In this episode, I conclude a series of episodes about my life of ministry in my local Catholic Church. I discuss the struggles I had with our new inexperienced pastor in my experience of a miracle worthy of canonization of a saint.

Hi, this is Chris Young. Welcome to episode 42 of Contemplating Life.

This week I’ll continue with more stories of my many years of volunteer ministry for Saint Gabriel Catholic Church. This week we discuss the challenge of adjusting to a new pastor and my experience of a miracle.

Standard disclaimers: I’m not trying to evangelize or preach to anyone. I’m just telling my stories. Also, this is my best recollection of events from over 20 years ago. I may have some of the details wrong or out of sequence but this is what I remember… the way I remember it. I believe I served briefly on the Board of Education. They not only covered the management of the school but the CCD Sunday school program as well as RCIA and other adult education programs. Naturally, my interest was in RCIA and adult education.

The biggest transition after leaving the finance committee was that we had a new pastor. A relatively young priest named Father Bill Marks was assigned to St. Gabriel. He was a tall, blonde, handsome man who somewhat resembled a young Robert Redford.

Let me talk about clergy assignments for a moment.

In my earlier faith series of episodes, I talked about getting private tutorship from Father Paul Rehart at St. Christopher Parrish when I was about six years old. He was the youngest of 3 priests assigned to that parish. While having three clergy in one parish was rare, the standard was 2. There would be an experienced priest assigned as pastor and a young priest newly ordained as an associate pastor. One typically did not get to be a pastor until they had served a considerable time as an associate.

As I was growing up in St. Gabriel we always had 2 priests. When I returned to the church in my late 20s we also had 2. Father Paul Landwerlen was the pastor and Father Conrad Camberon was the associate. Father Conrad was eventually moved and assigned as pastor of another parish but I don’t remember which one. We then had Msgr. Fred Easton lived at our parish rectory and celebrated mass but his regular job was as the Judicial Vicar of the Archdiocese. He didn’t have any other duties at the parish except to celebrate the sacraments.

The Catholic Church as a whole is suffering from a severe lack of new priests so the days when you could have 2 or 3 per parish are long gone. These days, one priest might have to serve multiple parishes.

As our story approaches the turn of the century, that shortage is just beginning to be felt. Father Bill Marks had only briefly served as an associate pastor before being assigned full pastor at St. Gabriel. Having Father Bill assigned as pastor so early in his career was quite unusual.

Having listened to Father Paul Landwerelen preach for a decade, I was looking forward to someone with a new perspective. I got something new all right but it wasn’t anything I could use. Father Bill would tell stories that we knew could not have happened to him and he would tell them as if he was the originator of the story. He would say something like, “I was on a flight to Chicago this week to visit my family and…” he would describe an encounter with a famous person. The likelihood that he would encounter such a person on a flight from Indianapolis to Chicago was near zero. I’ve heard that there are magazines that clergy can subscribe to that contain articles and anecdotes that you can use for a homily. But the idea behind it is that you’re supposed to stand up there and say, “I read this article with an inspiring story I want to relate to you.” Instead, he was taking these articles and making himself the center of the story.

Sometimes it was an old joke that I’d heard many times before but rather than say, “Did you hear the one about the guy…” Again he would tell the story as if it had happened to him.

There were other instances in which his duplicitous nature caused me great trouble.

In addition to our weekly bulletin that was printed and distributed after Mass each Sunday, we had a monthly newsletter with feature articles about the activities in the parish. Sometimes it was a thank you article from a parishioner whose spiritual needs have been met perhaps during the loss of a loved one or an extended illness in which parishioners helped out.

There was a woman who came to my RCIA class who converted to Catholicism and wanted to get involved. She went to Father Bill and said that she wanted to be the editor of the monthly newsletter. He suggested she form a small working committee and come up with a proposal on how to revamp the newsletter and make it more useful. She put countless hours into that committee putting together a proposal. Just before she was ready to present it to him, I had a conversation with him and learned that he was going to cancel the monthly newsletter. I later ran into the woman and said something like, “I guess your newsletter ideas didn’t go anywhere. I’m sorry to hear that.”

She said, “What!?”

I told her I had heard the newsletter was being shut down. She was furious. She had not yet presented her proposal to Father Bill. She was livid that her work was for nothing and was dead on arrival. She ended up leaving St. Gabriel and I don’t know but I think she may have left the Catholic Church completely.

There were also major changes he made in the staff. Many of them affected my friend Judy who was the parish secretary and bookkeeper. Under Father Paul, Judy had a great deal of responsibility. In any other parish, I think someone with her responsibilities would have had the title “business manager” which many parishes had. Saint Monica parish had a man named Jim Welter who I greatly admired. His title was business manager and pastoral associate. A pastoral associate is someone who is a priest but deals with many of the spiritual needs of the parish. It’s the kind of thing that an associate pastor used to do. Our pastoral associate was Sister Timothy Kavanaugh. I think that the titles business manager and pastoral associate could have fit Judy considering the work she was doing. I had often been disappointed that Father Paul had not given her a title that more closely reflected what she was doing.

But Father Bill was offended that a lowly secretary was running the parish. The clashes between Judy and this new inexperienced pastor are not mine to tell. I only mention these things here because they so deeply affected me. It hurt me personally that someone who had dedicated so much of her life above and beyond her job description to work for the parish was being so devalued. She eventually resigned and took a position as an administrative assistant at the Church Federation of Greater Indianapolis. I continued to work with her as her favorite computer consultant for several years in that position.

Judy wasn’t the only staff person who was driven out. We had a part-time staff person named Joan who served as Youth Ministry Coordinator. He redefined her job description such that the position required a college degree. She didn’t have one so it was his backdoor way of firing her. When she filed for unemployment, he contested it in court. He said she was free to apply for the new position of course ignoring the fact that he knew she wasn’t qualified under his new standards.

He went into court with his priestly collar on and testified that he didn’t fire her and therefore she didn’t deserve unemployment. The judge practically laughed in his face and ruled against him. When a man of his position testifies under oath to something with his hand on the Bible and the judge rules against him it says a lot about the kind of person he is.

The obvious fabrications from the pulpit, his disrespect for the staff, and his manipulation of volunteers created an atmosphere where it was impossible to respect anything that he said or to receive any sort of spiritual direction from him.

All of the incidents I’ve described and others I haven’t described affected other people. They were people I cared about but they didn’t affect me directly. I kept telling myself he hadn’t done anything to me personally so I shouldn’t react too strongly. But it was becoming more and more difficult to stay involved in the parish I loved.

It came time for the parish to buy a new computer. I consulted with him and others on what they should purchase. I don’t recall the details of the controversy that arose around that purchase. It all boiled down to the question, “Had the computer been ordered or not?” I was told that it had been and had made major preparations to get it set up and configured. I think I recall we were in a time crunch. Again I don’t remember all of the details but I remember having to make a lot of arrangements that turned out to be unnecessary because the new machine had not yet been ordered.

When I confronted him about it, he argued over the sentence, “It has been ordered.” He argued over the meaning of the word “has” which reminded me of Bill Clinton. Clinton had made a statement under oath during a deposition in the sexual harassment civil trial which came out in public after the Lewinsky scandal. Clinton famously said, “It depends on what your definition of the word ‘is’ is.” Clinton was so duplicitous and chose his words so carefully that he could argue over the meaning of the word “is”.

The idea that my pastor, a man of the cloth, and an ordained priest of God in the Holy Roman Catholic Church could be a deceptive, manipulative, bender of words similar to William Jefferson Clinton completely destroyed any hope that I could work with the man in the future.

I tried repeatedly to get an appointment with him to discuss some church business and he kept blowing me off. When I finally did get to sit down with him, he admitted he was avoiding me because he knew how disgruntled I had become. I told him he was making value judgments. I did have important things to discuss with him. After discussing them, I gave him an earful. I told him that I was done working in any administrative capacity.

I told him I couldn’t keep up with his lies and cover for him when he got caught. The only way to avoid that was to avoid having to deal with him at all. Then I wouldn’t have to worry about whether or not something he told me was going to burst someone’s bubble and drive them away from the church when they discovered they couldn’t trust the priest.

I did spend some time crunching budget numbers for the school because the principal there, a wonderful woman named Barbara Shuey, knew my skills as a number cruncher and respected me.

I would keep teaching RCIA because it meant I didn’t have to deal with Father Bill directly. By the way, Father Paul used to teach all but about 8 weeks of the classes throughout the year. RCIA was a high priority for him. I would teach 4 or 5 lessons. A retired history professor from our parish would do two weeks on church history and Sister Timothy would do a lesson on prayer. Father Paul would do nearly 20 lessons to fill out the course. In contrast, we were lucky to get Father Bill to teach 4 or 5 lessons all year. It just wasn’t his priority. So I could continue to do nothing for the church but teach and avoid having to deal directly with him.

I would go to Mass on Sunday and sit through his lies from the pulpit and hate every minute of it. I seriously considered moving to a different parish. St. Christopher in Speedway and St. Michael’s on 30th St. are almost the same distance from my house in St. Gabriel. The problem was, that I attended Mass with my mother, and although she was aware of everything that was going on and disturbed by it, I don’t believe she would change parishes. As upset as she was about the situation, she was in the mode where I had been in that he hadn’t done anything to her personally.

Both my mother and I were devoted to the church and our parish. It wasn’t like we had to be good friends with the pastor as we had been with Father Paul. But there are limits to what we can tolerate.

I also had to consider what kind of message it would send to my students if I wasn’t attending Mass at Saint Gabriel. Here I am saying, “Come join this Church but I can’t stand being here so I’m going elsewhere.” I didn’t know was there would be a teaching opportunity for me at St. Christopher or St. Michael.

As I was dealing with all of this, we had an outside guest speaker come to RCIA. It was a nun from the Sisters of Providence St. Mary of the Woods. They are an order of religious sisters based out of Terre Haute Indiana about 70 miles west of Indianapolis. Their special ministry was as teachers. They had been providing teachers to Catholic schools around central Indiana for over a century. They founded and ran St. Mary of the Woods College. It was an all-girls institution again focused on training educators whether they were vowed religious sisters or not. I had attended a couple of weekend seminars there and it was a very nice facility.

This sister, I’m sorry I forgot her name, was giving a talk about the founder of their order Mother Théodore Guérin who had recently been beatified by Pope John Paul II. This is the final step before becoming canonized as an official Saint of the Catholic Church. The speaker was the nun who was in charge of the program to try to get their matriarch declared a saint.

Mother Guérin was born Anne-Thérèse Guérin in France in 1798. She entered the convent in 1823 and took the name Sister Saint Theodore. In 1840, at the request of the Bishop of Vincennes Indiana, a group of sisters from France led by Sister Theodore came to Vincennes to found a school and convent and to assist with the influx of Catholic immigrants to the area. In those days, Vincennes was the capital of Indiana. This was before the founding of Indianapolis and its establishment as the state capital.

They arrived in the small village known as St. Mary of the Woods and in a small log cabin founded a convent and school that later grew into the institution it is today. Sister Theodore was their Mother Superior.

Apparently, Mother Guérin was quite a character. She was known to hang out in town and engage in intellectual debates with the movers and shakers of the community discussing religion, politics, philosophy, or whatever topic and she could hold her own with the best of them.

Although she was there at the invitation of the Bishop, he tried to micromanage her and interfere in the way that she ran the convent and the school. When she returned to France briefly on a fundraising mission, he tried to hold an election in her absence to have her replaced as Mother Superior. She was unanimously elected to retain the post by her community.

At one point, she was so upset with the interference from the Bishop that she wrote a letter to the Bishop of Detroit and asked if he would sponsor their move to his area. He wrote back rejecting the request and told her to stay faithful and that God would provide. After that, the Bishop of Vincennes never interfered with her again. Probably the Detroit Bishop wrote him a nasty letter telling him to stay the hell out of her way and let her run her convent or he would end up losing them altogether.

Mother Théodore Guérin died in 1856 at age 57.

Under the rules of the Church, one cannot be considered for sainthood until 50 years after their death although there have been exceptions made. In 1907, a process was begun to have her considered for canonization as a saint. To be declared a saint, one has to have two miracles attributed to them. The first was in 1908. One of the sisters in her community had breast cancer and other medical issues including an abdominal tumor and a neurological problem that affected the use of her arms. One evening she prayed at the crypt of Mother Théodore Guérin not for herself but for another sister who was ill. The next day, she regained the use of her arms, her abdominal pain disappeared, the cancer never spread and she lived into her 80s. They never said what happened to the woman she was actually praying for. Let’s hope she recovered as well.

