Episode 422 - Becoming Catholic with Jack Huber

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Welcome back to Voices in My Head. As always, I'm your host Rick Lee James, and I am so glad that you are here with us again this week for what I know is going to be another great conversation. Just before we begin our conversation this week, I want to let you all know here for the first time on the podcast, a new announcement. On June 25th, I'm going to be releasing some new music for the first time in over a year, and it's called You Are My Salvation, and it's going to be streaming out on all the places where you hear music. But I wanted to let you know, because you're listeners of the podcast, if you become a paid subscriber at Rick Lee James .substack.com, I will send you the song, the music video, the lyrics, everything that goes along with the song. You can get that right away as soon as you sign up. So just a part of being a paid subscriber and supporting the podcast and supporting my music ministry. So otherwise, you can wait and hopefully enjoy it on June 25th with everyone else. But I do hope that you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber and helping out this show and helping out many of the different things that Voices in My Head has going on. So just a reminder to set your calendars for June 25th and to look into becoming a paid subscriber at rickleejames.substack.com. All right, well, that advertisement is over, and now we're going to get into the real meat of our podcast this week. Our topic this week on Voices in My Head is becoming Catholic. Yes, my guest this week is my new friend Jack Huber. Jack lives in Seattle, Washington, and he's a father and a husband. By trade, he's a social scientist who has worked in public education and now in the healthcare industries, helping people use data to make better decisions. Jack loves music, cooking, wine, whiskey, and is an avid road cyclist, which is very cool. We may have to talk more about that later, Jack. He also loves reading and listening to podcasts. Especially You Have Permission, which is a podcast hosted by Dan Cope, the podcast where I first discovered him. Listeners may remember that Dan was a guest on this show several episodes back, and we had a great discussion that day as well. Well, Jack has had a lifelong Christian journey and is a convert to the Catholic faith and is actively involved at his local parish. He's always eager to share his faith and to learn from others, and he's here today to share some of his story with us. And so Jack Huber, I am so glad to have you here. Welcome to Voices in My Head.

Thanks, Rick. It's good to be here.

Well, I want to say at the outset of the show today just how grateful I am for you to come on and have this conversation. You're not a person who is striving to be a celebrity or anything like that. You're not someone who, you know, is here pushing a product or doing anything that is trying to get your name up in lights. And in fact, You're a person who, I think in a very humble way, shared some of your story on the You Have Permission podcast with Dan Koch a few episodes ago whenever he was sharing his story about when he almost became Catholic. And I just wanted to let everyone listening know that I'm very grateful for you to be able to come on and share some of your story because it is a very personal thing when someone chooses to come on who hasn't chosen really to put themselves out like in a big way in the public and to come on and kind of share some of their story, which really everyone's story is as private or as public as they choose for it to be. And you're only here today because I think you hope that your story maybe could be helpful to some people and to some folks who maybe are in a place on their journey where they're experiencing maybe some growing pains and maybe are kind of searching in their own heart for some different things and wondering what might be out there. And, and your journey to Catholicism I found to be a very interesting story, and I just felt like we had a lot of things maybe in common whenever I was listening to you on Dan's podcast. So all that is to say, thank you so much for, for being willing to come and to be able to share like this.

Us today.

Yeah, thank you, Rick. That's, that's good to hear. I'm happy to, happy to help and happy to share my story, especially if there's hope of it helping others.

Well, definitely, and then that is what we hope will be a part of today. Well, I wonder if you would mind, as we start the podcast today, just kind of to help people understand who you are a little bit, could you share some of the backstory of your faith journey with us? And, and maybe things like, you know, where did you grow up and did you grow up in church and just kind of some of your— I guess if we use superhero language like they do in movies, you know, what's your secret origin?

Sure, yeah, I did grow up in the church. I grew up in the Southwest, in Los Angeles, Albuquerque, and primarily Phoenix in the late '70s and 1980s. My father was a professional golfer. My mother was a a homemaker, and it's myself and my younger sister by 3 years. And we grew up in a strict, conservative, but ultimately loving Christian home, and in churches that I've since come to understand as rooted in the charismatic, foursquare, fundamentalist, and broadly evangelical traditions. Now, at the time, we just thought of ourselves as Christians, and that was kind of the world we lived in. So all these labels are things I've learned since then. In our family, there was a strong emphasis on the Bible as authoritative and inerrant. We had a personal faith in Jesus Christ, a personal piety. Strong belief in salvation, primarily through the sinner's prayer, or what I've since come to understand as the sinner's prayer. My mother was— she watched a lot of religious television. Back then it was Trinity Broadcasting Network and I think Christian Broadcasting Network or something like that. And, and so there I learned sort of through osmosis. I was out riding my bike and I'd come in for lemonade and Mom was watching Paul and Jan Crouch. And there I heard a lot about end times theology and spiritual warfare and things like that. There are aspects of all that that I have since left behind. But I increasingly look back on all that with a sense of appreciation that my parents introduced me to God and they gave me Jesus and they gave me the hope that comes through prayer. And I think that's really powerful. That's a wonderful gift to give your children.

Wow.

Well, I know there was no pun intended when you said things you left behind, but you were talking about a lot of the eschatology theology that was brought about on Jan and Paul Crouch. So in a sense, I'm sure there was some left behind that was left behind, interestingly enough, growing up. And I totally understand that. That's what I think a lot of people who grew up evangelical are kind of still shaking off and finding that that was something that was in their past. And I think that your story is probably similar to many out there who are listening right now. They'll probably listen and say, that sounds very familiar to, you know, where I grew up and what life was like, for sure. So thank you for sharing some of your backstory with us. I'm wondering what led you to start to search beyond the faith tradition that you were familiar with and to start to seek to know more about Catholicism specifically? And this isn't necessarily when you started your conversion process, but really what made you start to seek to know more? And it doesn't even have to be just about Catholicism, but made you— what made you really start on your search, I guess, for something more and for something different?

