In this episode, I begin a lengthy multipart series in which I adapt some of the lesson plans I used as I taught the Catholic faith for 30 years. I’m not here to convert anyone. I’m just sharing my stories.

Hello, this is Chris Young. Welcome to Episode 88 of Contemplating Life.

In this episode, I kick off a multipart series in which I return to the topic of religion.

Whenever I talk about religion, I always include this disclaimer that I’m not out to convert anyone to my beliefs. As with all topics, my purpose is to educate, entertain, enlighten, and possibly inspire. But that doesn’t include trying to evangelize you into Christian or Catholic traditions. I’m just telling my stories.

For 30 years, I taught classes to people considering converting to Catholicism. The classes were part of a program called RCIA, which stands for Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults. Note that “rite” is spelled RITE, not RIGHT or WRITE, because the program includes a series of rites or rituals that are part of the initiation process. Recently, the program has been renamed OCIA for the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults. I continue to call it RCIA because that’s what we called it when I was teaching.

The classes met one night per week, usually Thursdays, beginning in late August or early September and running a few weeks past Easter. The program’s first half is just basic instruction in Christianity and the Catholic faith. We clarify that there should be no pressure for you to join. In fact, sometimes, our pastors would say to the group, “Don’t tell me you are ready to join the Catholic Church. You don’t know what the Catholic Church really is.”

Sometime in January, the priest would interview each participant privately and see if they were still interested in converting to Catholicism. They could continue the classes even if they didn’t want to convert. The second half of the curriculum focused more directly on preparing you to receive the Sacraments of Initiation: Baptism, First Communion, and Confirmation. These sacraments would be administered at a special ceremony the night before Easter.

Two categories of non-Catholics attend the program. First, we have catechumens who have not been baptized in any other Christian religion. We also have candidates who are people who have been baptized but want to convert from some other form of Christianity to become Catholic. The program was essentially the same for both of them. The only distinction was which rituals they would participate in for their initiation.

In addition to the non-Catholics who attended the program possibly to convert, nearly half of the class participants were already Catholic. Often, these were Catholic spouses, fiancées, or fiancés who were there to support their partners in their faith journey. Some attendees had converted the previous year but wanted to come back again for a deeper understanding of what they had learned the prior year. Others were simply Catholics who wanted to update their faith.

I first attended the program in 1984-85 as someone who had left the church in their late teens and was returning to investigate whether or not the Church was right for me.

A year or two later, I began teaching some of the classes as part of our RCIA Team. I will explain later about my failing recollection as to when I actually started teaching.

In this series of episodes, I will dust off some of my old lesson plans and turn them into podcast episodes. When I taught these lessons, I felt obligated to adhere to official Catholic teaching to the extent I could. However, in this series, I might diverge a bit and talk about my own personal beliefs that may not be 100% the Catholic doctrine. I will talk about things I’ve learned about theology, especially interpretation of Scripture, in the few years since I retired from teaching. I will try to clarify what portions of my discussion represent genuine Catholic doctrine and where I go off on a tangent from time to time.

What I am about to present is not exactly how I would’ve taught it in my 30 years of service to my parish. I’m simply using my old lesson plans as an outline or a jumping-off point to talk about religion in general.

Before we get started, let me provide some context and background.

In previous episodes, I talked about the early part of my faith journey, from my indoctrination in the Roman Catholic Church beginning in first grade through my eventual departure from the Church in my late teens and my return to the Catholic Church in my late 20s. The details are in episodes 6, 7, 11, 12, 13, and 14. Although it’s not 100% necessary to review those episodes if you haven’t already heard them, I encourage you to check them out. It gives you a deeper understanding of how I got to where I felt that my faith had grown sufficiently that I was confident I could teach.

Additionally, I did a series of episodes about my early ministry in the Church once I returned. Most of that was about work I did as a member of the Saint Gabriel Parrish Finance Committee and Pastoral Council. These topics are covered in episodes 37 through 42. It’s not as necessary that you hear those episodes before we proceed, but I just thought I would mention them here. My ministry with the finance committee was ongoing during my first years of teaching.