Once you have one miracle attributed to you, can be “beatified” which is a step along the way to becoming a saint. The sister who visited us talked about going to Rome for the beatification ceremony and how beautiful it was. After beatification, you earned the title “Blessed”.

I was greatly inspired by the story of this amazing woman who dedicated her life to God and to education. She also had clashes with clergy that nearly drove her away from her ministry as a teacher. I could identify with that situation. My primary ministry for the church was as a teacher and I was worried that my troublesome clergy was going to make it impossible for me to continue that ministry just as it had happened with Mother Guérin.

That night I went home and prayed to Blessed Mother Théodore Guérin. I told her, “You know what it’s like to try to teach the Word of God under the authority of a troublesome member of the clergy. Yet you persisted and succeeded. Mother Théodore… give me the strength to endure this challenge the way that you endured your challenges.”

The following week it was my turn to teach. Throughout the lesson, I kept thinking that this might be the last time I would teach for Saint Gabriel and perhaps the last time I would teach forever if I could not find a position in another parish.

When I returned home from class that night, my mom had a huge smile on her face. “I’ve got some juicy gossip for you.”

“What is it?”

“Father Paul heard that they are moving Father Bill to a new parish. He will be leaving in just a few months.”

Thank you Blessed Mother Théodore Guérin. All I asked for was the strength to endure. I would never have had the gall to pray that the man goes away. But that prayer was answered. He was leaving my life for good. I could continue to serve my parish as I had been doing for many years.

I don’t recall exactly how long Father Bill was assigned to our parish but I think it was under two years.

We would be getting a new pastor. With new challenges. Like all priests in my life, I had some serious disagreements. But things were much much better after that.

Overall, I taught RCIA classes for 31 straight years.

I wrote a letter to the sister from St. Mary of the Woods who had come to our parish to tell us about Blessed Mother Théodore Guérin. I told her how untenable things had become under my pastor. And how I had prayed to Mother Guérin not for a solution to my problem but for the strength to endure it. And I told her that my troublesome pastor was leaving. I said I didn’t know if it was the kind of thing that would count as the second miracle to get her matriarch canonized but I had no doubts whatsoever that I had my own personal miracle through the intercession of Blessed Mother Théodore Guérin.

The cause for canonization finally succeeded.

The second miracle occurred in January 2001 when a maintenance man who worked at the college wandered into the chapel attracted by sacred music. He was suffering from an eye condition that was going to require surgery. He prayed that the crypt of Mother Guérin and awoke the next day to find that his vision was much clearer. He no longer needed complicated eye surgery and doctors were at a loss to explain how his condition resolved itself.

She was canonized as Saint Theodora Guérin in 2006 and at the time was only the third American Saint.

Father Bill was assigned a new parish in southeastern Indiana just across the border from Cincinnati. I pray from time to time that he is doing well and is growing in experience as a priest and a pastor.

I could continue to talk about my work under our next pastor but I think it’s time to take a break from the religious topics. I know not all of my audience is that interested in this area of my stories. Next week, we go to college. I will talk about my nine semesters at IUPUI earning a BS degree in computer science and I will probably follow up with the two years I was employed as a computer programmer starting with my eighth semester in college.

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I will see you next week as we continue contemplating life. Until then, fly safe.

In this episode, I continue a series of episodes about my life of ministry in my local Catholic Church. I discuss more work on the church finance committee and talk about my relationship with my pastor and good friend Father Paul Landwerlen.

Hi, this is Chris Young. Welcome to episode 41 of Contemplating Life.

This week I’ll continue with more stories of my many years of volunteer ministry for Saint Gabriel Catholic Church continuing with stories from my eight years serving on the finance committee and later on the Parish Pastoral Council.

Standard disclaimers: I’m not trying to evangelize or preach to anyone. I’m just telling my stories. Also, this is my best recollection of events from over 30 years ago. I may have some of the details wrong or out of sequence but this is what I remember… the way I remember it.

As you’ve seen in these past few episodes, the work on the finance committee at Saint Gabriel was intense but it built a camaraderie among us. We worked hard but we had a good time as well often joking around with one another. One of my fondest memories was a discussion in which we were trying to decide how much to increase a particular line item. Should it be 10% or 11%? I don’t recall if it was me or a committee member named Julie who suggested 11% was a better number. Someone asked why. Julie and I looked at each other and grinned and simultaneously said, “Because it’s 1 more.” And then we both burst into laughter hysterically at the reference to the classic film “Spinal Tap”. Neither of us had any idea that we were fans of the movie before that day. The other committee members looked at us like we were crazy and wanted to know what was so funny. We said, “Spinal Tap.” They still had no idea what we were talking about. By the way, if you don’t know what I’m talking about, I included a YouTube clip in the description.

We also very much enjoyed our December meeting because that was our annual Christmas party. We would dispense with our business as quickly as possible then bring out the snacks, turn on the Christmas music, open a bottle of wine, and have a really good time. Larry, the chairman of the committee, always brought a really great cheese ball made by his wife. Somehow that started a tradition that the chairman brought the cheese ball. When I was the chairman, they liked my mom’s recipe almost as well as the one made by Larry’s wife.

As much fun as we had, there were still times when controversies arose and differences had to be worked out.

The Parish Pastoral Council was governed by a set of bylaws. We loosely followed the normal parliamentary procedure of making a motion, having a second, and discussion followed by a vote. The strange thing was that we had to find what we called “consensus”. The theological theory was that God has a plan for us and it’s our job to prayerfully discern that plan and implement it. And there can be no division among us. So consensus in essence meant a unanimous vote on everything. If we are really guided by the Holy Spirit there can be no division among us. The Holy Spirit guides each of us differently so maybe that one dissenting voice has the right answer.

In practice, what we said was, “You don’t have to totally agree with it 100%. But you have to be able to live with it.” Council members were strongly encouraged to sort of go with the flow and side with the majority. I’m not saying rubberstamp whatever we brought in. You could raise objections and often people did. The bottom line was that one individual had the power to block, veto, or essentially filibuster anything.

On one occasion, when I was the finance chairman there was a guy named John on the pastoral Council. John was the finance chairman before me so we had worked together for a couple of years. We were pretty good friends. He objected to the budget which sort of pissed me off because he knew the kind of work that had gone into it having been in our position before. We spent the entire evening listening to his objections, trying to understand his concerns, and to address them. The evening ended with an impasse. We were all sent home to pray over it and come back again in a week.

The finance committee met in a special meeting a few days later to see if we could come up with a proposal that would address John’s concerns. I made a little speech which got me in some hot water. I really screwed it up. I intended to speak in John’s defense but I started out really poorly. I really regretted it. Rather than starting out saying, “I want to defend John but…” instead I said, “I want to say a few things about John. I like the guy but he can be a real pain in the ass…”

Before I could finish my sentence, Father Paul tried to stop me. I insisted on continuing and said, “But I’m not here to criticize him. I’m here to empathize in support him. I’m a pain in the ass also. As much as he frustrates me. I have to defend him because I want the right to be the same kind of pain in the ass as he is.”

When we came back for the second meeting, John didn’t show up. The budget passed through consensus without him. I don’t recall if we made adjustments or if it passed in its original form. He later explained he wasn’t happy with it. But he could live with it. And that was the definition of consensus. You had to be able to live with it.

As I mentioned previously, the chairman of the finance committee automatically had a seat on the parish council as part of their job. Somewhere along the way, they amended the bylaws and said the chairman of the finance committee could not participate in the consensus on budget issues. The finance chairman was otherwise allowed to participate in consensus on non-budgetary matters just like any other council member. They thought that the finance chairman would be biased in favor of the budget that they had worked so hard to present. I was always proud of the work we did but I recognize that we serve at the pleasure of the Council.

I was offended by the idea even before I was the chairman. Did that mean that a school board representative also should not participate because the school budget was on the line? That was a big, big line item. Or what if you represented the maintenance committee? Did they not also have a vested interest in the budget? Even if you’re a member at large and didn’t have a specific role on the Council, everyone there had their own priorities.

My concern was, why would you exclude this veto power from the one person in the room who was the most knowledgeable about the budget? If the Council voted to change the budget in a way that could be significantly detrimental to the financial status of the parish, the chairman of the finance committee would be the one person in the room who would be most likely to know that and to raise concerns about it. The idea that their opinion should not count in the final consensus seemed completely idiotic to me.

After I was no longer on the finance committee but was serving on the parish council for other reasons, I tried to get them to reverse that policy but I was unsuccessful.

I want to conclude this series were some comments about my dear friend Father Paul Landwerlen who was our pastor throughout this time. I’ve mentioned him several times in this series and in my previous faith series in which I talked about my return to the church after a nearly 9-year absence.

Father Paul and I had a great working relationship and I always felt that he respected me and I deeply respect him to this day. But we both got on each other’s nerves on several occasions as you’ve already seen.

One time there was controversy about someone on the school staff doing some bad paperwork on finances. There wasn’t anything nefarious going on. Nobody was dipping into the till. It’s just the record-keeping sucked. Everything didn’t always balance. It was just a procedural problem.

Father met with the person in question to try to work things out but he took John, who was the finance chairperson at the time, with him. Word got out about the meeting. Several school people came to various finance members and asked, “Why is the finance committee involved in a private personnel matter?” Most of us on the committee had no idea what was going on. We didn’t even know about the meeting. At the next finance meeting several of us complained why we were out of the loop on this issue. Father explained it was a staff issue and had nothing to do with our committee. Father seemed upset that we were making a big deal out of this. In his mind, it was none of our business. John simply said, “Father asked me to be there so I went.” I wasn’t upset with him. He was just doing what the boss asked.

So I asked Father, “Then why did you take John our chairman to the meeting with you? He is the public face of the committee. When you take him to a meeting you’re taking this committee. Sure he knows our procedures and was probably a useful resource in straightening things out. Still, either this was a private internal manner that should not have involved anyone from the committee, especially the chairman who everyone sees as the representative of the committee, or it was the work of the committee. We all needed to be at least aware of what was going on and not hear it secondhand and get the 3rd° from people what to know why we’re meddling.”

As I was speaking, Father had a nasty scowl on his face because I was continuing to complain about something he didn’t want to discuss any further. When I finished, his expression changed. He sort of raised his eyebrows and then cracked a grin. Finally, he said, “Uhh… you’re right. Now I get it. He is the public face of the finance committee. Now I get it. I probably should not have gotten him involved.”

“That satisfies me,” I said. The rest of the committee seemed satisfied as well. One of the other committee members, a woman named Betty, used to pick me up at my house in my van to go to the meeting and take me home afterward. After the meeting that night when she brought me home, she gave me a kiss on the cheek and said, “I’ve never felt closer to you than I did tonight.” She was glad I raised a stink.

The point of the story though is not that I had this great victory in a disagreement with Father Paul. It was that most of the time, if not always, Father really listened to what I and others said when we complained. We didn’t win them all. I’m sure that I and many others frustrated the hell out of him on occasion. And he frustrated the hell out of me. But he would listen when you pinned him down and if you could make a good argument, you could win one now and then. That’s why I love the man so much. I didn’t need to win every argument but I needed to know that my opinion mattered and it did matter to him.

I’ve mentioned before that I taught classes for our RCIA inquiry program for new converts. Father trusted me with that responsibility. I would also attend most of the classes that he taught and afterward, the RCIA team which consisted of Father, me, Judy, my mother, and Sister Timothy would go out to Denny’s after class for a late-night cup of coffee and some snacks. On the evening as we didn’t go out to Denny’s we would generally hang out at church for a while to talk about how the class went or just socialize.

It was on those occasions after class Father and I would have our share of theological debates as well. You may recall way back in Episode 6, I had been asking priests tricky theological questions since I was six years old so I guess this was just an extension of that.

A lot of it had to do with the nature of miracles in the relationship between religion and science. Science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke famously said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” The same is true for theological miracles that seem magical. It might just be science we don’t understand it. We would debate the nature of miracles.

One time we had a debate about the “Star Trek The Next Generation” episode “Who Watches the Watchers?” season 3 episode 4. We watched that episode together.