Sure. So my background is sociology, and Once upon a time, we were introduced to this idea of push factors and pull factors. And so when one makes a journey from one place to another, there are push factors and pull factors. And that's kind of how I think about that. As far as push factors, these were aspects of my family faith that that were, that I wanted to leave behind. I'm looking for words here. One was, and I'll be honest here, there was a lot of conflict in my family. My parents had a very rocky marriage, and we had a lot of dysfunction in our family. There was fighting, there was shame. We didn't have very good resolution skills and repair skills. And I remember there being a lot of Bible verses thrown around in the heat of argument. A good example is a lot of spankings. My sister and I got a lot of spankings. We would hear, "Spare the rod, spoil the child." Now my sister has since found a more restorative and hopeful interpretation of that verse. And I was like, oh my gosh, we could have used that back then. But part of this was, in my mind when I'm a child thinking, and even teenager, that if this is the kind of Christian life that I can expect, then you can have it. There's got to be something better than this. I just didn't feel like my family was really embodying Christianity. There was also, you know, I found that our theology, of course I didn't use that word back then, kind of dark. It seemed like there was always a message of, or a narrative of repentance, obedience, fear, hate, exclusion. You want to be on the right side. Don't be one of those. I mean, it was very much a faith as fire insurance, fear of hell as eternal conscious torment and things like that. I'll also say this was in the mid-'80s. I was, I guess I was 14, 15 at the time, and I really developed this fascination with science. Halley's Comet had come and I was studying excuse me, outer space and watching science fiction movies and just really developing this fascination with, wow, you know, the universe, the cosmos is huge, it's vast, and it's mysterious. And, and sure, that just makes God all the more big and vast and mysterious. So I kind of developed this fascination with science and intellect and that we could study things and know things. And that seemed very threatening to my family and kind of the messages that I was receiving in churches at the time.

Hmm.

So fast forward a few years, I went to college and I went to a state university. I started, I was of course dating and my girlfriends were of slightly different faiths. And in particular, one of my girlfriends was Presbyterian. And so this was unfamiliar to me and my family because they were a denomination and we had always been non-denominational. So I started attending this liberal mainline church. Again, these are labels I've learned since then, but at the time it was this big Presbyterian church around the corner, and it was different in several key ways that really appealed to me. There was this sense of history and tradition, if only a few hundred years, a sense of liturgy that the service was always— there was kind of a program that was set, and there was a sense of call and response, and there was a doxology, and this was all really interesting to me. The pastor wore vestments, and the sermons were shorter and seemed less exclusively focused on the Bible. I mean, definitely very biblically grounded and based, but he would bring in research and philosophy and other writings and news and things like that. This church was not obsessed with hell. It was not obsessed with sexual purity, and it was more focused on social justice. I just found that very novel and interesting for a church. So I was happy there, and I, I was happy there. I would have— I identified myself as Presbyterian for most of my adult life. I think if I was ever to I would probably go back to either Episcopalian or maybe Presbyterian. So pull factors, those were some pull factors toward the liberal mainline tradition.

Sure.

But then along the way, there were these little elements of curiosity, of little elements of exposure to the Catholic faith I would see something Catholic and I would kind of wonder about it. I would wonder, you know, why are their churches so ornate? Because I, you know, I went to a lot of plain churches. Why do they make such a big deal about Mary? I mean, she seems like a nice enough gal, but we didn't make a big deal about her.

Yeah.

Why do they show Jesus' body on the cross? You know, we had crosses in our home, but they were just the cross. There wasn't his body on it. That seemed kind of creepy. What's the deal with those beads that they hold on to, the rosary? So I had all these kind of growing curiosities, but also kind of an openness. And I honestly didn't know much about the Catholic faith. I would meet people periodically who were Catholic, and they just seemed very peaceful, or I should say they seemed comparatively peaceful. They didn't seem like they were trying to convert anybody or shame anybody into being Christian, and I just found that gentle peacefulness very appealing. There were two, I guess the other final two things I had some role models that entered my life. One was a high school teacher. I guess I was 16 or 17 at the time, and I was having a rough time at home. And this English teacher was— he was like a father figure to me. He was warm and kind and generous. He was also very educated and sophisticated. He had, of course, a deep, deep background in the humanities. He revealed that he had been a monk, that he was Roman Catholic, that he had been a monk. And of course, by that time as a teacher, he was married and had a family. And he just really just embodied the kind of man I ultimately wanted to be. I think young men— I'll just only speak for myself— at that age, in my late teens, I was just kind of looking around and kind of taking note of guys and kind of thinking, what do I want to be like when I grow up as a man? And he was just a really powerful, positive male role model. And my dad, my father was in many ways too. We were having problems at the time, but I can also appreciate much about my father. Even at the time, I think he was doing the best he could. And then I guess the last most significant role model for me was the late Father Andrew Greeley. This was— I was in my early 20s, and I, by then, I had finished college and I was going on to graduate school in sociology, and I just had a really strong interest in the social sciences and in data and in religion. I think that I've had this curiosity of, you know, what does it mean when people hold a belief, they belong to a tradition? Yeah, what— how does that impact other things like attitudes and behaviors and I came across the writings of Father Greeley, and at the time, he was alive at the time, and he lived in Arizona where I did. So I had read some of his work. He was a novelist. That was interesting because I've written a little fiction over the years. He was also a sociologist. He had gotten his doctorate, I think, in 1960 and was a sociologist for the the church, and he was a priest. He wore the blacks, and he was very much a priest as well. And so I sought him out, and I just wanted to meet him. And he was just a wonderfully intelligent, gentle— he was a good listener. And I was just really, really impressed. And he just kind of gave me a picture of what what was possible. And so I just— those were some key moments of curiosity and attraction. But this was back in my 20s, and it would be many years before I more seriously contemplated going Catholic.

