Journeys Home (37 page)

Every life's journey has its key scenes, its watershed events
that set the course for all that follow them. Mine were placed
roughly at five-year intervals from my confirmation in my native
denomination, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS), on April
2, 1978, to my reconciliation with Rome on March 29, 1998.

To be specific, just five scenes form the backbone of my journey
into the Catholic Church. My heart and mind are full of thoughts;
my bookcase is bulging with books and magazine articles that multiplied
as the journey went on. I could easily fill a special newspaper
section -- if not a full-length book -- with the things that seem
absolutely essential to understand how this born, bred and convicted
conservative Lutheran ended up in the Catholic Church!

But throughout these five scenes, the issue of justification was
there all the time. If you grow up in the LCMS and really believe
what it teaches, it can't be otherwise. Of all the thousands of
Protestant denominations, few are more dedicated than the Missouri
Synod to preserving the original arguments with Rome -- especially
when it comes to justification, the article on which Luther said
the Church stands or falls.

To Catholics then and now, the key issue in the Reformation is
authority: Luther's rejection of the doctrinal authority of the
pope and the Magisterium of the Church. And, indeed, the continuing
rejection of that authority is very important to Lutherans. But
it's not the first issue they talk about.

Justification comes first -- for Luther and the Reformers couched
every disagreement in terms of their conviction that the Catholic
Church doesn't believe that salvation comes through Christ's free
gift, but from performing this sacrament, that rite, this prayer
to Mary, that indulgence.

Almost any spiritual journey from Wittenberg to Rome (especially
if it detours through Missouri) hinges totally on that conviction.
Unless Lutherans perceive common ground with Catholics on justification,
Catholics can't hope to get Lutherans to listen to the Church's
views on authority, Mary and the saints, purgatory, and indulgences
and the sacraments, especially the Eucharist. Unless the cornerstone
of Lutherans' mighty fortress against Rome is removed, the rest
of the wall won't fall.

Let's go back to the place where my fortress was built.

I recall being in a classroom in 1978 in a Lutheran school in
western Nebraska, not too long before my confirmation. My pastor
drew a diagram on a chalkboard to outline the differing beliefs
about what happens when the Words of Institution are spoken in
the Eucharist. The Catholic section of the diagram said only "body"
and "blood"; the Protestant section, "bread" and "wine." The Lutheran
one linked "bread" to "body" and "wine" to "blood," showing Luther's
belief in Christ's Real Presence "in, with, and under" the bread
and wine. Catholics believe in transubstantiation, Pastor said;
Protestants believe the Eucharist is only a symbol. Both were
wrong; Luther was right. This is where our synod stands.

Missouri is big on taking stands. The synod's founders were Saxon
Germans who immigrated to America in 1839 rather than submit to
the forced union of Germany's Lutheran and Reformed (Calvinist)
state churches. The first LCMS president, the Rev. C. F. W. Walther,
firmly believed in the doctrines espoused by Luther and his fellow
German Reformers, especially as expressed in the Lutheran Confessions -- the doctrinal statements adopted by Lutherans in the 1580
Book
of Concord.

Walther's beliefs have been enshrined in the Missouri Synod since
its founding in 1847. Article II of the LCMS Constitution makes
it crystal clear what every member congregation must uphold: "the
Scriptures of the Old and the New Testament as the written Word
of God and
the only rule and norm of faith and of practice"
and
the Lutheran Confessions
"as a true and unadulterated statement
and exposition of the Word of God"
(emphasis added).

That constrains Missouri's members to stand firm against all who
believe otherwise -- even if they're in another Lutheran church
body, even if they're part of the LCMS itself. During my childhood
(I knew nothing of this before college), most of the faculty and
students of the synod's flagship seminary in St. Louis walked
out in 1974 after a majority of delegates to the previous year's
LCMS convention declared they were drifting too far from Missouri's
historic course and too close to liberal theology and its denial
of scriptural authority. (A number of congregations followed them
out and eventually joined two larger church bodies in the 1988
formation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.)

These beliefs also commit the LCMS to the German Reformers' litany
of objections to the Catholic Church's teachings: Catholics believe
salvation depends on your works; they place the pope above the
Bible; they pray to Mary and the saints; they believe in purgatory;
they accept seven sacraments, not two; and, of course, they insist
on this "magic show" called transubstantiation.

I absorbed all these objections, along with the absolute emphasis
on justification by grace through faith as the chief cornerstone
of Christianity. Christ died on the cross to save us from our
sins. We're born sinful; there's nothing we can do to earn salvation.
We are saved only through God's free gift of faith through Christ's
sacrifice on the cross. And we need that free gift throughout
our lives, for the Christian is both saint and sinner -- always
prone to fall into the trap of believing he or she can make it
to heaven without God's help.

There was no doubt whatever in my mind about it; indeed, no one
in my family doubted it. My Danish maternal grandmother summarized
it best when recalling her own childhood a century ago: "We knew
what was right, and it never occurred to us to do otherwise."

Which only more strongly poses the question: Given my background,
how on earth could I end up Catholic?

On one level, the answer is easy: It was God's grace. More to
the point, He preserved me from the depth and intensity of the
Missouri Synod's official feelings regarding the Catholic Church.
For if you believe the Confessions are drawn from God's Word,
you also commit yourself to believing "the pope of Rome and his
dominion" (to quote a 1932 LCMS doctrinal statement) are the Antichrist:
Luther's incendiary charge against those who threw him out of
the Church.

That simply wasn't part of my training. Young Missouri Synod Lutherans
aren't taught the entire contents of the Lutheran Confessions.
They are expected to read and master Luther's
Small Catechism,
which certainly includes the key elements of Lutheranism: the
stress on justification, the views on the Real Presence. But you
won't find the word "Antichrist" -- or any anti-Catholic polemics -- anywhere in it.