The most interesting part of the discussions was the time that I speculatively asked him one time, “What if someday they scientifically proved that Jesus rose from the dead by a completely explainable scientific method? Theologically, Jesus was fully human and completely suppressed his divinity while here on earth so he could fully embrace the human condition as an example for us. Theoretically, anything that Jesus did, if we had strong enough faith we could do as well.

And because we are told that someday we will rise as well, what if science proved that under the proper circumstances, any of us could rise from the dead by the same method that Jesus used?” My point was that I think it would not diminish its miraculous nature. Just because there is a scientific explanation, does not for me mean that God is not involved. For me, science is the mechanism by which God does everything. Science is the study of the things God did.

Father’s response was, ”If you scientifically proved how the resurrection worked, I would hang up my collar and walk away.” I guess he needs his miracles to be mysterious in order to be miraculous.

Father and I spent other social time together over the years. Sometimes we would hang out at Judy’s and watch football or movies. We would often gather at her house on Good Friday and re-watch “Jesus Christ Superstar” over and over every year. He would celebrate Christmas Eve at our house for many years and would visit us at our lakeside cabin in Brown County about an hour south of here.

But sadly, all good things come to an end. Priests are typically appointed to serve at a particular parish for a term of six years and most of the time that is extended for another six years. It is quite common to rotate them to a new place after that. He served at St. Gabriel from the summer of 1982 until the summer of 1996 so he exceeded the typical 12-year term.

There were people in the parish who disliked him greatly. It eventually reached the point where it was apparent that he needed to move on and we needed fresh blood. As much as I was going to miss him and as much as I admired and respected him, I also had the sense that he had taught me everything that he could teach me. I needed a fresh perspective if I was going to continue to grow spiritually. The Archbishop assigned him to St. Vincent Depaul Parish in Shelbyville about 45 minutes southeast of here. He served there for many years and then took the mandatory retirement at age 70. In January, he will celebrate his 95th birthday and is still going strong.

Because there is a severe shortage of priests, he serves as a substitute priest in parishes all over the Archdiocese so he is still celebrating Mass in front of some congregation almost every Sunday even though he doesn’t have any administrative duties any longer.

Overall Father Paul Landwerlen is a great spiritual director and a great pastor, and he remains a good friend to this day. I’m very blessed to have him in my life.

We were assigned a new priest who was quite young. It was his first assignment as pastor. Next week we will talk about that experience and how it nearly drove me away from Saint Gabriel Parish. On the bright side, I will tell the story of how I experienced what I believe to be a genuine miracle worthy of the canonization of a saint.

If you find this podcast educational, entertaining, enlightening, or even inspiring, consider sponsoring me on Patreon for just $5 per month. You will get early access to the podcast and other exclusive content. Although I have some financial struggles, I’m not really in this for money. Still, every little bit helps.

Many thanks to my financial supporters. Your support pays for the writing seminar I attend and other things. But most of all it shows how much you care and appreciate what I’m doing. Your support means more to me than words can express.

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In this episode, I continue a series of episodes about my life of ministry in my local Catholic Church. We talk about the struggles of maintaining a budget in a Catholic parish in the various strategies we used to meet those challenges.

Hi, this is Chris Young. Welcome to episode 40 of Contemplating Life.

This week I will continue my story of my many years of volunteer ministry for Saint Gabriel Church continuing with stories from my eight years serving on the finance committee.

Standard disclaimers: I’m not trying to evangelize or preach to anyone. I’m just telling my stories. Also, this is my best recollection of events from 40 years ago. I may have some of the details wrong or out of sequence but this is what I remember… the way I remember it.

It’s difficult to remember what happened in what order when you’re talking about things nearly 40 years ago. This week I have two different stories and I don’t recall when these events occurred or what order. Some of it could’ve been before events I’ve already described in previous episodes. I don’t remember the order of these two separate stories I want to tell this week.

Like last week’s episode, it’s a bit of a best-of-times and worst-of-times story. Let’s get the bad one out of the way first and try to end on a high note.

As I mentioned a couple of episodes ago, the plan to reinstate tuition for Catholic families was not well received but it did solve our immediate budget crisis and saved us from having to close the school.

Although tithing had worked wonders for us initially, there was a certain percentage of the population that just wouldn’t buy into it so the dramatic increases we had experienced tended to flatten out. I don’t think many people gave up on tithing but we just weren’t getting new converts.

There was pressure to do more fundraising. My belief was that any fundraising we did should be for particular projects and not for ordinary operating expenses. Part of the promise of tithing was that we wouldn’t do other fundraising. That promise eventually faded away. The school wanted to further subsidize its income and started something called “Market Day” where you could order frozen food from some service. They would deliver it to the school and you could pick it up once a month. They also sold trash bags after Mass. School volunteers handled all of the logistics of these programs.

I was a bit uncomfortable with it. I seem to recall Jesus got pretty pissed one time about all of the people selling things in the temple and he threw them out. At least this just took place in the school cafeteria and not the actual church sanctuary. All of this was mostly harmless but I would’ve preferred people do their shopping at the store probably at better prices and put the savings in the collection plate. But I didn’t feel strongly enough to raise a stink about it.

I did raise a stink about other things.

I was very upset about how aggressively we pushed people to increase their financial pledges. The standard philosophy of fundraising is that you put your efforts into the big donors because they are the only ones who are going to make or break your budget. You do a minor amount of effort courting smaller donors because they are not going to help anyway. That might work for some big fundraising organizations like a United Way agency where your corporate sponsors are your bread-and-butter and the five-dollar donors help a little. Or perhaps if you are trying to raise big dollars for a capital campaign I can see that is an appropriate strategy. It’s one we used many years later for capital campaigns when we raised money to renovate the church. More on that in future episodes.

But when it came to ordinary income in the Sunday collection, I STRONGLY objected to pushing the large donors and ignoring the little guys. The reason was, our big donors were already tithing. If we kept coming at them more and more, all we were going to do was alienate them.

I wanted to focus on the people who were not tithing. We would have people get up at Mass and give a witness talk about how using tithing and putting God first in their finances had really helped them. I wanted to see everyone have those benefits. We were supposed to be preaching Gospel values and not just fundraising.

I got so emotionally caught up in the arguments over fundraising philosophy that I nearly had a nervous breakdown. The politics and greed were too much for me. I needed to get back to more spiritually-based activities. I signed up to go back on the team for Christ Renews His Parish renewal retreat for a second time.

One of the lessons that I used to teach in my inquiry classes was about the Old Testament prophets. They weren’t just about predicting the future. Their primary responsibility was to be God’s spokesperson and to call people back to God when they went astray. They were almost always persecuted for that. I felt like I was being called to be a prophet. People needed to understand that we were drifting away from spiritually-based fundraising. I was failing at that job and I felt like I was being persecuted for my views.

My entire personality was changing. I was becoming extremely withdrawn and shutting people out. I was bitter and angry all the time. I knew that I was withdrawing. I knew that that was bad for me. I knew it was bad for the people around me. And I didn’t care. I was just too depressed.

The definition of a mortal sin is when you do something wrong, you know it is wrong, and you do it anyway. It also has to be a serious offense. I don’t think going into a deep emotional withdrawal in a self-destructive way necessarily rose to the level of mortal sin. I didn’t steal money or kill anybody or anything. But I certainly was aware that what I was doing was self-destructive and I didn’t care and I did it anyway. So it’s the closest I’ve ever come to a mortal sin.

The thing that brought me out of the self-destructive cycle was when I realized it was hurting the people around me. I was cutting myself off, isolating myself, and pushing people away. I thought about the end of the classic Pink Floyd album “The Wall”. It’s a semiautobiographical story by Roger Waters about how he shut the world out. The final song called “Outside the Wall” goes…

I could see people pounding on my wall trying to pull me out of that situation. And so I had to drag myself out. Like Roger Waters, I had to tear down the wall.

I suddenly realized that if I was in such a personal mess, I really didn’t have anything to give as a member of another CRHP renewal team. I had signed up for the wrong reasons. On the evening that I was supposed to be at a team meeting discerning what job I would take on in the team, I didn’t go to the meeting. Instead, I tracked down Monsignor Fred and I went to confession.

After confession, I joined the team meeting late and told them I was withdrawing from the team. I explained that I joined for all the wrong reasons and that I needed to take care of my personal demons before I could have anything to give of myself to the team or the people who would come to our renewal.

The team was understanding. Father Paul… not so much so. He was a bit upset with me. They barely had enough people to form the team. Without me, they were going to be a man short and someone would have to double up on duties. Trust me, if I had stayed… They still would’ve been a man short. I was not in a state where I could contribute in a positive way. My first trip through the renewal program was emotionally and physically draining on me. I never would’ve made it through a second one.

Eventually, I simply resigned myself to the idea that I wasn’t getting through to the people I wanted to. I was powerless to do anything about it. They were making mistakes and they were going to have to deal with the consequences. It was going to be difficult not to say, “I told you so” when the strategy failed or backfired. I just kept thinking of how the prophets felt when they preached and no one listened to them. How sad it must’ve been to see the people they loved fail to heed warnings. There’s no pleasure in being right under such circumstances.

The policies I opposed did ultimately fail. There was negative backlash as I predicted. I took no pleasure in being right.

So, I think that was the lowest point in my many years of ministry. But there were other successes to celebrate. Here’s another story about the finance committee that’s a little more upbeat.

One day the finance committee was meeting on a Saturday afternoon to stuff envelopes for financial statements. It was that complicated procedure I described a couple of episodes ago where we had to send different letters to different groups of people based on whether or not they were a school family and whether or not they had met their pledge. While we were doing it we brainstormed about strategies for solving our financial difficulties.

As I explained a couple of episodes ago, my best efforts to project our income were unsuccessful. Trying to figure out how much money we could spend in a given year was a challenge we weren’t meeting. One of our members, a very dedicated and gregarious guy named Tom, said, “What we need is a sugar daddy who will come along and give us one year’s worth of income. Then we would know how much money we had to spend that year. The following year, we would have banked all of our income and we would know how much we had to spend for the following year.” Unfortunately, none of us knew any filthy rich people who could do that. Our annual ordinary income in those days needed to be about $600,000 per year.

It was several days later thinking about Tom’s proposal that I realized how brilliant it was. He had the right strategy but he overcomplicated the solution.

We didn’t need a sugar daddy to kickstart the process.

The core of the idea that Tom proposed was to base this year’s expenses on last year’s income. All we had to do was project a 0% increase. We could still do that. It would be tough the first year because we had been counting on those increases. But if we held the line and counted on a 0% increase, we could build the budget on that. We were already basing school budgets on the 12-month rolling average ending February 28. Let’s take that number with no projected increase and use it as our income for the following year.

There’s an old adage, I’m not sure if it’s actually in Scripture or not, but it goes, “Don’t tempt God to perform a miracle.” That’s what we were doing when we proposed budgets with income increases. Let’s say for example our rolling average through February was $600,000. That’s the amount of money that God gave us during a 12-month period. So that must be how much he expects us to spend during 12 months. So use that as the income figure for the following fiscal year. If by chance, we get more than that, wonderful. Spend it next year. The only problem will happen if our income decreases and if it does, we make some midyear adjustments to expenses. We were doing that anyway when we didn’t meet our targeted income.

I really liked the idea because it was theologically based and I thought I could sell Father Paul on it. That’s what he liked about tithing. It wasn’t purely a fundraising strategy. Tithing is a theological principle based on the idea that everything you have comes from God and you give back 10% in gratitude. My plan says it’s sacrilegious to say, “We don’t have enough money.” God gives you everything you need. So if the budget didn’t balance, it’s something we’re doing wrong. You can’t say, “We don’t have enough.” That’s saying, “God didn’t take care of us.”

So that means either our spending priorities were wrong or we weren’t working hard enough to explain to people the value they were receiving for their donations. It was our fault that the budget didn’t work– not God’s.

The committee bought my idea. Tom was a strong supporter because it was really his proposal, to begin with. I just had the insight that we didn’t need a rich person to kickstart the program.

For the last couple of years that I was on the finance committee, that was the principle that we used going forward. No projected increase in income. If it goes up, spend it next year.

There was a catch… One that I didn’t see. But fortunately, it was a catch in our favor.

I hate to bog you down with numbers especially since these are hypothetical and I don’t remember the real figures but I don’t know any other way to explain the hidden positive consequence of this plan.