You’re probably wondering how a guy with a BS degree in computer science ended up teaching Catholic Theology. Here’s the back story…

In addition to the full year of attending RCIA as a returning ex-Catholic, I also attended many other adult education programs offered by my parish. The most influential and inspiring one was a series of lectures on the Catholic approach to Scripture given by Jim Welter of nearby Saint Monica Parish. He called his lecture series “The Ascending View.” I already explained what he meant by that phrase in episode 13, but I will cover it more in later episodes here. I was quite impressed both intellectually and spiritually by Jim’s work. I was particularly interested in the sections where he would share part of his personal faith journey in the context of his teaching.

Whether one is teaching an adult education program, Catholic Sunday school, or religion in a Catholic parochial school, we are not called “teachers.” The term we use is “catechist.” This is defined as “someone who instructs by sharing their faith.” Jim taught me by his example what that means.

In preparation for these episodes, I tried to locate Jim Welter. His website domain has been taken over by someone else. I found him on Facebook, and I’m trying to contact him to thank him for all I learned from his work. I always gave him full credit for teaching me much of what I know about the Catholic approach to Scripture. One of my lessons was essentially a stripped it down condensation of what he taught over a series of three or four lectures.

One of the questions I cannot answer is, “Exactly when did I begin teaching?” We are talking about events from 40 years ago so my recollection is a bit fuzzy on the details.

The timeline begins on April 21, 1984, when I attended the Easter Vigil service at the invitation of my friend Judy to see her husband Paul initiated into the church. They had just completed a year of RCIA classes. Attending that service was my entry back to the church after an absence of about nine years. Judy and Paul returned to the classes in the fall of 1984, and I joined them. I attended through the 1984-85 sessions.

If you had asked me a few days ago when I began teaching, I would’ve said it was the following year in the 1985-86 sessions. But the more I think about it, I don’t think I started until 1986-87. Upon deeper reflection over the past day or so, here’s what I think really happened.

In the 84-85 sessions, our Associate Pastor, Fr. Conrad Camberon, taught the Introduction to Scripture lesson. He used a class participation exercise that I later incorporated into my introduction to Scripture lesson.

Sometime, probably in 1985, I attended those lectures by Jim Welter, where I learned more about the Catholic approach to Scripture.

For the 1985-86 sessions, our pastor, Fr. Paul Landwerlen, taught the Scripture lesson. He seemed to me to be struggling a bit with teaching the lesson. Because I was freshly armed with abundant knowledge on the topic from Jim Welter, my reaction was, “I could do better than that.” After class, I approached Fr. Paul and asked if perhaps I could teach the class next year. He agreed.

In the second week of the 1986-87 season, I presented a lesson about the Catholic approach to Scripture. Father Paul attended. I was happy to have him there as backup lest I accidentally preached some heresy or misrepresented the Church doctrine. After class, he approached with a big smile and said, “You teach that material better than I do. We were taught all of that in the seminary, but it’s not something we preach or teach about on a regular basis.”

I’m pretty sure I simply thanked him for the compliment and for placing his trust in me, but I know inside I was thinking, “Yeah… I know I can do it better than you. That’s why I volunteered.”

So anyway, that’s how I got started.

Let’s talk about a typical year in the program after I had been teaching a few years.

Father Paul would teach the vast majority of the lessons. He was supported by a small team of parishioners known as the RCIA Team. That consisted of me, my mom, Judy, and our Pastoral Associate Sr. Mary Timothy Kavanagh. Father Conrad had been reassigned as pastor of a different parish so we only had one priest going forward. I would teach 4-6 lessons per year. Sr. Tim would do one or two. Judy and my mom were there to help keep things organized, provide hospitality, and moral support.

For many years, we would attract as many as 20 or more people to the class. We met in the parish meeting room sitting around cafeteria tables that would seat 6-8 people. The class was scheduled for 2 hours from 7-9 PM but we would take a 15 minute break in the middle for refreshments and socializing.

Parts of each lesson generally included a discussion period. The team would position themselves at different tables around the room to help facilitate the discussion and to be eyes and ears for Father to see if there was anything he needed to address with individuals or the entire group. Often the Team would sit around after class to discuss how the evening went. Sometimes these debriefing sessions ended up at Denny’s for coffee and pie.