Yeah. Well, it sounds like, as I'm hearing you, and you can tell me if I'm if I'm hearing you incorrectly, but what I think I'm hearing you say through all of this in your journey into the Presbyterian Church is, you know, you were hearing things that maybe you didn't necessarily hear in your background in non-denominational churches, like the history and the tradition that were there, and the things that you were hearing from Father Greeley, and things like that you were hearing from your teacher who was part of the tradition as well. Maybe one thing that was drawing you to this was you got a feeling they weren't just making it up as they went. There was a real sense of connection to their past and to their tradition and to their faith, and it was something that was really grounding them. And again, as you said, it wasn't all just Scripture. There was something so over-encompassing along with Scripture. It was tradition, and it was reason and experience and all these different things that had culminated in this thing of the church. And it wasn't just Catholicism, it was what you were experiencing in the Presbyterian Church as well. You were really just finding a richness in the heritage there and the way that they— that the people there were connected to that heritage, maybe in a way that you were not finding, in ways that often non-denominational churches can't trace embrace their history in that way. Am I hearing you correctly in that?

Absolutely. Yeah, that's very, very helpful. Um, I, I also think that, yes, definitely I'm seeing examples of other Christians, and I, I'm— I think at that time, well, I can say for sure I have never doubted God. I have never doubted Jesus. And so even when I left, kind of emotionally left my parents' faith, I didn't leave God. I didn't leave Jesus. But I think I was open to other ways that other Christians had, like you say, perfectly experienced and embodied the love of God in Christ. And so I was kind of asking, Well, God, how have others known you? How do others approach you? And what have I missed that could enrich my faith? These were other ways of being Christian that were appealing to me, but still Christ was the center.

Yeah, that's good. Well, thank you for sharing that. Again, I think a lot of people can relate to that, and I know definitely when I was in college myself and throughout life many times. I'm a part of the Church of the Nazarene, which we actually have our roots in Methodism, and John Wesley was an Anglican. So we actually have a bit of a Catholic side to us, even though there is a bit of the American holiness kind of freeform side to our denomination as well. So there's actually there's actually this sacramental side to our movement that is very reverent of Catholic traditions and Orthodox traditions and places like that. And yet there's also this other almost camp of our denomination that almost wants nothing to do with that and almost wants to be a non-denominational sort of like, we don't live in the past type, you know. So it's kind of an interesting identity/non-identity sort of denomination that I'm in. So by the time I got to college, and I found that even in my Nazarene University, most of the theologians that I was being made to read gratefully were people like Catholic theologians. Like Henry Nouwen was someone that, you know, when I would have Christian life and ministry classes, it was Nouwen who they Rick Lee James had us use for our formation, you know. And it was like, wow, why have I never heard this before, you know, and being introduced to the seasons of the church. And there was a time, especially in college, I thought I may not stay in the denomination I'm in because I really am finding a side of the faith I didn't know was there. And interestingly enough, like even in ministry preparation classes the college I went to, they would take us to places like the Orthodox churches in town on field trips, and they would take us to Presbyterian churches and Episcopals, and they really wanted us to have this broader view of our faith. And I think that was a really good idea on their part, that they would not shield us from those things but would actually say, look at this vast landscape that's out there.

Yes.

And how we are just a small part of this body of Christ, and we need to find ourselves within it. So, so I can totally relate as I'm hearing what, what you're saying, that you were kind of finding on your own. I can remember discovering that too in my college years. And to be honest, in the 20 or so years since then, since I've graduated, it's still been a quest for me. I've still been diving in and finding so much good in so many other traditions around me that I'm not I'm not necessarily a member of, but I still find such deep fellowship with and outside of. So I'm totally understanding and simpatico with what you're saying today, for sure.

That's great. That's awesome.

Well, let me get a little closer to where you are today in your story then. When exactly did you decide to make that conversion the Catholic tradition and what kind of led you to that place? I know you've already described today sort of this hunger for something more than what you had experienced before, and you had found a lot of that in the Presbyterian Church where you were worshiping. But what made you ultimately decide to convert to the Catholic tradition?

Sure.

Well, it was fairly Recently, it's hard to know where exactly to begin, but I think a good place is in 2015-16. This was, I guess, a few years ago now. I went through a separation and a divorce, and it was the worst thing that had ever happened to me. I was lost. I was wandering and looking for love in all the wrong places. And I'll let your imagination do the rest. Sure. There was a point, though, in the midst of that, that I did make a decision to come back to God in a Christian way of life. Of regular prayer, church attendance, and group Bible study. I knew I needed those things in my life. I didn't know what kind of Christian I wanted to be. I knew that there are different ways of being Christian, as we've discussed, but I knew that I needed more Christian than just me wandering around doing whatever I what I felt like and what I thought was right on my own. In the midst of this, in this season, I decided to do something unprecedented for an evangelical of my background. And that is I went on a pilgrimage to Spain to walk the Camino de Santiago.

Ah, okay.