Let’s say that our running income from 1985 was $600,000. We base our 1986 budget on that amount. Now presume it goes up $10,000. So in 1986 we actually took in $610,000 instead of the $600,000 the year before. So we base our 1987 budget on $610,000. Let’s say that in 1987, the income went up another 10K so our 1988 budget is based on $620,000.

In 1986 we spent 600,000 but took in 610,000. In 1987 we spent 610,000 but took in 620,000. We end up with $10,000 extra in the bank each time the income goes up. The original idea was, “If it goes up… we’ll spend it next year.” But we didn’t. We kept basing next year’s expenses on this year’s income and I didn’t realize we would be banking that extra money.

Probably what we should have done when it went up by $10,000 in 1986, Our 1987 budget should have been $620,000. That is the $610,000 that we expected to continue to get plus the $10,000 windfall that we got through the grace of God.

When the money finally started getting significant, and we realized we had this extra cash lying around we began to use it for some long overdue maintenance projects. We started talking about our capital needs. We formed a special committee. I think it was called something like the “capital planning committee” or something like that. Their goal was to look at all of our big-budget capital needs and try to prioritize them. As I mentioned previously, there were maintenance projects that had been deferred year after year and we were only doing the bare minimum.

Windows needed to be repaired and replaced. The parking lot needed resealed and restriped. My mother came up with an idea for remodeling part of one of the downstairs restrooms into a handicapped restroom. All of these projects were funded out of this unspent increase which was an unforeseen side effect of our zero increase budgeting.

The only problem would come if we reached a year if our income decreased year-over-year. So it probably would’ve been a good idea to keep a little of that cash in reserve especially if that income graph flattened out too much. Because we were keeping a 12-month running total continuously, I think we would have seen it starting to flatten out and could’ve held back some of that windfall in the event that it did actually decrease.

So Tom had a brilliant idea. We needed a sugar daddy.

It turns out we had one all along.

His name was Jesus.

Next week we will continue telling stories of my days serving on my parish finance committee.

If you find this podcast educational, entertaining, enlightening, or even inspiring, consider sponsoring me on Patreon for just $5 per month. You will get early access to the podcast and any other benefits I might come up with down the road. Although I have some financial struggles, I’m not really in this for money. Still, every little bit helps.

Many thanks to my financial supporters. Your support pays for the writing seminar I attend and other things. But most of all it shows how much you care and appreciate what I’m doing. Your support means more to me than words can express.

Even if you cannot provide financial support. Please, please, please post the links and share this podcast on social media so that I can grow my audience.

All of my back episodes are available and I encourage you to check them out if you’re new to this podcast. If you have any comments, questions, or other feedback please feel free to comment on any of the platforms where you find this podcast.

I will see you next week as we continue contemplating life. Until then, fly safe

In this episode, I continue a series of episodes about my life of ministry in my local Catholic Church. We talk about the struggles of maintaining a budget in a Catholic parish in the various strategies we used to meet those challenges.

Hi, this is Chris Young. Welcome to episode 39 of Contemplating Life.

This week I will continue my story of my many years of volunteer ministry for Saint Gabriel Church.

Standard disclaimers: I’m not trying to evangelize or preach to anyone. I’m just telling my stories. Also, this is my best recollection of events from 40 years ago. I may have some of the details wrong or out of sequence but this is what I remember the way I remember it. Now on with the story…

As I mentioned before, some of my volunteer activities for the church, especially regarding my computing skills, were before I made the decision to return to the church. In previous episodes, I chronicled how I drifted away from the church and what brought me back. Once I was back attending mass regularly and attempting to grow spiritually and deal with my remaining doubts, volunteering for the church became a huge part of that process.

One of the first spiritual growth opportunities I availed myself was attending the Christ Renews His Parish weekend retreat. We used the acronym CRHP but pronounced it “chirp”. The goal of that program is not only to renew spiritually but to motivate you to become actively involved in the church. After attending the weekend retreat, you begin attending a series of weekly meetings of discernment and formation. You try to discern what role you will play in the parish or as we called it “What is your ministry?” Although it isn’t mandatory, nearly everyone who goes through the process begins forming a team that will present the program to a new group of parishioners six months later.

I someday may do an episode about that experience but for now, I just bring it up to explain that the program worked on me because I felt a very strong motivation to become as involved in the parish as I possibly could. Of course, much of this was an extension of my sense of volunteerism which we have discussed extensively. It’s just that now I was spending my volunteer time for the church and not for other secular activities.

I believe it was about a year or so after I returned to the church that there was a vacancy on the Finance Committee and I lobbied hard to fill it. I was already heavily involved in the finance of the parish because I was helping train people how to use spreadsheets and accounting software. I was very happy when I received an appointment to the committee.

The committee consisted of about six or seven people. The chairman of the committee automatically was appointed to the Parish Council. We also had a Board of Education and they had a representative on the Finance Committee as well. Our pastor, Father Paul attended every meeting. The parish bookkeeper also attended as part of their job.

Shortly before I joined the committee, my friend Judy was hired as the parish bookkeeper. She was the one who had invited me to the Easter Vigil service which led me on my journey back to the church. Judy and I spent countless hours together working on budgets for many years.

The church and the entire archdiocese operated on a fiscal year that ran from July 1 through June 30. This was convenient because the largest item in the budget was our subsidy to our parish elementary school. They had a budget of their own that they prepared. Having the fiscal year start and stop in the summer worked well with the school year schedule.

One of the problems with the system was that we had these two entities – the church and the school, preparing budgets that were dependent upon one another. It was a question of who went first. Did the parish need to hear from the school how much money it needed as a subsidy? Or did the school need to know how much money the parish was going to give it? The parish could not determine what it could afford until it made its overall budget.

There was also a great tension between those who supported the school as being absolutely essential to our parish life versus those who thought that the school represented the tail wagging the dog. There was resentment that the school took too much of our resources that could’ve been used for other ministries. And there was resentment on the other side that not everyone felt that the school was our top priority.

Our pastor, Father Paul, hated having to stand in the pulpit and beg for money. That wasn’t what the pulpit was for. It was for preaching the Word of God. Then he heard about the program which promoted tithing. As I mentioned in a previous episode, that was the scripturally based principle that everything you have is a gift from God, and in thanksgiving for that blessing, you give 10% back to the church. Even if you have financial troubles of your own, we encourage people to put God first in their finances. You were encouraged to take a leap of faith. If 10% was completely out of the question, pick a percentage of your income as close to 10% as you could manage and stick to it.

Father brought in a priest from somewhere else that had already implemented the tithing program. He preached every Mass to start the process and then Father took it from there.

After the program had been running, he would recruit ordinary parishioners to speak at Mass to give witness testimony about how tithing and putting God first in their finances had worked wonders for them.

It did work. We worked on both the parish and the personal level.

Our parishioners told inspiring true stories of how putting God first in their finances had reaped its rewards in their lives. People who were facing serious financial difficulties took a leap of faith, adopted tithing, and saw many blessings come their way.

We saw a significant increase in our Sunday income. I think it was a combination of Father Paul preaching tithing and the renewed dedication of parishioners who had attended the CHRP program. At one point, we were able to put a much-needed new roof on the school at a cost of about $90,000 without having to add to our mortgage.

Because we were seeing steady increases in our income, we couldn’t resist the temptation to count on those increases. We would prepare our expense budget and then see how much money we needed to cover that. If it required an 8, 9, or 10% increase in our income, it was easier to just plug that number as a goal on the income side and hope that tithing and Parish renewal continued to produce those results.

Our finances were in such solid shape for a few years that we completely eliminated school tuition for active Catholic families. By the way, on several occasions, I’ve talked about tuition for active Catholic families. We also had a good number of students whose families paid full tuition because they were not Catholic at all. They just wanted their kids to go to a quality private school. Or perhaps they were inactive Catholics who were willing to pay full price.

About the second or third year of our tithing program, I did an extensive analysis of our income trends. I created a graph showing our 12-month rolling average of contributions. We had to use rolling averages in all of our estimates because our contributions were seasonal. People tended to give more during the winter months especially right before the end of the tax year and they gave less during the summer because they were often gone on vacation or not motivated to contribute when school was out.

My projections showed a clear trend of growth of approximately 10% per year. For once, we did the budget the way you’re supposed to. We made a credible estimate of our income and then built an expense budget based on it. This was in contrast to the previous way in which we computed our expenses and then plugged in a magic number to cover that and hoped and prayed we could meet that income target.

When we presented the budget to the parish council, many of the members were skeptical that we could meet such a goal. I tried to explain to them, supported by my graphs and spreadsheets, that for once we had done it the right way. When a council member named Craig questioned the projected income I tried to explain that if they wanted us to lower that projection, we would have to redo the budget to keep it a balance. That’s what I said. But I concluded with, “If that’s not our income number the budget won’t balance.”

Craig became irate and accused us of picking a number out of thin air just to make the budget balance. That’s what we had been doing for years. The one year that we didn’t do that, we got accused of doing that.

I don’t recall if they ended up accepting our projections or if we had to go back to the drawing board and recompute the budget based on a smaller number. What I do recall distinctly was that the projections that I had spent countless hours producing did not come true. The big bump that we had gained by introducing tithing had run its course. The inflation of the late 70s was putting pressure on everyone’s finances. Those who had brought into the concept of tithing were remaining faithful to it but we were getting no new converts to the concept. Almost immediately after approving the budget, that graph of the 12-month rolling average income began to flatten out.

So, if our income did not continue to grow at the rate it was growing, we would have to make cuts to expenses. But where? There was very little in our budget that was discretionary. The problem was similar to the problems faced by government budgets and I suppose any other large entity. A huge percentage of our expenses are fixed. Clergy salaries were set by the archdiocese. We had to pay other staff a reasonable wage. Healthcare costs seemed to go up disproportionately to everything else. Utilities, mortgage, and ordinary maintenance were fixed costs. Much of our maintenance had to be deferred which of course would be more costly down the road.

One of the few things that was discretionary was the liturgy budget. My mother was the chairman of the liturgy committee for about 10 years. The budget included the cost of sacramental bread and wine, flowers and decorations for the sanctuary, cleaning, and occasional replacement of vestments and robes used by the priest and altar servers. So we could do less decoration of the church for various seasons, and have fewer banners, flowers, or other displays. But our services would have been much less meaningful and enjoyable.

There is a hymn titled “Nothing but the Blood of Jesus” the theme of which is that that’s what’s necessary for salvation. Mom warned them that that was going to be our theme song if the budget cuts went too deep. The only thing we would have in the liturgy budget would be the bread and wine.

I wrote a bit of a parody…

I put a link to a Carrie Underwood version of the song. She does much better than me.

The problem was, that taking 10 or 20% out of the liturgy budget, which was only a few percent of the overall budget to begin with, wasn’t going to solve our financial problems. But it would have a dramatic, visible effect on our celebrations each Sunday. She rightly objected to having to make drastic cuts in her small budget that weren’t going to help our overall financial stability.

To deal with the crisis, we put together a special committee consisting of three members of the Parish Council, three members of the Finance Committee, and three members of the Board of Education. We had several meetings which I recall were a bit contentious, to say the least. The solution came at a meeting of the special committee around my dining room table. I don’t recall why we were meeting at my house rather than at church. I can only speculate that perhaps there was a nasty snowstorm that would’ve made it difficult for me to get out. So to accommodate me, we met here. But I don’t really remember what the reason was.

It was the chair of the school board, a wonderfully dedicated woman named Kathy who is a friend to this day, who brought in a proposal. We would have to resume charging Catholic families tuition to send their kids to school. We had eliminated the tuition when we first brought in tithing. But that just wasn’t sufficient anymore. The only other viable alternative would be to close the school.

To further attempt to put things on firmer financial grounds, we made a commitment that the school subsidy would be a percentage of our parish income. That would ease the tension that the school was consuming all activity and income from the parish. I seem to recall that in our previous year, the school subsidy was 28% of our income. Like I said at the top of this episode, this was over 30 years ago and some of these details may be wrong or out of order. Anyway, everyone agreed that this was a reasonable percentage. But then came the question, 28% of what? The previous calendar year? The previous fiscal year? Although the curve had flattened out, our income was still increasing gradually.