Though my pastor taught the theological differences with Rome,
he didn't teach the polemics, and he didn't call the pope the
Antichrist. And the standard LCMS confirmation vow requires a
new member to confess belief in Lutheran teachings "as you have
learned to know it in the
Small Catechism
," not the Confessions
as a whole.

So I didn't carry all the anti-Catholic baggage into life as an
adult Lutheran. But I believed the Missouri Synod's take on Rome's
beliefs as firmly as Luther ever did.

Fast-forward a few years to 1983. I was alone in a hotel room
in Germany on the Fourth of July, the last day of a five-week tour
with my LCMS college choir in honor of Martin Luther's five-hundredth
birthday. I was paging through my Bible, writing in my diary,
looking for answers to reconcile what I believed about justification
with what I'd witnessed among our group.

I had entered that school a year before with the intention of
becoming a music teacher in LCMS high schools. The European tour
changed my life. We sang in beautiful cathedrals, drank in the
sights of our ancestral land and even sang a surreptitiously scheduled
concert behind the Iron Curtain in a tiny, embattled church in
Leipzig in what was then East Germany.

Those were the high points. They weren't why I was in that room.

Several of the choir members -- people planning to be pastors,
teachers, church musicians -- largely abandoned the pretense of
consistently living their faith while they were so far from home.
Some of them drank to excess, which didn't help. But they also
ridiculed those who suggested they weren't setting a good example.

And the leadership of the choir, all too often, sided with them.

We were all young; I know I didn't handle my own reactions as
well as I should have. But the experience shattered my beliefs
about who we were and what we were supposed to be doing. It wasn't
that I expected people not to sin; I learned my confirmation lessons
too well for that. But these ministers-in-training not only were
sinning ... they didn't seem to care.

So there I was, trying to make sense of what had happened, asking
myself: Was I wrong? I found myself in Paul's letter to the Romans,
the epistle Luther used more than any other in building his theology
of justification.

"What shall we say then?" Paul writes in Romans 6:1 - 2. "Are
we to continue in sin so that grace may abound? By no means!
How
can we who died to sin still live in it?"
He emphasizes and expands
on the point in Romans 8:9: "But you are not in the flesh, you
are in the Spirit,
if the Spirit of God really dwells in you.
Any one who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong
to Him" (emphasis added).

Then, in Romans 8:12 - 14, Paul lays it on the table for Christians
who are tempted not to live the life to which Christ has called
them:

So, then, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live
according to the flesh -- for if you live according to the flesh
you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds
of the body you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of
God are sons of God.

I wasn't wrong. Here was the proof in the Scriptures. We can't
sin without consequences, even after we've been justified by grace
through faith. God expects His people to shine their lights all
the time, not just during the concert; to live their faith at
all times, not put it away when it's time to have fun. To do otherwise -- to sin and not care -- is to throw away that undeserved gift
of grace through faith in Christ.

At the time, that discovery saved me from total disillusionment
in my Lutheran faith. It also started me down the road toward
the Catholic Church -- though it would be years before I understood
how important, both personally and theologically, that moment
would be.

I came home deeply conflicted about God's plan for me. I didn't
think I could function in a ministry that appeared to tolerate
such a gap between belief and practice. Then, quite unexpectedly,
I got a call from the publisher of my hometown newspaper, for
which I had written a column on high school activities. He wanted
me to fill in for the rest of the summer for a sports editor who
had suddenly quit.

I enjoyed it and found my niche. And after I returned to college
that fall, opportunities in journalism kept coming my way without
my asking for them. After a month, I decided God was giving me
a different mission. I transferred at semester's end to the University
of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), home to one of the nation's best journalism
programs. I've been a journalist ever since.

Less than five years later, on May 28, 1988, I stood before a
Catholic altar on my wedding day. Not only had God yanked my professional
life in a different direction; He had sent me my life's partner
from the most unexpected of directions. My three years at UNL
had been everything I hoped for -- in every area but one. I was
fortunate to land in an LCMS campus ministry full of young people
who lived their faith amid the admittedly more hostile atmosphere
of a secular university. I wrote for and eventually edited the
ministry's monthly newsletter when I wasn't studying or writing
for the main UNL campus newspaper, the
Daily Nebraskan.

But I had hoped for, tried for, and frankly embarrassed myself
in the quest to find a woman to share my life. Simply put, I crashed
and burned. My last hope among the women I met at UNL faded for
good soon after I left for my first job in North Platte, Nebraska.

Or so I thought.

Quite unexpectedly, a friendship with my copy desk chief at the
Daily Nebraskan,
Joan Rezac, began to blossom. I nearly missed
the signals when she started hinting she was interested in something
more, but I came to my senses just in time. On April 5, 1987,
I asked her on the phone: "Are we moving beyond a friendship?"

"I'm glad you called," she said. "The thought had crossed my mind!"

Right then, I knew -- absolutely
knew
-- the search was over.
I can't explain why, and I didn't tell Joan until much later.
But the phone calls and trips back to Lincoln for dates proved
it. Here was a fellow journalist who loved music and seemed to
understand me better than anyone ever had.

I can't do justice in this short space to how perfectly Joan fit
into my life, other than to say I've never doubted in the years
since that phone call that she was, and is, God's precious gift
to me. But she was Catholic.
Catholic
.

Why, God? Why did you send me a
Catholic
? This surely can't work
... can it?

We started working on the answer only a few weeks into our relationship.
I gave her a copy of Luther's
Small Catechism,
while she gave
me a Catholic catechism she had studied in her confirmation class.
Naturally, as a good Missouri Synod Lutheran who knew Catholics
were wrong, I figured I had the tools to wake Joan up. If we were
to have a future as a couple, I had to.