugs. And they were so full of joy. And it was like. And I remember saying to my wife, I'm like, look at how joyful these people are to be here. It was like all of these friends had gathered together and they hadn't seen each other in so long and they were coming together for the most important thing they were going to do that week. And they all came in and they were so filled with joy. And then they went and then they prayed. And then after mass was. And it was a beautifully celebrated, you know, tlm. Then we had this big potluck afterwards and people hung around for hours just hanging out, talking. I'm like, that's going to convert people, man. You know?
[01:21:18] Speaker A: Yeah. I think practically this is a great topic because there is this balance here because we're not Protestant churches where we don't have a sense of a sacred space. So we just kind of do whatever we do outside church, in church. But at the same time, like you said, we're not supposed to be ticked off when somebody new comes in and maybe breaks a few of the rules because he doesn't know the rules. And so I think there's a certain sense, like when I said being serious like, that these people take this seriously. But like, if I go into a church, a Catholic church, and I see people chit chatting about, oh, did you know? Oh, yeah, last week I did this. You know, two of their friends, they're all inside the church at the pews doing that. I honestly, I think that that sends a signal that they're not really serious about where they are. It's not a special where. If I see them all praying, I'm like, okay, these people are serious about this. If it's quiet and all that.
Yet at the same time, I think, like, I honestly, I think my parish does a great job of this because like, after Mass, people hang out for hours just chatting and stuff. But also when there's somebody new, we're very quick to be like, hey, let. We try to figure out, okay, what, what's. I don't think this is done intentionally, but it's like, what's their demographic? Oh, it's a young lady. Okay, let's find the young ladies and introduce her to, to, to them. If it's a, you know, a married man might, okay, let's introduce to the married man, try to, you know, connect them and really to be like, hey, we're. And we, we ask, you know, we, we welcome them. We're like, we love having you here. Why are you here? Why did you decide to come where? You know, and so I think that. And we're not given side eyes when somebody shows up. Like, everybody in our parish mostly dresses up pretty decently. It's a tlm, you know, it's kind of normal. Nobody's giving the side eye to somebody who shows up in jeans or something like that because it's like, you know, it, you know, whatever. It's like, you know, we know what we're doing, but we're not gonna, like, you know, condemn you because you, you showed up in jeans or something like that. So I think that is the balance. I think if you keep that balance of, okay, this is a sacred space that we take seriously, that we know we're here for a reason, to worship God, give glory to him.
But part of that always, I mean, just read a few of Jesus's parables and, you know, if that means you're also a jerk to your neighbor, then you've failed in the purpose. So I think there is that. And I think sometimes we mess it up. Like, I know there's stories like teal and parishes where somebody new comes and they. They don't treat them well. So, like that. Maybe it's just somebody's had a bad day. Maybe it's just like they don't understand it's a new person. Whatever. I get that. We all, we all do that. I've looked at crying babies before and I shouldn't have, you know, like, you know, I always tell people, don't do that. You'd be cool when, when somebody's crying, they can't control their kid. But I've done it myself and, and I try not to. So I think that's, that's. That's a challenge. But I think we can do it. And I think there are parishes that are doing it today.
[01:24:04] Speaker B: I think. I think so too. And it goes back to something you said earlier that I don't want you talked about. Okay, what about like the regular, you know, average Novus Ordo suburban church or whatever? Okay. And people walk into that and they go look like, like you say to people, go to the local Catholic parish. What's it going to be like? Here's the thing that we have to. That that's going to save us, I believe. Okay, Obviously, the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ, when we can help people understand the why behind the what, then they can endure those things.
So, like, even so, I, I had. And this, this happened to me with a. With a young man who I met at work one day who come up to me. And he was like, hey, man, I heard you're a Catholic or something. I'm like, yeah. And we start talking about it. He's a young kid in his early 20s, and he goes, like a vineyard or something like that. And he was telling me about, you know, yeah, I just have a passion for prayer, you know. And he goes, I just have this vision to start this thing I want to call a night watch where, where everyone goes to my church and everyone takes hour shifts to go and be in the church to pray, you know. And I said, really? And I looked at him like, dude, you're not gonna believe this. We do that every week at my church on Fridays. I said, my wife and I, we go 10 o'clock at night. Every. Every Friday night, 10 to 11. He goes. And he goes, and people are there all night? I said, yeah, they started right after our 12:30 mass or 12:05 mass. And it goes all the way through the day and the night until the next morning Mass. And he's like, dude, that sounds awesome. Do you have to be Catholic to go to that? I said, nope. He said. He said, can I. And of course, I'm talking about Eucharistic adoration, right? He said, can I come? I said, you can come anytime you want, bro. And I gave my number. I said. And he goes, I want to come this week. So this kid drove down, you know, over an hour to come down. I said, meet me in the parking lot at 9:45. I need to explain something to you, though.