As I mentioned, we started the class either in late August or the first week of September. The first session was just to get acquainted. Father would give an overview of the program and present an outline of lesson topics. Then he invited everyone to introduce themselves. He had a brief outline: Who are you? Who or what brought you here? What do you hope to gain from these sessions? He would invite the Team to share first to get the ball rolling.

When it came to my question of, “What brought you here?” I typically said, “I rode in that blue van in the parking lot.” I’m sure my team got sick of the joke, but it always got a big laugh from the new people. The team members, including Father, always insisted that we got as much or more from the sessions as the participants. The example of Judy’s husband and others who joined the church at the Easter Vigil inspired me to return to the church. Seeing more and more people joining the church through the RCIA program and playing a part in their journey greatly recharged the spiritual batteries of the entire team.

The following week, the lesson was a basic introduction to some core concepts about who God is and what is our relationship with Him. Both Father Paul and, years later, Father Larry Crawford taught a similar lesson. What follows in this episode is based on an outline by Father Larry with my own personal spin on the topic.

Father Larry would begin with a reference to the 1966 Michael Caine film “Alfie,” in which the opening song asked the musical question, “What’s it all about, Alfie?” Father explained that we all want to know what life is all about. Why are we here? How did we get here? What is our purpose in life?

By the way, I’m old enough to remember the film and the song, but many of the people in the class had no idea what he was talking about in referring to the film. Sometimes, they were a bit less confused if he prefaced the reference with something like, “There was this movie years ago about a guy named Alfie, and the theme song of the movie asked the musical question, ‘What’s it all about, Alfie?’” It always illustrated to me that whether teaching a lesson or writing fiction, you should ensure your audience understands your cultural references.

For Father Larry, the answer was, “It’s all about God and our relationship with Him. That’s what life is all about.”

It’s part of our human nature to ask these questions. The Church has tried to address those. Even back in first grade, when I was learning Catholicism from the Baltimore Catechism, the first three questions were:

Q1. “Who made me?”

A. “God made me”

Q2. “Who is God?”

A. “God is the Supreme Being who made all things.”

The third question asks, “Why did God make me?” The answer was, “God made me to show forth his goodness and share with his everlasting life.”

The fourth question is, “What must I do to share in God’s everlasting life?”

Answer: “To share in God’s everlasting life, we must know, love, and serve him.”

For a further discussion about these four questions of the old catechism, see episode 6.

So, the process is to know God, love God, and serve God.

How do people come to know God? Here’s an overview of just a few of the ways as presented by Father Larry.

Some people grow up with knowledge of God. That probably accounts for the majority of believers. If you are raised in a religious tradition, that is your first encounter with the divine. It’s where I began. Along the way, that was insufficient, and I left. But I came back for my own reasons.

Some people come to know God by reflecting on the course of their life. They look at their blessings. They reflect on the times that they survived hardship. They conclude God’s presence in their life.

Some people find God’s presence in nature. I once heard astrophysicist and science educator Neil deGrasse Tyson explain that when out in the wilderness away from city lights, looking up at the stars, he can rightly describe it as a spiritual experience. For him, that is insufficient to lead him to believe in an anthropomorphic supreme being. However, it is common to find God in nature. I’ve experienced some of that as a sense of awe or wonder that I find in nature. I’ve often described science as the study of things God made. For better or worse, this phenomenon among fundamentalist Christians leads them to try to develop a science of intelligent design. While I have no problem considering God as the architect of the universe, I don’t use that philosophy to justify interpreting Scripture in a manner that defies scientific fact. The fundamentalist do that to maintain a false view of the inspiration, inerrancy, and univocality of Scripture.

Some people are convinced they have personally experienced God. I’m not talking about necessarily hearing voices from God. They simply have had transcendent, spiritual experiences in which they feel in contact with the divine. For example, a father witnessing the birth of their children or a woman giving birth can be a spiritual experience when they realize the miracle that is human life and the fact that they were able to participate in it. Perhaps surviving an accident, illness or disaster can lead you to the divine. As the saying goes, “There are no atheists in a foxhole.” These personal experiences of God are similar to the nature issue we discussed earlier, but it doesn’t always have to be an encounter with nature to instigate such feelings.