We came up with a solution that solved one of our other budget problems which was who would make their budget first? The parish or the school? Working backward from our June 30 deadline, we concluded that we would take the 12-month rolling average income through February. Take 28% of that and guarantee it to the school. That would give them time to prepare a budget during March and April. The finance committee could meet in April and May. We would present the budget to the Council in either May or June and be ready by the June 30 deadline.

The committee approved the proposal as did the full Parish Council and School Board. Naturally, it was not well received by the school families. When you had been getting your kids a Catholic education for free and now had to pay tuition–even at a reduced rate, you can imagine the turmoil. For some, it was proved that tithing didn’t work.

I remember a few years later talking to Kathy about the years we had served together on the finance and education committees. Shared our disappointment and how poorly our hard work and difficult choices were appreciated. She said to me, “I didn’t expect them to be happy about the idea that they were going to have to begin paying tuition again. But not once did anyone express gratitude for the fact that we saved the school from folding completely.” I totally agree.

Personally, I’ve never been a fan of Catholic schools. Yet I respect that it is important to many people. They were raised in an era when it was sacrilegious if not outright sinful to not send your kids to Catholic school.

My Mom was a vocal critic of our school. She was firmly in the camp of those who thought it was an overwhelming drain on our resources and an unnecessary luxury we couldn’t afford. She felt sorry for families who felt obligated to send their kids to Catholic school when they couldn’t afford it. Private school was for rich people. Let them pay their way and not burden the parish or Less wealthy families with the cost.

I seem to recall there was one proposal that suggested we should eliminate the school subsidy completely. Let the school be financially self-supporting through tuition and then we could use church money to give scholarships to those who had financial need. I might have supported that however it really would’ve almost been a divorce between the church and the school. It would’ve made them totally separate entities. While I didn’t see the school as a top priority, I recognized that it was an important part of the overall work of our church. I think such a divorce between the church and the school would’ve had disastrous effects on the church community as a whole.

Although we survived our immediate crisis by reinstituting tuition for Catholic families, it didn’t solve all of our problems. We still needed more strategies to deal with the difficulty of projecting income in wrestling with the fact that we had many more ways than means.

Next week we will continue telling stories of my days serving on my parish finance committee.

If you find this podcast educational, entertaining, enlightening, or even inspiring, consider sponsoring me on Patreon for just $5 per month. You’ll get early access to the podcast and any other benefits I might come up with down the road. Although I have some financial struggles, I’m not really in this for money. Still, every little bit helps.

Many thanks to my financial supporters. Your support pays for the writing seminar I attend and other things. But most of all it shows how much you care and appreciate what I’m doing. Your support means more to me than words can express.

Even if you cannot provide financial support. Please, please, please post the links and share this podcast on social media so that I can grow my audience. I just want more people to hear my stories.

All of my back episodes are available and I encourage you to check them out if you’re new to this podcast. If you have any comments, questions, or other feedback please feel free to comment on any of the platforms where you find this podcast.

I will see you next week as we continue contemplating life. Until then, fly safe.

This week we conclude the story of my journey back to the Catholic Church. I struggle with the question “Does God exist?” Next week, we begin a multi-part series on my travels through the special education system from kindergarten through high school.

Hello, this is Chris Young. Welcome to episode 14 of Contemplating Life.

This week we will wrap up the story of my journey back to the Catholic Church after a nine-year absence.

Last week I described what I did after the moving experience of attending the Easter Vigil service that had prompted me to re-examine whether or not the Catholic Church had any meaning for me. I began attending adult religious education programs and studying Scripture. I discovered that the Catholic approach to Scripture scholarship is much more logical and common sense than the evangelical or fundamentalist Protestant literalist approach.

The remaining issue was, is there really a God?

The cassette tape of a lecture given to me by Father Paul helped me understand my role in the Church using the analogy of a body that is handicapped. It was another tape he loaned me that gave me a strategy for wrestling with the existence of God.

The lecturer tried to tackle the question of proving that God exists. His conclusion was… don’t bother. It can’t be done. It wasn’t just that old adage: “For those without faith no proof is possible and for those with faith no proof is necessary.” His thesis was, proving God is a bad idea altogether. To deal with issues of faith, you have to assume there is a God and then see where that takes you.

Oh no… They got me again. They made the connection to something I already believed.

I believe in math. I believe in logical proof that comes from math. But even in the most strict Euclidean mathematical proofs you have to start somewhere. You have to start with certain things that are given. We call these axioms and postulates. Without getting into the technical differences between the two we can simply say that they are things that are so self-evident that they are assumed to be true without the need for proof. You have to start somewhere with a logical argument and then piece things together in a logical manner to develop new ideas.

Consider mathematics. We don’t ask “what is zero” or “what is one?” We assume a mathematical concept called a unit one. We can then describe zero as the absence of one. We can invent an operation we call addition in which one added to one creates something new we call two and from there, three and four and five and so on literally ad infinitum. Reverse the process of addition and label that subtraction. Do addition and subtraction repeatedly and we get multiplication and division.

In geometry, we start out with points. We connect them with things called lines and we assume axiomatic the idea that you can connect any two points with a straight line and that line can be extended indefinitely.

Logic, science, and mathematics all depend on certain fundamental axioms that we assume but cannot prove are true.

There is even a form of proof where you assume something is false and then see if that leads to a contradiction. If that contradiction exists, then your hypothesis is true.

Let’s make God an axiom. Start with it as an assumption and see where it leads us. If it leads us to an inescapable contradiction then we have to reassess those axioms.

Okay, so we got God. We got humans. Natural to assume that God being a God that he made humans. Why? Maybe he was bored. He wanted people around. He must’ve been lonely.

John the Evangelist tells us “God is love.” John the Beatle tells us, “All you need is love.” Ringo the Beatle tells us “you need somebody to love” even if you’re like me and you sing out of tune. It’s reasonable to assume God created us out of love.

Why does evil exist? Because we have free will. We have the power to choose evil over good. Why did he give us free will? The classic story of Svengali taught us that there is no love without free will. A maestro hypnotized his protégé to fall in love with him but realized it wasn’t real love and released her from his spell. We have to be able to choose against love otherwise love has no meaning.

What do you do to show someone your love? You do things to please them. You share in their goals and their ideals. You make their work your work. You derive mutual happiness from these common activities. Because, by definition, God is eternal, that happiness can be eternal as well.

Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.

We just assumed for the sake of argument that God exists and we ended up deriving the first four questions of the Baltimore Catechism! Who made you? God made me. Who is God? God is the supreme being who made all things. Why did God make me? God made me to show forth his goodness and to share with us his eternal life. What must we do to share in God’s eternal life? We must know him, love him, and serve him.

Holy shit. There is a bizarre kind of logic to Catholic Christian theology.

Okay, if you want to get really rigorous. I haven’t proven anything. But there’s enough logic and it makes enough sense that I don’t feel like a total hypocrite to say that I want to express the values and beliefs that I share with the Catholic Church in the context of that Church. And I don’t have to check my brain with the brain check girl before they let me in the door. You can be a logical, thinking, not hypocritical person and still be a person of faith.

At least I can. Your mileage may vary.

So, maybe I can exist in this Church and not give up my logical thinking nature. Faith and reason are not mutually exclusive.

But just what the fuck do I believe? If I’m going to concentrate on the things I do believe in and not get bogged down in the things I don’t believe in, it couldn’t hurt to take a survey of where I am on that scale for each bit of theology.

I made a mental list sorted by level of belief. At the top, I put things like dedication to social justice, respect for life, opposition to war especially nuclear war, and the need to serve my fellow human beings. Somewhere in the middle, there was a belief in Scripture and respect for the authority of the church to offer moral guidance. Not really solid but not out of the question now that I had a deeper understanding of where Scripture and tradition came from. Near the bottom was a solid belief in eternal life and way low were ridiculous things like the Real Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist. Some of those things I labeled, “No way José.”

I never really wrote down the list or formerly labeled each item but I had a rough idea of where things were. Occasionally, I would take something on the “I’m not so sure but I’m not totally opposed to the idea” category and ask myself, “What would it hurt if I gave them that one? Take a leap of faith and say until contrary evidence comes along I’ll give them this one.”

The result of these little moves was that something else would fall into place. Something else that had been troubling me or that I didn’t understand gradually started to make more sense. The result was that everything on the list slowly bubbled its way higher. After a year or so, I found myself such that even if I wasn’t sure or even if I had extreme doubts about certain parts of theology. There were no more items on the, “No way José” list.

Nearly 40 years later do I believe in Real Presence in the Eucharist? Who am I to say? At what point does a symbol become so powerful that it becomes the thing it symbolizes? Can a symbolic thing pass the Turing test? If so, then the symbolism of the Eucharist is so powerful that there is Real Presence. Jesus says, “If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father.” If Jesus and the Father are indistinguishable from one another then they pass the Turing test and they are equivalent. Jesus is fully human and fully divine.

What about eternal life? Am I certain I’m going to heaven? Not really. But in the end, does that even matter? Oh sure, it means I was wrong about all of Christianity. But does it change how I live my life? Do not Christian values still have meaning to me? I can hope for eternal life. If I die and I’m dead, my life wasn’t wasted by following Christian teaching. Who am I to say?
That’s just their opinion. They could be wrong. But they could be right.

Does that mean everything the Catholic Church has ever done is 100% right? Oh God no. The Church has done and continues to do terrible things. It’s far from perfect. And so am I and you and everyone else.

That’s just the beginning of my story of nearly 40 years of strongly dedicated service to my parish and my Church. I don’t have all the answers. Neither does the Church. Neither do scientists. We are all seekers.

I may go back and fill in more details of this early part of my journey and I’ve got decades of other stories to tell. Maybe these stories are my gospel. Maybe this is my version of the ascending view. I write down what God revealed to me through His presence in my life. I offer it up as my ascending view saying this is what you revealed to me. Did I get it right? I hope so. It’s the best I can do.

But for now, let me jump to the end a bit. In the next year, I agreed to be Godfather to my sister Carol’s first child Brittany. And when they asked all those questions about what I believe (reference the baptism scene from the movie the Godfather) I could say yes with a straight face.

As I mentioned, I attended RCIA and other adult education programs at my parish.

I also attended a Christ Renews His Parish weekend retreat and became part of the team that presented the program to the next group of parishioners. My Christian witness speech included some of the things in the past couple of episodes of this podcast, especially the story about the paralyzed woman and the analogy of the body.

Eventually, I began teaching RCIA classes and taught them for over 30 years. For a few years, I also presented a program called “Catholics Returning Home” in which we helped inactive Catholics who had left the church for whatever reason tried to find their way back. It was sort of a quickie six-week version of RCIA.

At the following Easter vigil, they need a volunteer to do the Scripture readings. I volunteered to read Romans 6. “Are you unaware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?“

The panic attacks over my mortality gradually drifted away. Does that mean I suddenly believed in a certain afterlife and was no longer scared of death? No. Nobody really knows what happens when you die… well… except that you crap your pants. But nobody knows what happens after that. I think that the peace of mind came from being occupied with living rather than preoccupied with death. I had important work to do. And I was going to do it as long and as hard as I could.

Maybe that’s why I started this podcast. I need to spend my time contemplating life.

That’s enough religion for now. I’ll return to the topic in some future episodes. Next week, we began a multipart series recounting my school days and making my way through the special education system.

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This week we continue my journey back to the Catholic Church. I begin studying Scripture and learn how the Catholic approach seems much more common sense to me than the fundamentalist literalist approach we hear about so much. Next week, the last of our series on faith and then we returned to disability topics.

Hello, this is Chris Young. Welcome to episode 13 of Contemplating Life.

Last week, I promised that we would be wrapping up this series on faith but the script came out too long (as it often does) so I decided to split it into two episodes.

As always, I offer my standard disclaimer when talking about religion. I’m not trying to evangelize anyone. I just want to tell my story. If it happens to mean something significant to your own faith journey then that’s great. But if not, I hope you find it entertaining and informative.

In the last episode, I had just attended an Easter vigil ceremony where a group of adults was choosing to join the Catholic Church. Seeing these reasonable people choose to join the church, the warm welcoming atmosphere I felt that had been missing previously, and the acceptance of my doubts by my mom’s Bible study group started me on a journey back to the church.

