Greenville College is a Mecca for young Christian musicians - when I arrived there in 2001, I was a starry-eyed young idealist looking forward to honoring God with my talent by becoming a better minister and musician. To an extent, I did that, though not as intended. My first major was Contemporary Christian Music, as it was for 33% of the freshman class. And like most freshmen, I realized quite quickly that it wasn't for me. I switched my major to Digital Media, and gave up my dreams of professional musicianship after one semester.
It was in the second semester at Greenville that the seeds of Catholicism that had been planted long ago in the masses I attended at St. Anthony of Padua in Effingham began to be watered. Greenville has a required curriculum in the liberal arts that also requires some degree of general faith formation - I say general because there wasn't anything denominationally particular about these courses, and inter-sectarian discussion between Catholics, Wesleyans, Reformers, Lutherans, and Charismatics was encouraged. Despite this, there was a bias among most of the religion faculty toward high-church tradition, and many were Free Methodist ministers with PhDs in Philosophy or Historical Theology from St. Louis University. From them I learned that "tradition" and "ritual" were not dirty words or obstacles that stood between a believer and God, but rather the continuing preservation of the Church Universal's collective experience of God.
This faith formation curriculum had in this second semester course a very unique bit of experiential learning - a trip to the religiously diverse city of Chicago, to tour and dialogue with other faith traditions (Catholics, Anglicans, Charismatic Catholics, A Christian Commune, Black Church United Church of Christ, Greek Orthodox, Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, and Baha'i). Numerous were the reactions among the students, some of whom had never attempted to engage in any tolerant dialogue with any tradition but their own. Some were angry; some evangelicals tried passionately to convert our tour guides on the spot; some began a slow turn away from Christianity to agnosticism... I still quite vividly remember the moment that I felt my heart embracing the Catholic portion of my faith tradition.
Until then, I had associated Catholicism with empty ritual and passionless, spiritually lethargic congregations (not that these aren't all too common), and with my mother and step-father, who, despite having been forgiven for the sufferings they caused my brothers and I during adolescence, still did not strike me as role models. When I came into Holy Name Cathedral of my own accord, saw the noontime worshippers in prayer, the homeless sleeping in the pews, and felt again the rhythm of the mass, I knew immediately that this unique part of my spiritual heritage could be neglected no longer. My professor encouraged me to integrate this heritage into my faith tradition, but as I grew deeper in faith, a mere integration would become less and less acceptable.
In the meantime, I began preaching. What started as a few sermons given on special "youth" Sundays at the First United Methodist Church of Vandalia grew into my being a confirmed and certified lay minister in the United Methodist Church. I led a worship band for a contemporary service, often leading the entire service and preaching the homily on days when Holy Communion wasn't to be celebrated. On one occasion when a pastor of three nearby churches had to be away, I took his "circuit" for the day and preached at all three - a truly exhausting experience that I believe the Holy Spirit wholly guided and sustained me through. I studied homiletics and scripture and theology at Greenville, taking a minor in religion and continuing to explore Catholic belief.
I wish I could say that my transition from United Methodist minister to Catholic laity was always smooth, charitable, and well-ordered... but it wasn't. By 2004, I was burnt out from balancing my ministry at the church against the demands of school and my then girlfriend. My girlfriend broke up with me just before Lent, my car broke down, and the keyboardist and self-styled leader of my band at the time decided my services were no longer needed. Depressed and exhausted, when my pastor was transferred to a new church, I took my leave as well.
What seems obvious in hindsight as the Adversary's attack on my faith and my morality did not occur to me then to be anything but a string of unfortunate events. After several months of only occasional attendance at church services, I presented myself to the pastor of St. Lawrence Catholic Church in Greenville for RCIA. My motives were aesthetic and theological - the mass was to me, beyond compare as a method of worship. Where I had seen some contemporary worship services become an irreverent spectacle, or cults of personality centered around charismatic musicians and speakers, the masses I had experienced were always reverent and beautiful times of prayer and celebration (though I would later learn firsthand about liturgical abuses that make them less so) . Where I found Lutheran and Reform theology deficient, and exclusivist -- a trait I found unloving -- I found Catholic theology robust, inclusivist, and loving, even when I disagreed. Conversion, however, was not easy. St. Lawrence had no active RCIA program, and so as my initiation classes, I helped teach the high school confirmation class, learning the tenets of the faith as I taught them. My scriptural knowledge impressed my fellow RCIC instructors, and perhaps it was this knowledge that blinded them to the fact that the obligations of the faith were as yet unknown to me; for example, my attendance at mass and my obedience to rules was out of a love for mass and God, and it never occurred to me that one had an obligation to go to mass on Sunday, since the opportunity was there every day -- something I never had as a protestant -- so if I slept in on Sunday or didn't feel up to going, I'd "make it up" through the week, or not, whatever.
In addition to educational difficulties, I began to feel ostracized and separate from the protestant community and tradition I was leaving. Where once, I could identify with being a "good child of the Reformation," as I had been, now I found the phrase and even the notion problematic when the president of the college used it in a general address to my class, now seniors. I was bitter and uncharitable in my heart and speech toward churches that used a "stage" instead of a dais or altar. I was making provocative art to challenge perceptions, I wore makeup to challenge convention, and I drank alcohol -- strictly prohibited by the college's guidelines for communal life -- to challenge the institution. I settled down to some extent as graduation approached, and immediately after graduation I moved to St. Louis. I realized I had been uncharitable, and unwise, but I was still a poorly catechized new Catholic with no Catholic friends, newly out on my own in an environment filled with more options than I had ever encountered.
Despite my unwavering belief in God, and my love of the Catholic Church, my life over the next few years was one that could be accurately summarized with the phrase "Drugs, Sex, and Rock 'n' Roll." My drug of choice was alcohol, and lots of it, though I tried a few others. I gave up my virginity, and though I regretted that, I continued having sexual relationships without regret or remorse; the infamous "Catholic Guilt" is not something I possess. It was toward the end of one of these relationships that I realized that my growing interest in and understanding of Catholic teaching was convicting me of the glaring contradictions in my life. I sought answer after answer, and was slowly making some friends that were also Catholic, but orthodox in their beliefs and practice. I, naturally, as I learned, became more orthodox as well, and the buried desire to minister in some fashion became awakened within me. The permanent diaconate appealed to me, but my lifestyle was an evident problem - If I truly sought holiness, I knew I could not live a double life.
I finally got the nerve to go to confession. It was my second confession, the first since my confirmation. My confessor was an ancient, half-deaf Jesuit, but he definitely heard my confessions, as I heard the surprise in his voice as he responded to the long list of grave sins spanning not days, weeks, or months, but whole years, and helped me through the rest of the rite.
"Well..." He paused a moment. "Welcome back!"
It is good to be back.
My journey of faith has been one of continual motion, from the foundational faith of a child, the passionate faith of a youth, the jaded faith of a wanderer, to the reforged faith of the reconciled. I feel like I have reclaimed the joy that I had felt as a zealous youth, my heart stirs when I read the pages of a theology book and marvel at the complexities of God and faith and the Church, and there is no feeling like it.
As I look forward, trying to see the end of my journey, I can't fathom what comes next, and judging from what I thought I'd be doing at 16 and 21, at 27, it seems almost foolish to venture a guess. But, as I've chosen to summarize myself on facebook, I'm a trusting, passionate scholar and artist: I want to make a difference, and I want to have faith. Lord help me be all that you made me to be.