The Way of St. James. For you and if your listeners who don't know what that is, I'll just say briefly, it's an ancient path across northern Spain. It begins in France and goes all the way across northern Spain to the town of Santiago de Compostela, where tradition holds that the remains of St. James are buried. And so there's a lot of fable and lore surrounding that, like how it got started. But the important thing, at least from my perspective, was that for hundreds of years, Christians have been making pilgrimage across this path to see the remains of St. James in this cathedral. And at the time, this was of course pre-COVID, there were about 200,000 people doing it every year. And there was a movie that came out, it was called The Way. The Way, yes. With Martin Sheen and his son, I think it was 2010 or so. I had seen that movie with my first wife and we were both just blown away by it. And we were just like, wow. This is a thing. I didn't know people did this. And so it was just kind of on my radar of this, something we could do to put on the bucket list, right? So here I am in kind of divorce land, and I reach out to my first wife and say, I want to go do this. And she says, that's a great thing. I want you to do that. Go do that. And I'll take care of the kids. And so for 2 weeks, I went out there and I walked the way. I started halfway in León and walked to Santiago. Now, I won't give you the blow-by-blow, the travelogue of every single, but generally speaking for me, This was a very Catholic experience. Now, it's not for everybody. I mean, there's a variety of people who walk this for all different kinds of reasons. There's a saying that, you know, you walk your own way, you walk your own Camino. And so I met people who were, you know, it was just a vacation, it was a holiday, it was fun, it was a hike. Catholic, but really no spiritual significance to them. Well, to me it was very Catholic in the sense it was very historical. It was deeply historical. It was mysterious. I've alluded to the kind of the fable and legend surrounding it. It was very physical. I mean, I was literally walking and it hurt. I was in pretty good shape, but I was doing 12 miles a day, and I had 20 pounds on my back. It was hot, and it was just painful walking at the end of the day. And it was beautiful. It was unspeakably beautiful. It was very communal. Because you do it with others. There are others who walk with you. You're kind of walking your own way at your own pace, but you're never alone for very long. And so I met some amazing people and we would walk together and we would stay together in an albergue. And there was just a very powerful sense of shared shared humanity of community. We all said buen camino to each other. We wished each other well on our walk, knowing that we may never see each other again, or we might see each other the next night. It was very universal. I went to Mass with some guys that I was walking with. They were college friends. And they had gone to, I think, a Jesuit college together. And they were doing the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. And so they would end their walk every night with a period of quiet time and journaling and prayer. And then they'd go to Mass if they could. And so I joined them for Mass once for sure, if not two times. And I was just really blown away by, you know, people from all over the world were here celebrating Mass and they all knew what was going on and I didn't. And so fortunately these guys were kind enough to talk me through it. And at the very end, there was the priest asked all of the pilgrims to come forward and share where we were from. From. And then he gave us his blessing. And I was just really blown away by that, kind of the globalness, the universality of it. It was very confessional and in that way cathartic. There was a, at least for me, I found it easy to develop enough rapport with people to share a little bit about who I was and why I was walking the Camino, which was personal. It was a kind of prayer. I now see it. It was a kind of walking prayer of being with God, of kind of in between what life I had lived and what life I was going to live. It was a kind of finding God again, walking with God. And I talked about my divorce and what I had done wrong in my marriage. And it was amazing, just the vulnerability and the love and mercy and understanding that people could show. So I was just really— it was a really powerful experience. It was— I would say it was sacramental. It was an ex— I didn't crack open a Bible once, but it was soaked with God. And I, when I got back, I was, it took me a period of time to readjust to normal life again. Not a whole lot, but I had been in some different place spiritually, socially, emotionally. When I got back and as time kind of passed on, I felt like I had a stronger feeling of shared humanity, but also an intense curiosity about the Catholic faith. And so in that fall, I went to my local geographic Catholic church., and I basically said, what would be involved in becoming Catholic? And the woman who was in charge of that, it's basically a program called RCIA, which is the acronym for Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults. And it's a period of time of study and Reflection. We met on Monday nights. It was me and I guess a handful of other people who were discerning, who had felt a call, either a call out of the blue, or maybe they were marrying someone who was already Catholic or converting for marriage reasons, which I totally get that. So we met every Monday night for a while, and we were a small group. We met at a church building that actually had been a former convent, and it had that church smell. And I kind of wonder how universal that is, that, that kind of sweet, musty, Catholic— not Catholic, but coffee, old church building smell. And I honestly found that very comforting, like, ah, I'm back in church, I feel safe again.

Yeah.

So they took us through the content of the Catholic faith, and this was the more didactic kind of the history, the geography, the lay of the land, the theological components. Although I don't think we got that deep theologically, it was really kind of you know, who are the saints and why do we venerate saints. And we had a night where we talked about Mary, and I actually slept through that lecture. And I woke up and my sponsor was kind of annoyed with me, and I had missed out on the Marian dogmas. And I thought, well, I'll learn it later. That's okay. There There was nothing I heard that was a deal killer for me doctrinally. In the sense that I guess evangelical doctrine had kind of loosened up, or lost its grip, I should say. But I didn't really have the same hangups that everyone else had had with the Catholic faith and its distinctives. I really just wanted to be back home with God, being Christian in this interesting new way. I was confirmed Easter Vigil 2017. It was a long, long Mass.

Yeah, that is a long one. I've been to them.

And I was a candidate because I had already been baptized. They recognized my baptism many years ago in a pool in an Assembly of God congregation. So I was a candidate and what merely this was was a confession of faith that I am Christian I follow the Lord Jesus Christ, and I want to be in communion with the church. And so this priest gave me the oil with his thumb, the chrism oil, and I can almost still feel it on my forehead. The smell of it, the feel of it. It was powerful. Makes me emotional just to remember it. Wow.

Well, I can remember— and by the way, I hope I'm not interrupting you. Were you finished with what you were saying? Oh, no. Okay, I wanted to make sure. I can remember a few years ago going to my brother-in-law's baptism at his Easter vigil. It might have actually been— I want to say it was either 2015, 2016, somewhere around there. I can't remember the exact year, and I remember very well that late night Easter vigil and a very lengthy service, but there were so many candidates at that time, and for my brother-in-law specifically, it meant a lot to me to see that happen. Happened because when I first met him, he was pretty clear to me and wanted to make it known pretty fast that he didn't believe there was a God and didn't want anything to do with church.

Oh, wow.