That was in the spring of 1984. For my birthday in July, I asked for a Bible. I wanted the New American Standard edition which had the official Catholic-approved translation and footnotes. It’s the translation used in all Catholic liturgy. Mom got me a really nice one with a brown leather cover. Somewhere along the way I also got a Bible concordance. That’s a complete cross reference for Scripture. You can look up any word and it will tell you every chapter and verse where that word appears. Of course these days there are websites where you can search for any passage from a variety of translations. But in 1984 with no Internet, such a large reference book was valuable.

I figured I would start at the beginning. I only got as far as Genesis 2 before I started seeing contradictions. That wasn’t very encouraging. There are two different creation stories in Scripture. One of them is the traditional seven days of creation where God says let there be… whatever and it came into being. The other one in Genesis 2 talks about the garden where he created Adam. Then he creates all of the animals and brings them to Adam to see what he calls them. The order in which things are created is completely different between these two stories.

The footnotes say that these different creation stories came from different sources. Wait a minute… I thought Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible known as the Pentateuch. Of course, Moses dies part way through the fourth book but my understanding was that one of his followers finished it up for him.

I decided to bypass the Old Testament and spent some time with the New Testament but I still wasn’t getting much out of it. I could see that reading the Bible was going to cause me more problems than it solved.

By now, lots of parishioners had been through the CRHP renewal program and were hungry for more adult religious education. Lifelong Catholics began attending the RCIA classes to update their understanding of the faith. I started attending the classes in September along with Judy, and her husband Paul. They had enjoyed the experience so much that they wanted to go through it again and pick up some things they might not have appreciated the first time through. It also gave them the opportunity to become sponsors for non-Catholics who were going through the program. The classes were held every Thursday night from 7-9 p.m. with a break in the middle for refreshments. They were presented by our two priests. Our pastor, Father Paul, and our associate pastor Father Conrad.

Among the programs I attended was a series of lectures by a man named Jim Welter from Saint Monica Parrish. He called his lectures “The Ascending View”.

Jim explained how the Catholic approach to Scripture was much different than the literal “it means exactly what it says” approach of the fundamentalist Protestant. The Catholic Church, along with other mainstream Catholic-like Protestant denominations such as Lutheran, Methodist, and Episcopal use what is called the historical-critical method of Scripture analysis.

While we believe in the inspiration behind Scripture, we understand that it was written by human beings who are the product of their culture and times. The Bible is theology. It is not history or science. When we say that the Bible is inerrant and true, we don’t mean the details of exactly how many days it took exactly 6 days to create the entire universe and that the universe is only 6000 years old. It is the meaning behind the mythology that is true. What it says about us, God, our relationship with Him, and His plan for us is true.

Jim explained there are two ways to look at Scripture. The “descending view” is that Scripture is the result of divine dictation. The Word of God was handed down to the authors pretty much verbatim and they simply wrote down “what God intended.” This was that Book of Mormon model that we talked about a few episodes ago that seemed so ridiculous to me that it contributed to my leaving the Church. It is the same view that most fundamentalist or evangelical Christians believe even if it wasn’t found on some hidden metal plates dug up by some church leader.

In contrast, Jim describes the “ascending view”. People of faith experienced God in their lives. Some would see God in nature. Some had spiritual experiences that they could not explain otherwise. They saw events in history through a theological context.

Nearly all of Scripture began as oral traditions handed down by word-of-mouth for generations before anyone ever put quill to parchment. Realizing the importance of these stories, they were eventually collected and written to be handled on faithfully to future generations.

These writings were in effect a letter to God saying, “This is what you revealed to me and I offer it up to you in recognition of its importance. We are handing them down to future generations to preserve your Word that you have revealed to us.”

When we say that a particular person was the author of a book of the Bible, it means that they compiled the oral traditions that had been handed down for generations. The community is the actual author and the person that we call the author is simply the one who put it in writing. In modern terms, we would call them the editor or anthologist rather than the author.

In some cases, like Moses dying before the work was complete, one individual may not have been the actual author. For example, there appear to be at least two different authors of the Gospel of John. That can be seen most easily in that there are two different endings. One was probably written by John the Evangelist himself and another ending was written by one of his disciples. In ancient times, to say that a particular person was the “author” of a work meant it was written under their authority. It represented their teachings. And those teachings were a compilation of oral traditions.

By the way, there are several people named John in the New Testament that you need to distinguish between. John the Baptist was a preacher who sort of paved the way for Jesus’ public ministry and was beheaded by King Herod. John the Apostle was one of the 12 chosen apostles. He probably was not the author of the Gospel of John. That person is generally called John the Evangelist. He not only wrote the gospel but also wrote three New Testament letters and the Book of Revelation. The Gospel of John was probably written somewhere around the year 100 so it’s unlikely it was written by John the Apostle.

Jim told a joke about a minister who had decided he would start using a more modern translation of the Bible rather than the traditional King James version. That version was written by a committee who were more interested in flowery language and pretty prose than creating an accurate translation. A little old lady went up to him after services when he announced the change and said, “If the King James version was good enough for Peter and Paul, it’s good enough for me.” Naturally, we know it wasn’t published until the early 1600s. But what you might not realize is that they didn’t walk around with the four Gospels tucked under their arm either.

The official Canon that decided what holy writings should or should not be in the New Testament was not made until the year 400. And as we previously explained, John’s Gospel wasn’t written until about 100.

Let’s re-examine those contradictory versions of the creation myth in Genesis 1 and 2.

The reason for the differences between the two creation stories is they were originally oral traditions by two different communities. We can learn a lot about those communities by looking at what they wrote.

In Genesis 1, what do we have? Light and dark, stars, the sun and moon, water water everywhere. The water is collected so that dry land can appear and only then do we have the creatures of the land and the sea and plants to feed them. These people were obviously sailors. They lived by the sea. Their life was connected to the sea. They saw God in the sea and the land and the sun and the moon and the stars.

Genesis 2 is the story of a garden. Man was created from clay. The animals were brought to him and none were suitable companions so God created woman out of man. The land came first. The water came up out of the land in the form of a spring to irrigate everything. Obviously, these people were farmers. It’s all about the land. Plants. Animals. And human beings’ relationship to all of that.

It was Moses, allegedly, who wove these two different oral traditions into the marginally continuous almost self-consistent narratives of the book of Genesis. In order to really understand Scripture, you have to understand the communities that created the oral traditions that were eventually be written down.

Let’s take one more brief example of how understanding the culture and times in which scripture was written helps us to understand it properly.

A rather controversial passage is from Paul’s letter to Ephesians 5:22-33. Depending on the translation, it says either, “Wives be subject to your husbands…” or “Wives submit to your husbands…” This passage has been used to justify the dominance of men over women. It does go on to say, “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the Church.” On the surface, it hardly seems a fair trade.

Today, we understand it to be a partnership between equals. Marriage is not a 50-50 proposition. It is a 100-100 proposition in which both partners are totally committed to one another in the relationship. But consider the times in which Paul wrote. He was saying the same thing. He was talking about total commitment. But the culture expressed total commitment differently than we do today. In Paul’s era, wives showed their commitment by submitting to their husbands. And to say that husbands should love their wives as Christ loved the Church, how did Christ show his commitment to the Church? He died for it. Men committed to their wives and children by working themselves to death and an early grave. The details of what Paul wrote are not pertinent to the world today. The message behind what he wrote is still true. It’s about total commitment. We simply express it differently in modern times.

Jim went on to explain various techniques that modern historical-critical scripture scholars use to get to the heart of the meaning behind the words. He also discussed ways that they try to reconcile various versions of the manuscripts that have been discovered. I won’t go into all of the details but it is a very common-sense approach.

In my studies, I also learned about another major difference between the Catholic and Protestant approaches to Scripture. Nearly all Protestant denominations, not just the fundamentalists, believe in a doctrine known as sola scriptura which means, “Scripture alone.” In a nutshell, if it’s not in the Bible, you don’t have to believe it. There are historical reasons why the Protestant Reformation adopted this stance that I won’t go into right now.

I heard the story of Presbyterian theologian Scott Hahn who was asked by one of his theology students, “Where in Scripture does it say that Scripture is the sole authority?” The professor cited various passages that talk about how Scripture is inspired by God and how important it is. But nowhere in Scripture does it actually say that Scripture is the sole authority. So if sola scriptura isn’t in the Bible… Then we don’t have to believe it!

I won’t go into all of the other logical inconsistencies of the doctrine but there are several. Long story short… Professor Hahn converted to Catholicism and has made it his life work to explain why sola scriptura doesn’t hold water.

The Catholic approach is that divine revelation is handed on in two forms. Sacred Scripture and sacred tradition. The explanation of this is in a Vatican II document called the “Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation.” While Catholics have often over-emphasized tradition and underemphasized Scripture, Vatican II calls for a balance. I linked the document in the description.

The Church also has published a monitoring document called the “Catechism of the Catholic Church” which is not a bunch of memorized questions for first-graders but rather a detailed explanation of the church’s teachings on a variety of topics. I’ve also linked to an online version of that book. It too is much more common sense even though I can’t say I agree 100% with everything in there.

All of this commonsense approach to Scripture and a precise explanation of church doctrine in the modern Catechism solved the major stumbling blocks for me. I could now contemplate Catholic theology from the point of view of an adult and begin to see some of the logic behind it.

There was just one more problem… Is there a God?

That is the topic we will tackle next week and then I promise we will go back to disability issues the following week. No more stretching it out.

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I will see you next week as we continue contemplating life. Until then, fly safe.

In this episode, we continue the story of my faith journey. I attended the Easter Vigil in 1984 which had a profound effect on me. It was the start of my journey back to the Catholic Church. We will wrap up this section of my faith journey next week and the following week will return to disability topics.

Hello, this is Chris Young. Welcome to episode 12 of Contemplating Life.

This week we are going to continue the story of my faith journey. Usual disclaimer, I’m not trying to evangelize anyone. I’m just telling my story. I hope you find it interesting and if it does anything for your own faith journey then that’s okay too.

When we last left off, I had been away from the Catholic Church for about nine years. I had immersed myself in secular volunteer activities but occasionally would help out by using my computer skills to help out Saint Gabriel Church because my mother was still very active there. In recent months, she had been even more active than usual because of a new program called Christ Renews His Parish abbreviated as CRHP pronounced “chirp”.

It’s the night before Easter 1984 and our friend Judy Chapman has invited us to the Easter Vigil service where her husband Paul would be initiated into the Catholic Church. It was the final step in the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults or RCIA. Paul and a half-dozen others had been attending weekly classes in the Catholic faith since September and were now ready for the sacraments of initiation: Baptism, First Communion, and Confirmation.

The ceremony begins outdoors around a fire known as “the new fire”. In our case, it’s an ordinary charcoal grill. Instead of charcoal, it is piled about a foot high with sticks and small branches. A parishioner who is an Eagle Scout leader prepares this mini campfire each year for the ceremony.

The priest has a large candle about 3 feet tall and perhaps 4 inches in diameter decorated with various religious symbols. This Easter candle, also known as the Paschal candle, is described in the prayers as representing the light of Christ. The congregation gathers around the fire and the ceremony begins. He offers prayers and places four wax nails into holes on a cross on the candle. Each parishioner carries a small candle that they light from the Easter candle.

Usually, the entire congregation gathers around this fire and enters the church in a procession. But I believe on this particular occasion it was raining. Most of the congregation, myself included, sat in the church which was totally dark. I was sitting in the aisle about the second row back from the front. The priest carried the candle in the door at the back of the church and as he slowly processed up the center aisle, he would repeatedly chant, “Light of Christ” to which the people would respond, “Thanks be to God”. As he entered, everyone would light their small candle off of the Easter candle. The person on the end of the row would pass the light down the pew.

I had my back to all of this as I was sitting in the front. All that I could see was that the church was gradually being illuminated brighter and brighter by these candles. It was a very effective symbol that the darkness was being swallowed by the light of God.

Then by candlelight, the priest, in this case, the associate pastor Father Conrad, chants a long prayer called the “Exsultet”. It recounts some of salvation history including how God saved the Chosen People from slavery in Egypt. How He led them by a pillar of fire to escape through the Red Sea. It talks about how Christ conquered death. Naturally, this being a celebration of the Resurrection, this was a major theme throughout the service.

