In
the ensuing college years I drifted further and further away from the Church in
true “prodigal son” fashion, often arguing with my mother over matters of
faith. In college, I was approached by evangelicals asking, “Are you saved,
brother?,” something they did not believe of me as long as I was Catholic. The
norm would have been for this now-lukewarm Catholic to have been lured away
from the Church, but baptismal grace proved me an exception. Though I was not all that holy, I wasn’t
about to become a Pentecostal! How Our Lord led me home is outside the scope of
this endeavor; suffice it to say that there are rough parallels with St.
Augustine.
Upon
returning to the Faith I was unable to find employment in my undergraduate field,
history, and so volunteered to teach CCD in my parish, hoping eventually to
land a job there teaching history. This required me to earn catechist
certification offered by the Archdiocese of Detroit, which I did in 1978. No
sooner had I completed the requirements, when a combination Religion/History
opening occurred at a co-ed Catholic High school in inner-city Detroit. I
taught there for one year, after which I landed a job teaching Scripture (for
which I, by true Catholic standards, was woefully unprepared to do) in my
parish high school, where I remained for one year. I then took a position at a
Catholic high school in a suburb of Detroit, where I have been ever since.
Since 1995, however, and my “reversion” to the fullness of Catholic teaching, I began an extensive study of the
post-conciliar years in the United States, for which my training in history and
as a catechist at the St. John Bosco Institute for Catechetics, as well as
twenty-five years as a catechist in the Archdiocese of Detroit amply prepared
me.
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