And so it was interesting to see his journey as he grew and then wanted to go through the RCIA and all that it took, and then how he started inviting me to come whenever I had a Sunday when I was able to, to come to church with him. And, you know, and all the lead-up to him being baptized. And it really was a special thing, and, and there was a lot that was asked of him to be a part of that community. And, and it was just very interesting to me, and I think a lot of it was that sense of community that he was finding, and maybe the sense of history as well. And, and he didn't grow up in the church the way that you and I grew up in church, so maybe it it was all new to him in some ways, but it was still a very special thing for me to see. And so when you described the oil being placed on your head and a lot of the symbolism that is there— a lot of people don't love symbolism when it comes to church and they don't appreciate it for what it is, but I hear you telling that story And the way that you can say you can still even remember it, and there's no doubt that it left an impression upon you. And some of the traditions and some of the symbols and the ceremonies, there is a reason behind those things, and there truly is a, a reflection of heaven that I think they are trying to put across in these ceremonies when you are in the places of worship and in the houses of worship, that they really want you to try to realize that when you walk into these sacred spaces, that you are to be stepping foot into the realm of the holy, you know. And I love that. And it sounds like you really have found something special there. And so thank you for sharing sort of your conversion story, because I think a lot of people listening me, don't really know anything about the RCIA even in the way that you described it today and have kind of wondered that in the past. Well, what goes into it? So that's very informative, I think, for a lot of us. Now, I know that you don't necessarily— and I know a lot of people don't necessarily find themselves 100% in agreement with everything in their local church. Churches, and I think it's probably the same with you in the Catholic Church. If we're honest, we all probably have things in any church that we go to, no matter which one it is, that we could all point to and say, I'm not sure I'm fully in agreement with that 100%. And so we probably all have some disagreements along the way, but I wonder if you could talk with us a little bit about some that, because I just know that there are things that you find maybe you're not necessarily in full agreement with, but that doesn't mean you are necessarily in disunity with your church.

Right.

And I'd love to maybe have you speak to us a little bit about the differences you see between unity and uniformity when it comes to a person's faith tradition, because I think this is maybe an important point for all of us when it comes to our faith.

Yeah, that's a, that's a great question. Um, it's a big one. Um, I'll just say straight up, I'm, I'm a, I'm at the progressive end of the spectrum. Um, I, if it was up to me, uh, women would be ordained, um, and would be part of the Holy Orders. Who could celebrate Mass and consecrate the host and preach, run parishes, etc. Be Pope, or I don't know what the Latin word for mother would be.

Sure.

Be bishops and I guess the female equivalent of Pope. If it was up to me, same-sex couples would feel welcome in any Catholic Church church, partaking, receiving any sacrament, and be married in the church with a sacramental marriage. If it was up to me, priests could marry, and the celibacy discipline would be relieved. It's not a matter of dogma or even doctrine. The celibacy issue. It's merely a church discipline that could be relieved. So, and I know that I'm not alone in this. I know there are a lot of Catholic lay people like myself, and probably many clergy too, who, who have the same kinds of attitudes about where what should be. But that's okay. In spite of these things, these are not deal killers for me with this church. Because I have a history with this church and because of what it has meant to me and has partly formed me, I'm okay I can remain unapologetically Catholic and love this church despite its faults. And there are many, and I am not blind about them, and I'm sure critics can point out and have pointed out all kinds of problems with this church, probably more pointedly at at the Vatican and some of its history. And yes, guilty as charged. So, and yet it still is something that I can be a part of and say, I am Catholic, I am part of this. And I know that it's not gonna get any better if I leave. So what can be the offering of my life to try to make things better. That's part of my discernment. I think that one's— I'll just speak for myself— relationship with a faith tradition, and by relationship, kind of the give and take, at least for me, has evolved over time, and now I'm beginning to see it better than I think I did before. I can see now how I was formed by the church, the Christian church, the body of Christ broadly, inclusively. My family came out of conservative evangelicalism and they made the introduction to God. They gave me my map of reality, kind of my sense of the cosmos, my identity, my way of being Christian, my sense of purpose, and the Bible as a, as a guidebook. The Bible's meant different things to me over the years. I don't, I don't see it the same way I always have. But I still see great value in it. I see it as inspired word of God. But I think there's also, at least for me, I wanted to make a difference too. I wanted to grow. I wanted to be creative. I think people have a productive energy and a desire to to be themselves, whatever that is, and to feel like that is a contribution. So from your faith tradition, I would hope that your faith tradition would support you and inspire you. Bless you, anoint you, send you forth. You came out of this mission, the sense of Christ's work and God's work in the world. Go give it. Pay it forward. And if you fall upon hard times, would that tradition comfort you and support you and heal you help heal you. And that's not always true. Maybe you outgrow your faith tradition and you need a new one. I think from the Pew Research Center, an estimated 42% of adults identify with a different faith tradition than the one in which they were raised. I was I was looking at some data recently and that number just kind of— it's an estimate, don't quote me on it— but it kind of has resonated with me that it's not uncommon for Christian American adults to go somewhere else to be Christian. Maybe that has to do with whom they marry. We hear a lot A lot these days about the nuns and the spiritual but not religious. And of course they get a lot of press. This sort of secularist story plays out in the media. Look how secular we really are and religion's dying and it's kind of the message. And I can see how that gets attention and gets headlines. I can tell you from my experience, and I include my second wife, my wife in this too. I had many years of, I'm a nominal Christian, I believe but I don't really practice it, I don't go to church. But now I'm nearly 50 and my wife is 50, we're very much on the same page in believing that Christianity should be practiced practiced in community. That we are not individualistic Christians. Christianity is something that should be practiced in community, and community does not mean perfection. It doesn't mean surrounding yourself with people who are exactly like you. That community means a certain amount of diversity, whether it's age or gender gender, race, geographic, different kinds of needs, and so on. I was willing to join the Catholic Church despite its warts, knowing that it's not perfect. And I'm thinking of the sex abuse scandals and such. But neither am I. I'm not perfect either, and I can acknowledge that I've made some mistakes and I need community. I need church to help my discernment, to remind me of, you know, what the Bible says and how we might approach that, what might be the best way to handle a situation, language for what's better, what's right, What's good? And we can do better than this. What was Christ, what was Jesus like, and how can we better follow his example? So I'm not in 100% agreement with the Catholic Church, and I don't think I'm alone in that. And yet I identify as Catholic. I see no I don't plan to leave it. I've had some problems recently with even with my local Catholic Church bishop's office, but I see value in it and I see there's a lot of humility behind it. At least I'm working on that.