For me, the most interesting part of the prayer was the idea that it was a good thing that Adam had sinned because if human beings had not sinned, we wouldn’t have needed redemption. It says, “O truly necessary sin of Adam, destroyed completely by the Death of Christ! O happy fault that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!” The phrase “happy fault” in Latin is “felix culpa” where felix could be translated not only as “happy” but as “lucky” or “blessed”. Happy fault. Lucky fault. A blessed fault that we had fallen from grace.

The idea that the human flaw of sin turned out to be a good thing because we were eventually redeemed seemed pretty bizarre to me. Then again, looking at my own life, I had discovered that there were positive things about having a lifelong disability. So maybe it isn’t that crazy after all. Perhaps my disability is a felix culpa. A happy, lucky, blessed fault.

After this lengthy prayer, we eventually turn on the lights and extinguish our candles. The ceremony then proceeds with the Liturgy of the Word. This is the first portion of the traditional rite of the Catholic mass. On a usual Sunday, it consists of an Old Testament reading (or sometimes reading from one of the New Testament letters), a psalm in which the congregation repeats the refrain, and then a gospel reading followed by the priest’s homily. A homily is a kind of sermon that is a reflection on the Scripture readings we have just heard. Because the Easter vigil is such a big deal, there can be as many as seven Old Testament readings, each followed by a responsorial Psalm. This is followed by a reading from the Letter to the Romans. Then the gospel which was followed by the homily.

Fortunately, St. Gabriel chooses to only do about five of the seven Old Testament readings. It begins with Genesis, “In the beginning…” and recounts the entire seven days of creation. It always includes the Exodus story of the parting of the Red Sea. There is a parallel to be made that in the same way that God rescued the Chosen People from the slavery of Egypt by passing through the waters of the Red Sea, we too are saved from the slavery of sin by passing through the waters of Baptism.

When it came time for the reading from Romans, a woman named Barbara Dean walked up to the pulpit. Barbara was one of the women who had attended the CRHP weekend retreat with my mother and Judy along with other women of the parish. Barbara was struggling with the effects of lupus and had spent the past few months in the hospital. Although people with lupus experience serious bouts with possibly long periods of remission in between, many people were very worried about her. She had been going through a very bad spell. She had been released so that she could attend the service. Her husband Leonard was among those to be baptized and initiated into the church. She read Romans 6:3-11 which reads in part…

The reading goes on to talk more about death, resurrection, and new life in Christ.

I was totally weirded out by the experience. Here was this woman who had one foot in the grave and the other foot on a banana peel. Yet you would never know it by looking at her. She looked like a million bucks. She stood up there in front of everybody and talked about death as if it was no big deal.

What I haven’t told you is that during that point in my life, I was scared to death of death. I would frequently have panic attacks where I would think about nothing except my pending demise. Sometimes in the middle of the night, I would want to just scream. The only relief I could get was to keep my mind occupied with other thoughts so I wouldn’t be able to think about death. In previous episodes, I already told about losing a good friend to his disability. There are other stories about losing friends and an early age that I will tell later. I mentioned that my parents rushed me through the early sacraments of the church because they didn’t think I would live long enough to get through them. I was facing mortality at an age much younger than people typically worry about such things.

I couldn’t understand how she could stand up there and talk so calmly about something that would often freeze me in terror. The fact that she was there at all was amazing given her condition but then again, I imagine wild horses couldn’t have kept her from seeing her husband initiated into the church. But that still didn’t explain how she could read that reading without breaking down and crying.

There are other parts of the Easter vigil service that I grew to greatly enjoy in the many times I attended after that but I won’t bother to detail them here because they aren’t part of this particular story.

In addition to Paul Chapman and Leonard Dean, there were probably five other adults being initiated that night. One of them was a young man named Tom something who was about my age. While one might cynically suppose that Paul and Leonard were doing this at the encouragement or for the benefit of their wives, Tom was single. He had no excuse or reason to do this except that he wanted to. And after I got to know Paul, I was confident that he was there of his own choice, and presumably so was Leonard. But I had no way of knowing that at the time.

Here were reasonably intelligent, adult human beings, standing up in front of God and everybody saying, “I want to be part of this.” This was in contrast to my feelings that I’d been tricked into a life of faith when I was a little kid and didn’t know any better. All of this was a challenge to my assumptions that there was nothing here for me.

I’ve always enjoyed the pomp and circumstance, the smells and bells of Catholic liturgy. At the Easter vigil, they pull out all the stops. The ceremony was moving and inspiring. The example set by the catechumens and candidates joining the church challenged my beliefs. The music from the choir was awesome.

When the service was finally over, I began to realize the changes that had happened to the congregation since the introduction of the CRHP renewal program. It was a much warmer and friendlier place than it had been when I had last attended.

People hugged one another.

I’m not just talking about the people who were happy that their family members had joined the church. The whole place had changed.

Among the highlights was I also got to meet Judy’s stepdaughter Deborah who was in her early 20s and her daughter Anne about age 7-8 both of who would later become good friends to me.
This was a case where my natural curiosity actually drew me toward the church. There was a mystery to be solved. I had a lot to think about.

The next Sunday, I decided to tag along with mom not only to go to Mass but to attend her Sunday morning Bible study class. As we previously explained, Catholics are not known for their interest in or knowledge of Scripture the way the Protestants are. We were not raised memorizing Bible verses rather we were memorizing questions and answers from the Baltimore Catechism.
One of the reforms of Vatican II was a renewed emphasis on Scripture. Also, the CRHP program was designed to instill a deeper appreciation of Scripture.

There was a group of about a dozen people who would gather in the cafeteria Sunday morning before Mass to read the Scripture readings that would be used that day. They had a small booklet that would have discussion questions based on those readings. You would talk about what that particular passage meant to you or how you might apply it to your personal life.

The gospel reading on the first Sunday after Easter is always from the Gospel of John 20:19-31. It describes the post-resurrection encounter that the apostles had with Jesus when he appeared in their midst while they were locked in the upper room. Thomas was not with them at the time and when he was later told about the incident, he said that unless he saw Jesus with his own eyes and can probe the nail marks in his hands or the wound in his side he would not believe it. The next time Jesus appeared, Tom was on hand and having seen, professed his faith.

The Scripture says, “Jesus said to him, ‘Have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.’”

The supplemental material provided an explanation I had heard before. The name Thomas means “twin” with the implication being that we are Thomas’ twin when we doubt. This is the origin of the phrase “a doubting Thomas.”

At an appropriate point in the discussion, I spoke up and said that this was true. I strongly identified with Thomas. My curious, scientific mind often demanded proof, and just because Jesus said it’s better to believe without proof that didn’t cut it for me. I said to them, “There’s a lot about the church that I admire and respect and could say that I believe in. But I got to be honest with you people. A lot of this stuff (I resisted the urge to say crap) I just don’t believe. And I don’t know that I ever will believe it.”

I fully expected them to say something like, “Then what the hell are you doing here? Get your heathen ass out the door.” or something more polite like, “Well maybe then the church isn’t for you.”, or some sort of argument about how wrong I was to reject the gospel message.

That’s not what I got.

Instead, they said, “That’s okay. We all have our doubts at times. You just can’t let those doubts drag you down. Focus on the things you do believe and don’t get bogged down in your doubts.”

Wow. Just wow.

Without being critical of me or trying to “change my mind” they had made a perfectly reasonable suggestion of how to proceed. The most powerful part of the argument was that it was a strategy that I had been employing my entire life in regard to my disability. I had seen too many people who sat around and felt sorry for themselves and became consumed by their disabilities. By focusing on the things that they could not do, they ended up being a basket case. I believed that it had contributed to the death of my friend Terry Johnson.

The way I was able to cope with my lifelong disability was to focus on the things that I could do and not get bogged down by the things I couldn’t do. Perhaps I could find some relevance in Christianity and the Catholic Church by applying the same strategy. Don’t let your disbelief stand in the way of expressing things you do believe, among people who believe in the same things.
That wasn’t sufficient to say, “Yes I’m fully back. Count me all in on this Catholic thing.” I still had a lot of issues to deal with but it was the first step back.

While my mother was naturally pleased to see me exploring the church, she didn’t overdo it by jumping for joy at least that I could see. She had realized somewhere along the way that this was something I had to do on my own. With the exception of occasionally asking some tough questions like the things she asked me about the Archbishop last episode, I never felt at all pressured by her. Or let me say any pressure was pretty subtle.

Prior to all this, one time I was pretty sick in bed. She asked our pastor, Father Paul Landwerlen to stop by and pray for me. He visited me at my sickbed at home. He invited me to pray with him and I politely declined but said he could pray if he wanted to. I eventually recovered and he took some gentle opportunities to evangelize me.

He brought me a cassette tape of a lecture he heard one time. The speech had the clever title, “What on earth is God doing for heaven’s sake?” He had it all queued up to a part of the speech he thought would be particularly useful or inspiring or whatever. I listened to it out of curiosity. It didn’t do anything for me. I rewound it to the beginning. No. Nothing here to see. Move on.

I don’t remember the exact sequence of events but somewhere along the way, sometime after the Easter vigil, went back to the tape that Father Paul had given me. I turned the tape over and listened to the other half. It blew me away.

Let me pause a minute to give you an explanation of a bit of theology known as the “Mystical Body of Christ”. It comes from Saint Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians chapter 12. Many of Paul’s letters were written to settle some dispute or misunderstanding. Apparently, in Corinth, they had been arguing over who was a better Christian based on which spiritual gifts they expressed. He begins by describing various spiritual gifts. He explains that all of the gifts come from the same spirit even though our spirituality is manifested in different ways.

Then he talks about the analogy of the human body. About how all the parts must work together. The foot cannot say because it is not a hand it does not belong to the body. The ear belongs even though it’s not an eye. “If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?” It reminded me of the old joke, “My dog has no nose.”

“Then how does it smell?”

“Terrible!”

[Sound FX: rimshot]

Anyway… all jokes aside. He concludes by saying in verse 27 “Now you are Christ’s body, and individually parts of it.” Together we make Christ present here on earth. We are his mystical body doing his work It ties into the other Scripture that says, “Whenever two or three of you are gathered in my name, I’m there in your midst.”

On the other side of the tape, the lecturer told a story which I will now paraphrase.

He had been to a conference and the speaker was a paralyzed woman. Some accident had resulted in a spinal cord injury leaving her quadriplegic. He said she was rolled on the stage lying prone on a gurney. She said, “In my mind’s eye, I can imagine my body doing all sorts of wonderful things. Playing sports, hugging my children, and loving my husband. It’s not a lack of willpower. My will is plenty strong. But there is a disconnect between my mind and my body. I’m trapped in a body that is unresponsive to my will. And so it is the same for the Body of Christ. God has imagined wonderful things for us. It is his will that we enjoy these marvelous things. Yet when we fail to communicate with him and to act according to his will, we handicap the Body of Christ.”

Holy shit.

That freaked me out.

That made the connection between volunteerism and religion. We are all part of a body. We all have a job to do. We were put on this earth for a reason. And when we fail to do our part, we handicap the body that we are part of.

I could extend the analogy further to other types of disability. Look at my friend Christopher Lee who had such severe spasms from cerebral palsy that he would keep his wrists strapped down to the armrest of his wheelchair. Unlike the paralyzed woman, his body had no lack of movement. Yet his body was unresponsive to his will. Often we are out there flailing about thinking we are doing something but we are no more effective than the spastic limbs of someone with cerebral palsy. Or look at my own body. All of my parts work. But because my muscles are weak, like a person with weak faith, my muscles do not work effectively to achieve my will. I too am trapped in a body that is unresponsive to my will.

I survive my disability reasonably well. But I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone. But when I don’t work together with the members of the Body, I handicap that body. And I can’t do that.
Whether God exists or not, the Church was a body that I could connect to. I could play my part and not handicap the body by my absence.

I still had to decide if God even existed. The journey back had a long way to go. Next week we will tackle that problem which will wrap up this series on my faith journey. We will come back to the topic in future episodes but after next week we will return to disability issues as I recount the story of my journey through the special education system.

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I will see you next week as we continue contemplating life. Until then, fly safe.

In this week’s episode, we continue a multi-part series about my off-again, on-again relationship with God and the Catholic Church. This episode is about the 9 years I spent away from the Catholic Church and what led me back again. We will continue this series on faith for a few more weeks and then go back to disability-related topics as I review my history in special education.

Hello, this is Chris Young, and welcome to episode #11 of “Contemplating Life”.

This week we are going to continue our multi-part series on my off-again, on-again relationship with God and the Catholic Church.