We get there and I asked him, I said. I said, do you understand what Catholicism teaches about, you know, the body and blood of our Lord? Being. Being present in the. In the, in the Eucharist? And he looks at me like I got three eyes. He goes, I don't even know what you're talking about, man. He goes, I've never once set foot in a Catholic church. I said, okay, let me explain this.
And I walked through what we believe about that. And I said to him, we're not going there just to pray. We are going there to literally be in the presence of God. So when you walk into this church, you're going to see some people just on their faces. You might see someone on the ground kneeling. You might see someone laying on the ground. Sometimes people do that. You're going to see people reading, reading the Bible or, or walking around and praying the stage of the cross. You're gonna. I don't know what you're gonna see in there, man. But Jesus Christ is truly in there. So what you're not going to see is people in there screwing around. You're not going to see people in there on their phones, you know. And I said to him, I said, are you ready for this? Because this is what you've come to tonight. You wanted to pray. You're going to pray in the presence of Almighty God. If you're ready for it, let's go. And he goes, whoa. All right. So just to prepare him, right? So we go into the church and I take a seat and put him where he's going to be, you know, And I'm praying for him the whole time, Right?
[01:27:20] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:27:21] Speaker B: After we got done, I go up to him when my shift was over at 11 o'clock, and I said, hey, Braden, I said, hey, you know, it's time to go. And he looks up at me and he goes, is it cool if I stay?
And I said, you can stay here as long as you want. And he goes, I might stay here all night, if that's all right with you. And I said, you're in God's house, man. You can do whatever you want. He's inviting you. He stayed there until like, 3:00 in the morning.
[01:27:47] Speaker A: Wow.
[01:27:47] Speaker B: And then drove home and.
[01:27:48] Speaker A: Right.
[01:27:48] Speaker B: And we talked about it. Now, I don't know that he ever became Catholic. I didn't really. I didn't work there much longer after that. But the point is this.
When you. When a person comes in, understanding what's really going on there, this is the key to surviving some of these bad parish experiences. And I had to learn this. My parish is amazing. Okay. But I'm on the road a lot, too, and I. I go to some. Most of the parishes I get to go to are really good, but there are some where I'll have to go to. And it's not the greatest, but the thing that. That gets me through that and made it just more than worthwhile is knowing what's happening there on the altar. And when people really understand what we're walking into, what we're receiving there in the Eucharist, then, yes, the music can be crappy. Yes, the homily can be a disaster. Yes, the people can be irreverent and wearing Crocs and a, you know, tank top, and I just have to get my. My eyes off them and put my eyes on Jesus. That's the same message I used to tell people back when I was a Protestant when they would say, oh, yeah, my parents are hypocrites, or these other people sit next to Me, they go to the bar on Saturday nights and get trash and come to church. Keep your eyes off them and put your eyes on Jesus. Except for in the Catholic Mass, we are actually doing that. So the laity needs to focus on that. We need to focus on keeping our eyes on Christ and focusing on what's true and. And, you know, we can deal with what the Church needs to do that. They're not really asking me, though. I don't know if they're probably asking you, but they're not. They're not asking me my opinion about that. But I have people every day that are asking me my opinion about what they should do when they go to a parish that's. That's less than stellar. From the, from a. From that perspective, how do we endure that? We have to tell them what's really going on there, and we have to explain to them that they aren't the most important person in the room. They used to go into Protestant churches where as soon as a visitor walks in, you know, they hand him a loaf of bread and a coffee mug and tell them that they want to be their best friend. That's not going to happen to you in a Catholic parish, especially a reverent Mass. You're going to walk in and nobody should notice you because they should be so focused on Christ. So don't miss. So you tell them the why behind the what. When someone complains to me and says, like my kids, for example, when they started coming to Mass with me at first, you know, and, and. And even recently, you know, why aren't people.
Why aren't people greeting us? Why aren't people. Because they're praying to Jesus. Why isn't there a nursery here, dad? How come the Catholics haven't heard of having a nursery? Why are all these babies crying? Because the families stay together. Because we want everyone to be, you know, it's just, just recently, you know what? My, my son, my youngest son, we took him to the, to the TLM for, For Christmas Eve.