Yeah. Well, thank you for speaking to that. I really do appreciate it. And you know, I'll be honest with you, and we share this in in common, unfortunately. And I wanted to say before, and I was saving it until now, I want to say first of all how sorry I am that you experienced the pain of going through a divorce, because I too went through a divorce. It's been quite a bit longer for me, but boy, the pain is still there. One of my favorite songwriters, Andrew Peterson, has a line in one of his one of his songs that says, talking about pain, it says, "The aching may remain, but the breaking does not." And I think that that's one of the best ways maybe to describe it as time goes on. There is a sense in which maybe the ache will always be there, even if we're not constantly breaking from it. But I want to thank you for your transparency in sharing about that. And, and you can tell me if this has been the case in your life. It certainly has been the case in mine. I would say before I went through a divorce, religiously speaking, I think I was much more of a judgmental, judgmental, Pharisaical hypocrite in my life personally. And I think after I went through it, because I I don't think you just get divorced. I think people go through them because it really is going through something.

Yes.

When I came out the other side of that, I feel like in my own life, like, I have been— I feel like a much more compassionate person. I feel like I am much less judgmental of some of the issues that you you even mentioned today, that you have found yourself not in total agreement with the church. I find myself much more open and loving to even in my own denomination when it comes to things that I struggle with in my own church, and I keep coming back to what is the difference between unity and uniformity, and, you know, how do I, for the sake of Christ, be with these people who I love even when I disagree with them? And when it comes to things like, you know, how do I love these people even though they're wearing their MAGA hats and doing, you know, all the things that, you know, just drive me crazy? And yet still I'm part of the body of Christ somehow in the midst of all this. So I'm just taking a guess here, but I'm wondering if going through that experience for you also opened new doors of compassion in your heart that you maybe didn't even know you had. Would you say that in some ways that was true of you as well?

Absolutely. Yes, what you've just described resonates very well with me, and my heart goes out to you for your divorce, and really anyone listening. Divorce changes you, or it changed me deeply. Sometimes I even measure my life AD, after divorce. It's a failure, no matter how you slice it, it's a failure. Whatever side you're on, who was wrong, who was right, it's a failure. Divorce was never the plan. And so after divorce, it's always plan B. Well, even not plan B. It's like, what do we do now? And so I, in the case of my divorce, it was a failure on my part for all the ways that I had fallen short as a husband. And she wasn't perfect too. I'll own my fair, if not more than fair share of it. And that's hard for someone like me who always took pride in being right and having accomplished things and not failed at things. And, you know, we live in a culture of being right achieving things. And so here's a failure. So yes, it changed me deeply in that I just— I look at people in their, I guess, their weaknesses when people aren't making the best decisions because they just want to feel better. They're in pain and they just want to feel feel a little better. And I get that, which partly is kind of my relationship with the Catholic Church. Early in his papacy when Pope Francis, he did an interview, I think it was with America Magazine, where he was asked his vision of the church. And he said he He views it as a, or should be, a field hospital. And it was for me. And so I think that's part of my orientation is I'm not interested in shaming anybody. I'm interested in healing and in comfort and in restoring people. And maybe that takes some time. And it certainly takes some walking with people, some friendship, wherever food and drink, that helps too, riding a bike, things like that. Because I've been given that grace, I want to go pay it forward. Sure.

Well, you know, while we're on this subject, and I'm grateful for you and all that you shared today. And I just want to have you share a little bit more before we end our conversation today. I am a big advocate of receiving the Eucharist, and especially pre-COVID, I was one that was very much, uh, receive it as often as you can. John Wesley, who as I mentioned before, really is one of the founders of of the denomination that I'm a part of, someone that we look to as sort of one of our fathers, he would advocate receive it as often as you can, definitely weekly, daily if you can, and receive because this is Christ that you are receiving and don't be denied the body of Christ, you know, and yet he also would preach as I think Paul would preach about the body of Christ, of when you're coming together, the body of Christ is the body that is around you. It's the brothers and sisters who are there with you. It's not necessarily just the meal you're receiving, it's those who are you receiving it with. And COVID has been such a different— difficult time in that I have not been able to receive it very often together with the family in the way that I would like, just because of different restrictions at least in our particular context where I've been at. But I do know that when I, in particular, say if I visit my brother-in-law's church, even though I am an ordained minister in my denomination, when I visit his Catholic church, for instance, I don't partake. Usually I'll go up to receive a blessing and I'll cross my arms, and sometimes they will use the oil on my head head and do a cross and give me a blessing when I'm there, but I am not allowed to receive the elements because I am not Catholic. I know that because of your divorce, and I know that there may be some confusion and maybe some questions people have, that divorced people, from what I understand, are not at a place of welcome to the table as others are in the Catholic Church either, or at least there has to be sort of a restoration process that, that you have to go through in order to become a part of that. And I think it would be interesting because I've heard some of your story before on this. I wonder if you would mind sharing with our listeners today some of your journey back to the, the table of the Eucharist and some of the things that you have been on a journey to with that, because I found it fascinating. And I found that it also takes a lot of humility, I think, on your part, maybe to submit to some of the teaching of your church and some of those around you. But I actually, when you were telling it on Dan's podcast, which is really what led me to invite you on my show, I just really found I found it a beautiful part of the story too, and it felt like something that the body of Christ was doing together, and it didn't feel so much like you were being cast out as it was sort of a reconciliation process that was being done together with the family.