Let me reiterate my usual disclaimer when I discuss religion here. I’m not specifically trying to evangelize or proselytize anyone. I’m just sharing my views and experiences about faith. I hope that it is entertaining and informative. If by chance, you find it sparks something in your own faith journey that’s fine also.

When we left off before the Oscar break, I was 19 years old and I had just decided to leave the Catholic Church. My passion for science, intense skepticism, and the failure of the church to engage me in meaningful ways led me to quit going to Mass.

I had no ill will toward the Church. I wasn’t mad at God, at least not now.

There was one occasion a few years earlier when I was mad at God. One of my best friends in high school, Terry Johnson who was two years older than me died of complications of his Muscular Dystrophy just six months after graduating from high school. He had earned eight consecutive semesters of straight A grades and was awarded an academic letter sweater. However, after graduation, he did nothing with his life. He never attempted to enter college or find employment. Like some people whose lives end when they retire from a lifetime of hard work, after high school he had no future and apparently gave up on life.

It seemed to me that all of the hard work he put into getting perfect grades was a total waste. After his death, I was determined not to let high school graduation be a death sentence for me. I already had college plans and plans for a career as a computer programmer. His senseless passing made me more determined to make it to college but less determined to achieve academic perfection. I would rather have a good time while I lived, goof off, and earn Bs and Cs than work my ass off getting As and end up dying young.

I wasn’t so much angry that he died. I lost lots of friends from complications of their disability at an early age. It was never easy to lose friends but somehow I took this one personally. I concluded somewhere along the way at the only purpose or meaning I could find from his death was that it might motivate me to be different. Somehow that made me feel responsible for his death as if God killed him just to teach me a lesson.

I can’t really say that that argument with God was part of why I left the church. You can’t be angry with someone whom you are not certain even exists.

While I seriously doubted the existence of God, I didn’t describe myself as an atheist. In my opinion, atheists are absolutely certain that there was no God. Good scientists are never absolutely certain about anything. You always have to be open to new evidence. I described myself as having an open mind about God and religion yet I didn’t do anything to try to fill that opening.

If you pinned me down I would probably identify with the label “agnostic”. Somehow that word felt like it described someone who couldn’t make up their mind.

So, if agnostics were considered wishy-washy and atheists radically anti-religion I needed a different rebel. In the early 1970s, they invented a label that seemed to fit my beliefs best– secular humanist. It seemed to me that the phrase was invented in response to the accusation of religious people that atheists were immoral because they didn’t have God in their lives. Calling yourself a secular humanist was a way of saying, “I have morality and values that are not significantly different from mainstream religion. I just don’t believe it’s necessary to connect that sense of morality to belief in a deity.”

One of the values that my mother instilled in me was a strong sense of volunteerism.

As I was growing up in the early 60s, it was not that common for housewives to work outside the home. That gave her lots of free time, especially during the school year. It began with her involvement in the PTA at the special education school I attended. She served as “room mother” which meant that she hosted Christmas and Valentine’s Day parties, as well as a thank-you party after our annual fundraising cookie sale. I recall she was elected treasurer and eventually the president.

This led to involvement in the PTA at the city and state-wide levels. From there she became involved in education and disability advocacy with a grassroots coalition known as the Council Of Volunteers and Organizations for the Handicapped or COVOH. That organization helped secure the passage of the Indiana Mandatory Special Education Act which required all Indiana school districts to develop special education programs a few years before a federal mandate required the same nationwide. For once, Indiana was ahead of the curve.

During the summer of my college years and then later after college and after I had to quit work because of my worsening disability, I accompanied her to the Indiana Statehouse to lobby the General Assembly for disability issues. We attended several monthly meetings of the Indiana State Building Commission as they were revising building codes which included accessibility requirements. In a future episode, I will tell some stories about those efforts.

She also served on the Indianapolis Mayor’s Advisory Council on the Handicapped and on the Indiana Special Education Advisory Council and I attended many of those meetings with her.
She also did significant volunteer work for a United Way agency called the Marion County Muscular Dystrophy Foundation which is now known as the Indiana Muscular Dystrophy Family Foundation. I will detail her work for them in another episode. She served their board of directors for several years.

I followed in her footsteps joining the board of MCMDF immediately after she left. I also was invited to serve on the Board of Directors of another United Way agency called Central Indiana Radio Reading. This organization used a subcarrier frequency of the Butler University radio station to broadcast people reading articles from the daily newspaper and some magazines for people who were described as “print handicapped”. This included blind and visually impaired people as well as physically handicapped people who could not easily handle a newspaper or magazine.

There will be future episodes about my involvement in all of these activities. I only mention them here because it describes what I was doing while I was away from the church and as you will see, my involvement in these activities gradually indirectly led me back to the church.

As I mentioned, I had no brief with the Catholic Church. I admired and respected my mother’s faith and her involvement in the Church. Somewhere along the way, mom transitioned her time from doing disability advocacy to becoming more involved in parish activities. She served on the Parish Council and was involved in a variety of activities in the church.

Along the way, she heard about a software package developed by a priest and one of his parishioners called Parish Data System. It was a database that would keep track of your membership. It not only kept track of names, addresses, and phone numbers. It also allowed you to record sacrament records such as if your kids had received First Communion or Confirmation. It would also allow you to tag members with keywords such as “maintenance committee”, “school family”, “Eucharistic minister”, or “usher/greeter”. It would also keep financial contribution records and print charitable tax donation records at the end of the year. Because she had become skilled at using my personal computers for her volunteer activities, she knew how important a computer could be for church administration. She worked to get us a personal computer for the parish. I was happy to volunteer to get the program up and running and to advise them on how to best use it.
Before we were able to obtain a computer for the parish, I allowed their volunteer bookkeeper to use my computer and spreadsheet software to prepare monthly financial statements and annual reports.

Although I didn’t attend Mass on a regular basis if someone in the family was having a Baptism or First Communion I had no problem attending to show my support for their own spiritual journey. I might have also tagged along on occasional Christmas or Easter or at least I wasn’t opposed to the idea of going to church for some special occasions.

Through my involvement with the Muscular Dystrophy Foundation, I was invited to attend a special volunteer recognition Mass at Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral the seat of the Archbishop of Indianapolis. The invitation went out to a variety of voluntary organizations which included United Way Agencies.

I had always admired Archbishop Edward T. O’Meara. Each year the Catholic Archbishop is invited to give the invocation at the Indianapolis 500. Rather than pray “in Jesus’ name” as your typical NASCAR chaplain might do, he always gave a very ecumenical prayer to “our common God” and would give a blessing to the drivers in their variety of native languages.

The Cathedral had just completed a major renovation and my dad had worked on part of it refinishing huge bronze doors at the front of the building. The opportunity to hear the Archbishop speak on a topic such as volunteerism and to see my dad’s handiwork seems like it was a reasonable excuse to go to Mass on a weekday afternoon. I got to visit the Blessed Sacrament Chapel attached to the Cathedral which was the location of my parents’ wedding. The renovations of the building did not do much in the way of accessibility. I had to go up and down a very steep ramp that definitely was not according to disability access standards.

The Archbishop had just returned from a meeting of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops in which they ratified a document expressing the immorality of the nuclear arms race. While the church agrees that there are instances where going to war can be justified where all else fails, the document declared that nuclear war which indiscriminately kills innocent civilians and threatens the entire human race to possible extinction could not be justified under any circumstances.

In his homily, he was quite enthusiastic about this new teaching document and was looking forward to finding ways to have it proclaimed and understood at the parish level. The theme of the Mass however was volunteerism. As previously stated, that was a word with which I strongly identified so he was speaking to me and my kind. He talked about the nobility and the necessity to serve our fellow human beings.

Everything he was saying both about war and volunteerism resonated strongly with me. He was a very likable, intelligent, and charismatic speaker. Somehow, he tied it all to serving God. “Whatsoever you do to even the least of my brethren, you do unto me.” according to the parable in Matthew’s Gospel.

When we returned home, mom asked me what I thought of the experience. I told her how much I enjoyed it and how that Archbishop’s resonated with me. He seemed so enthusiastic about the Church’s statement against nuclear war and naturally I appreciated his recognition of volunteers like the two of us. I don’t particularly agree that that has anything to do with God but he is still a pretty cool guy.

“Do you think he’s stupid?”, she asked.

“Of course not. On the contrary, he seems like a very intelligent man.”

“Then if he is so right about the immorality of nuclear war and he is so right about the importance of volunteerism, what makes you think he is so wrong about everything he said about God?”
That was a good question. I didn’t have a good answer for it.

When I was attending Mass on a regular basis, Saint Gabriel Church was a bit cold and unfriendly. Naturally, there were cliques of people who volunteered for the church and were friendly with one another. Overall most people came to Mass, fulfilled their obligation, left, and that was it.

That began to change when the Parish Council decided they needed to do something to spark more involvement. They kickstarted a program called Christ Renews His Parish. It was abbreviated CRHP but often pronounced “chirp” as if the “H” and “R” were reversed. A group of parishioners consisting mostly of Parish Council members including my mother spent a weekend at a religious retreat presented by a parish in Fort Wayne Indiana. Men and women attended the retreat separately.

The program was presented not by professionals but by ordinary Catholic parishioners who had been through the process themselves. Over the two-day experience, the team presented a program in which they would tell personal stories or give what they called “witness talks” about their own faith journey and what God had done for them. While giving testimony is quite common in Protestant nominations, Catholics are not typically accustomed to telling their personal stories or talking about their relationship with God.

Once our parishioners had been through the process at the parish in Fort Wayne, they came home and spend six months in formation preparing to present the same program to a group of our people. The process would then repeat every six months. Each group of people who attended the program would then form a team to present it to the next group 6 months later.

My mother had been heavily involved in the parish prior to this process but after returning from the retreat, her involvement, dedication, and enjoyment of church activities multiplied significantly. Although our disability advocacy work had been waning for some time, now all of her volunteer efforts were dedicated to our parish.

Prior to attending CHRP, it seemed like she was friendly and collegial with the people she worked with at church. After CRHP she developed a strong bond of friendship with the people at church.

The most significant new relationship that came out of her involvement in the Parish Council and subsequent involvement in CRHP was her friendship with Judy Chapman. Judy also later became a significant person in my life as you will learn in future episodes.

Judy’s husband Paul was not Catholic but together they attended a year-long program at Saint Gabriel called RCIA. That acronym stands for Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults. It involves attending weekly classes in the Catholic faith, participating in various preparatory rites and rituals, and culminating with an initiation ceremony at the Easter Vigil service the night before Easter.

According to Jewish tradition and subsequently Catholic Christian tradition, each day ends and a new day begins at sundown. Therefore, attending Mass on Saturday evening counts for Sunday. The initiation ceremony consists of the Sacrament of Baptism for those who have not already been baptized in another Christian tradition, the Sacrament of First Communion (also known as First Eucharist), and the Sacrament of Confirmation which we’ve previously discussed.

Judy didn’t have a large family to attend the ceremony for her husband so she invited my mother and me. I already mentioned that I had no objection to supporting people by attending sacraments and that Easter and Christmas were not off the table. This Easter Vigil service counted as Easter Mass and would involve the celebration of three sacraments at once. It was 4 for one! Despite the fact that it would last from about 8 PM until nearly midnight I agreed to tag along.

April 21, 1984, at the invitation of Judy Chapman, I attended the Easter Vigil Mass at Saint Gabriel the Archangel Catholic Church to support her and see her husband Paul initiated into the Catholic Church. What occurred that night was a challenge to my belief or rather unbelief that set me on a journey back to the Catholic Church – a relationship that continues to this day.
Next week I will talk about that evening and the events that followed as we continue to explore my faith journey. We will continue on this topic for another couple of weeks and then take a break and go back to talking about disability issues. I am planning a multi-part series chronicling my history in special education.

If you find this podcast educational, entertaining, enlightening, or even inspiring, consider sponsoring me on Patreon for just $5 per month. You will get early access to the podcast and any other benefits I might come up with down the road. It’s not that I’m desperate for money, but a little extra income sure could help.

Many thanks to my Patreon supporters. Your support means more to me than words can express

Even if you cannot provide financial support. Please, please, please post the links and share this podcast on social media so that I can grow my audience.

I will see you next week as we continue contemplating life. Until then, fly safe.