Some people are helped to know God by demonstration from reason. There are many philosophers throughout the centuries who have attempted to prove or disprove the existence of God. The most common one is titled “prime mover” argument. Take any object around you. A table, chair, lamp, your computer… Whatever. Where did that come from? The table is made from wood. Where did the wood come from? Where did the tree come from? Where did the seed from which the tree grew come from? No matter what you encounter, you can continually ask what came before. Even scientists cannot explain what happened before the Big Bang. Ultimately, when you can go back no further… they argue that is God.

If you go back to my earlier episodes about my spiritual journey, you will see that my “argument from reason” is that you don’t prove there is a God. You simply assume there is and see where that takes you. In mathematics, geometry, and logic, you always begin with axioms. These are unprovable truths that you accept as fact to have a basis from which to build everything else. If all of mathematics is based on axioms that are taken without proof, why can we not have axioms for religion? For me, God is an axiom. See episode 14 for more details on this topic.

Some people come to God through their desire for perfect unconditional love. In some respects, this also reflects my philosophy. I look at the blessings in my life, especially the people in my life–my family and friends who take care of me, and I sometimes feel unworthy to be so blessed. My logical conclusion is that these people were put in my life by a God who loves me. And I see it as my mission to be a blessing in their lives as well.

Some people are led to God by people who love God. This is similar to being brought up by believers. However, this can occur later in life. You associate with religious people, see the value it brings to their lives, and you adopt new traditions to get a piece of that peace.

Finally, some people cannot express why they believe or what God means to them.

It is simply beyond their capability to express what it means to them. And that’s okay. God is hard to explain. I think a saying attributed to St. Thomas Aquinas is illustrative. He said, “To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.”

I look to Matthew 22:21, Jesus says, “Render unto Caesar, that which is Caesar’s and render unto God, that which is God’s.” I adapt the idea to deal with the dichotomy of faith and reason. I render unto reason that which requires reason, and I render unto God that which requires faith.

Going off-topic for a moment. I recently wrote a sci-fi murder mystery in which a church official is murdered. I invented a fictitious religion that claimed they could merge faith and reason. This fits my general category of sci-fi stories: “You can’t do that. But what if you could?” For me, I don’t try to merge or reconcile faith and reason. I give them each their own domain.

Anyway, back to God… Ultimately, what it takes to know God is experience. And we’ve already listed a variety of ways in which people come to experience and know God.

Father Crawford would say that God is wholly other. That is, wholly spelled WHOLLY, not HOLY. By definition, God is beyond human understanding. But we can talk about what we do know about God. We can discuss some of God’s attributes. We can say God is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-forgiving, and unconditionally loving. Can we really understand what those things mean? Can we really experience unconditional love? That’s ,eyond human experience

For many people, God is distant. Jewish tradition is that only Moses was able to be in the presence of God. That is why many of them failed to accept the idea that Jesus was God in human form. It was a radical concept that God would be with us personally here on earth.

For others, their relationship with God is quite personal. The image of a divine Jesus walking the earth as one of us and calling us brothers and sisters makes God more accessible and people have a personal relationship with God much more easily than they would with a distant God the Father sitting on a heavenly throne.

The theme of the four lessons that I taught after the opening lesson about God Is that our God is a god who speaks to us. He has revealed himself to us in a variety of ways. We will talk about what has been revealed, how we preserve and pass on that revelation, and what we have learned by reflecting upon what has been revealed.

Ultimately, we know most of what we know about God through Jesus.

We are going to wrap things up for today. In the next episode, we will discuss human nature. How we view ourselves as human beings affects how we see our relationship with God. We will also discuss good and evil and how we use the metaphors of Angels and Demons to discuss these concepts. All of that was included in our opening lesson in the RCIA program.

Remember that our weekly sessions were about 90 minutes or more, and I try to keep these podcasts not much longer than 30 minutes. So, it will take a while to get to each lesson plan.

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