Sure.

And I wonder if you could maybe share some of that story of the road back and what that has meant to you.

Sure.

Um, and your mic was muted for a second. Sorry there.

Yeah, sorry about that.

Um, that's okay.

Yeah, I'll say, I'll say a few words about Eucharist and how that's come to be important to me. I, um, the Eucharist is the source and summit of the Catholic faith. It is really the big deal. It's the Blessed Sacrament. It's more than a piece of bread that you solemnly ingest and remember the Last Supper and the Passion. It's more than a memorial meal. It is Jesus. The way we see it, we are receiving Jesus in physical form. And to me, that's a— it's a big change. It's new. It's— I weep when I receive. Less now than I used to, but it's a deep, powerful, physical experience. I know that Alfred Hitchcock was Catholic and he wept when he received. Sometimes people have said, you know, have you received Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior? And I'll think to myself, yes, every time I go to Mass. This is, of course, it was not how I was raised. Where the point was the sermon, and the long sermon at that. At the Catholic Mass, the point is the Eucharist, and yes, there is a homily, and its place there is appropriate, and there is scripture reading, but really that prepares the heart for receiving physically the body of Christ, and we are body, so we share in that that too as body. So it's a big deal. It's important. And it, to me, is I hunger for it. I weep. It moves me. And my wife too. So being a sacrament But here is where we get into how the church makes sense of it and kind of sets forth the doctrines and the rules that you've described here. And I think the critical, the foundation of it is this concept of ecclesial community. And it's this idea that the sacraments are brought to us physically. The sacraments are physical. The baptism is water. The confirmation is the holy oil of chrism on the forehead. Of course, there's the Eucharist. Confession is a human voice for, God saying, "I forgive you." These are physical things brought to us through a physical institutional church. And so the argument, the notion is to receive communion you need to be in communion with the church that's bringing you the the communion, the real presence of Christ. Now, there are differences, there are huge differences within the Catholic Church. There is what I understand, and this is just me, to be a more traditional orthodox, kind of by-the-book approach, which is to be able to rightly receive communion, to be worthy of it, you need to first be in communion with the church, which means you need to be Catholic, which means you need to have received already the sacrament of baptism and the sacrament of confirmation and be in a state of grace by having received the sacrament of confession or reconciliation, and to be in a state of grace in assent to its teachings. So that's why we're seeing some bishops say you can't be a politician who's actively— who is pro-choice and receive communion. That's not communion with the Church. So So there are those more traditional, there is that traditional Orthodox perspective that is, I think I can accurately say, is part of the voice I hear, is part of the voice I hear in my discernment. But there is also, the more progressive end of the spectrum that is embodied by Pope Francis in saying that the church is a field hospital, and is in his view, and that communion should be viewed as medicine for the soul, and that the priest should not be the guard dog of Eucharist. So there are some, I would say some if not many Catholic priests in their parishes that are tacitly open table. You'll hear about this anecdotally. My wife and I have been just blessed to belong to a parish that accommodates us where we are. Now, the divorce thing. Being divorced was okay. I went through my RCIA program. I had already been baptized. I was about to be confirmed. Confirmed, and before I received communion, I needed to go to confession. And so that was all okay as a divorced person. I could receive communion. The problem is when I commit to a new relationship, particularly a marriage outside the church's sacrament of of marriage, that's not okay because, at least from this perspective, I'm now committed to an adulterous relationship or a premarital sexual relationship because if the church has not celebrated our marriage, then it doesn't recognize our marriage beyond the church. And yes, we are married. Yes, we were married in a wonderful small Lutheran ceremony.

Okay.

So this is where church doctrine becomes more salient and begins to distinctions, and not all churches and all priests see it that way. And I will say, my wife is Protestant. She's been a Christian all her life, and she has many years of experience in ministry. She has a master's degree in theology, and we have multiple female friends who who are ordained clergy. And so she may never convert to Catholicism, and that's okay. And still, she too has come to a sense of appreciating a tradition that has liturgy, that she has a sense of the real presence in the Eucharist, and wants very much for us in our marriage to receive communion together. And so we do. We do receive together at our parish, and this is with the blessing of our ordained clergy. Now we could go to a different parish where that would not be the case, where we wouldn't be able to receive communion. So yeah, it's a tough one. I mean, depending on how— it's just, it's been a matter of our discernment. We've been to other churches where Eucharist is celebrated and we've both received— I shouldn't be receiving in those other churches, and yet I do. I think what it boils down to is my wife and I, and I include myself in this too, are not— have a more inclusive, broader view of the church and sacramentality.

So, hmm.

Yeah, there's also the annulment story, and there's— I don't know if we want to go into that or not, and if not, that's okay. But there have been elements of the church having— trying to preserve a sense of integrity of marriage that seems really out of date and really unrealistic in today's society where marriage marriage is, for many people, little more than a contract. And I get that. I respect that. I respect the church saying, no, son, you're not ready for another marriage until you get some help from therapy. We've read what you wrote in your annulment document, and quite honestly, it scares us that you need some help, you need some therapy, you need some counseling before you're ready for another marriage, or you'll be back here in another couple of years. That's kind of the brief annulment story I had to go through.

Wow.