And, you know, he'd been there before, but on the way home, he said, well, that was interesting. I didn't understand a word of it, you know, because I don't speak Latin. And I, I said to him, I'm like, do you really want me to tell you why we do Mass in Latin? Why the Church does that? And he's like, sure. Kind of being snarky with me about it, right? And when I actually explained to him about why, why that is the way it is in terms of the universality of it. And in terms of the unchanging nature of a dead language, he was like, oh, wow, that is kind of cool, you know. But before he understood the why behind the what, he just goes, this is dumb. You know, and when people walk into Catholic churches and they don't understand the why behind the what, they're like, oh, well, this is just weird. So I'm always trying to tell people, you know, when I'm telling them, look, try to find a good parish, but understand this. Here's what's going to happen when you walk. It might not be this, it might not be that, but this is what we believe and this is what's happening on the altar, regardless of what's happening around you.
[01:31:27] Speaker A: Yeah, that's great. That's great advice. I love that. I love the story of the guy adoration too. Before I let you go, I want you to tell me about down to Earth Ministries. Like what is you guys are doing?
[01:31:37] Speaker B: So down to Earth ministry is, is a ministry that is focused on, on communicating the truth, the Catholic faith, in a, in a clear, direct and impactful manner. So it's kind of more like a, an everyday Catholic kind of a vibe. I'm trying to explain Catholicism mostly to people who are either considering Catholicism or are brand new Catholics.
So, so I do a lot of things devoted to, I would call them like semi apologetics. It's not really like the deep level apologetics, but it's more like overcoming basic objections to Catholicism that a lot of people have or helping new Catholics understand things that they, that they don't get about Catholicism. But I also do a lot of things for Catholics that are kind of, maybe they're a few years into it. You know, we do a weekly, a weekly Bible study called Unpacking the Mass, where I walk through the readings for the Novus Ordo because even though I go to the TLM, 90 whatever percent of the people that are watching my videos are, they go to Novus Ordo parishes. So I want, my goal is to help these Catholics become more, more literate in their Bibles and to connect what's happening in the Bible with what's going on in the Mass. So I'm going to walk through those readings with them so that when they go to Mass, they're, they already have ears to hear. So those come out on Tuesday nights on my YouTube channel. And then I do a daily rosary that I've been doing for almost five years every single day on my, on my other YouTube channel called Rosary Crew with Keith Nestor. We've got thousands of people from all over the world that pray with us every day. And then I, you know, I do. I do in person. Interviews with people, mostly. Mostly conversion stories and. And. And different things related to that as well. So I've got two books out. The Converts Guide to Roman Catholicism, your first year in the church. And then a book I wrote a couple of years ago called Unpacking the Mysteries of the Rosary, which is really a Bible study of the rosary. It's kind of like, where is each one of these mysteries found in the Bible? And what is the. What is the. The. The. The. The meaning behind it and then the application to it. Some of the stuff that I used to do as a Protestant pastor, I, I haven't shaken off yet. You know, like, practical application. I kind of think that's still important.
[01:33:48] Speaker A: Scott Hahn still hasn't shaken it off yet either. He's been around for 40 years doing.
[01:33:52] Speaker B: It, so that's okay. So that's, That's. That's the gist of it. And then I do a lot of traveling around for conferences and parish missions and stuff like that, too.
[01:33:59] Speaker A: That's great. Well, I will put a link to the Down Earth Ministries and also the YouTube channel. You got some great content on the YouTube channel. To be honest, I had not really followed it. And then when I. When I reached out to you, I was like. I was looking at this and I was like, boy, this is some great stuff here. And I got some stuff to listen to, so.
[01:34:14] Speaker B: Oh, man, I appreciate that. Thank you.
[01:34:16] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it's very good. I highly recommend it. So I. And so I'll put links to that so people can find it as well. This has been great. I appreciate you kind of sitting down with. With me here and kind of telling your story. I. It's always. I mean, like, I've been Catholic for 30 some years, and so I get jaded like the next guy. So I always love hearing stories of how God is working in people, even today. And like, I'm with you. I do think there's something happening. I think there's something happening that I. Like I said, I've been around for a while, and I don't. Didn't feel it before, but I feel it. I really feel in the last couple years, it's kind of starting to ramp up some. So we'll just have to see what. What God has. Has planned for us. Right?
[01:34:55] Speaker B: Amen, brother.
[01:34:57] Speaker A: Okay, well, thanks. Yeah, thank you, Keith. And until next time, everybody. God love.
Our guest was a Protestant pastor and is now a Catholic helping others discover the riches of the Catholic Faith. We'll talk about what brought him to Rome.