And so, I mean, there's an element of that where in today's world, we individualistic Christians who kind of shop for churches that provide a good fit, and how dare a church presume to have authority over us and tell us how to, you know, conduct our spiritual business. Here is a situation where I said, no, the church is right, and I mean, I can choose to be and rebellious and prideful about this, or I can maybe lean into this and think maybe God's trying to say something here. Maybe body of Christ is kind of taking this physical form and this message is something I need to hear. And gosh, I probably could use some help. I could use some therapy. I— so that my marriage will be stronger. So I went through that process, and if it weren't— I guess the last part of this, I'll put a bow on this, is my wife and I very much intend to have a sacramental wedding ceremony in the Catholic Church. It's called a convalidation. Where the church blesses your pre-existing union. And I can do that. I've received my annulment. I'm— and I can marry a non-Catholic. That's okay. But for COVID, we had one planned, but COVID made that impossible. So, so now I think in the new year or next, we'll put that back on the radar and get that done.

Wow. See, I find that story just— honestly, I find that to be amazing, and I think a lot of people might hear that and think, well, what right does the church have to tell you that?

Right.

And yet to me, and maybe in some cases that would be overreaching, but the way you received it and the way you said, maybe— I think you said it in this way, that maybe that was God speaking to you through them in this way, and maybe they were right. And I think there's a sense in which maybe we've lost some of that in our society, that maybe God actually does speak through his church to his people at times. And maybe in more than a few cases, there are some marriages that if the church would have spoken up and said, I I really don't think you guys should be doing this, that we may have saved a few marriages along the way. But that was a part of your story that I thought was really beautiful too, because it almost felt like a family of God thing helping each other too. It didn't feel like a judgmental thing to me, and I didn't see the letter that the church wrote to you about the annulment, but to me, in the way you described it It felt like, you know what, you're part of our family and we're worried about you and we want to help you on this and we want you to thrive. We're scared that if you go through this without doing these steps, you're not going to thrive and you're going to end up in a whole lot more pain again. I can so appreciate that. I have to say I respect you for submitting to that. I respect your church for having the courage to say that to you, because it honestly, that's not an easy thing to say to somebody, and you almost expect probably pushback. And yet what a beautiful celebration is in store too, I think, when you finally get to celebrate that, knowing that, hey, we've gone through We went through all the steps we needed to go through, and now we are fully where we need to be and in full celebration with our church. And I don't know, to me that just blesses me to hear that, and I can see the hand of God in that. Again, maybe somebody else would hear the story and hear something different, but I felt it was very powerful, and I felt very moved by that. So thank you for sharing that. I really do appreciate you sharing that part of the story. I do think there is a lot of misconception about the church, and it probably does vary from parish to parish and who the leadership is and how they might approach things like that. There are good churches and bad churches, and there's good leadership and bad leadership everywhere. But it does sound like you've fallen into the hands of some people who love you dearly. So that's a good thing. Well, you know what, we've had such a good discussion today, and I've really appreciated all that you've had to say, but our time is running out. And I think I just want to end with one final question for you today. And I would love to know, as much as we could probably list things that we disagree with and things we could complain about all day long if we really wanted to. I'd love to know maybe, maybe just one thing that you find is really giving you hope as a result of becoming Catholic, or even just being Catholic. Maybe there's something that's making you very hopeful that maybe you wouldn't have seen or noticed, but now that you have, have converted, that you're finding this very hopeful thing as a result.

Well, sure. Yeah, so being Catholic is a way of being Christian. It's a way of following Jesus. And so it's like following a path. And so how has the Catholic Church kind of charted the path and navigated it? I think a lot in metaphors. I mentioned to you the church has already been a field hospital. It took me in, it gave me shelter, it helped me heal, and in a sense it gives me hope in that I feel like I'm part of a mission. There's kind of a saying, "You don't have a mission, a mission has you." And so I know that I feel like I'm a part of that. Catholic, the church has been a kind of a home in a sense of coming home to Christianity, a Christian way of being, a Christian practice. It's like a family, a big extended family, that it's not just my, you know, my genetic family, but 2,000 years of family. It's obviously Jesus and the Virgin Mary, and my faith in her, my devotion to her doesn't depend on whether she was a virgin or not. I don't care. The saints, the canonized saints, and people who have not been canonized who have lived wonderful Christian lives and provide good example. Yeah, the Catholic faith, and here I distinguish, you know, the faith, the being Catholic, is living sacramentally. It's permission to see and experience God physically through the senses, to touch the beads of the rosary, to look at the body of Jesus on the the cross, as he does his work on the cross that takes what is bad and evil and shameful and violent and makes new life. That's a physical reminder of what it means to be a Christian, is to participate in that Paschal Mystery. The icons, the pictures of extended family, those who have given their lives as witness to Jesus. Obviously the beauty of the churches, the smell of the incense, the holy water, although I haven't touched holy water in a very long time. Obviously the Eucharist that literally feeds me and strengthens me as body of Christ. It kind of gives me permission to see God disguised in my life as my life. It's a school of salvation and hope. The hope that the worst thing I ever did doesn't have to be the end of me, or you, or anyone else.

Else.

It's a living reminder, a physical reminder of the beauty of God and the grace of God, that we live in a world and universe that's soaked with God. Not a God-forsaken world, a God-soaked world. And that's just how I live, and it just, it fills me with hope to keep going.

Wow. What a great answer. Well, this has been a real pleasure to get to sit and talk with you today, Jack. I really appreciate your time and being so generous with us and sharing your story. I say this to my guests every week, and I'm so glad to get to say it to you. Jack Huber, thank you for being one of the Voices in My Head this week.

Thanks, Rick. It's been a pleasure.

Thank you for joining me here this week on Voices in My Head. I hope you'll visit me on my website at rickleejames.com, where you can find out more about me, get my music on vinyl and CD, follow my blog, and even schedule me for a concert or a speaking engagement. Better yet, even a book signing in your neighborhood. You can find all that and more at rickleejames.com. Also, it would mean a great deal to me if you could write a review review of this podcast on iTunes. The more positive reviews that we receive, the more visible this podcast will be online. And now for the benediction: May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. God bless you, and thank you for listening to Voices in My Head.