Discovering the beauty of the Catholic faith
“The Catholic faith is beautiful. I don’t even know how to say it. Every time I go to Mass, it’s just beautiful.”
Josh Morris of Wiscasset says that is the way he has felt since the day he walked into a Catholic church for the first time.
“It was a sensation that this is how it should be,” he says. “It was like you’re directly in the presence of God.”
Morris, who comes from a Protestant background, is among more than 180 people across Maine who became members of the Catholic Church this Easter. They include around 140 people who will be baptized and another 40 who, like Morris, were previously baptized in other Christian faiths but will be welcomed into full Communion with the Catholic Church through the reception of the sacraments of confirmation and the Eucharist.
“I know this is right. I know this is His Church,” says Morris, a member of All Saints Parish in Brunswick.
“It’s been an arrival that I had hardly dared to hope for. There’s so much about Catholic spirituality that resonates with me,” says Lucas Frantz from St. Mary of the Visitation Parish in Houlton.
“I just have this overwhelming feeling compelling me, inside of me, to follow God more. This is something that I just needed. He was calling me for something more. I had to be doing more for Him,” says Zachery DiAnni, a member of St. Michael Parish in Augusta.
These new Catholics found their way to the Catholic Church through many different paths. Morris credits his oldest son for helping him and his wife to again make Christ a priority in their lives and for introducing them to Catholicism. Morris says his son, whom he describes as a borderline atheist at the time, became curious and started doing some online research into religions, including Catholicism, a few years ago.
“He had been researching it for about a year before he started talking with us about it,” says Morris. “So, my wife was questioning him, and he had answers, just historical answers.”
Morris says his son told them that he wanted to go to St. Joseph Maronite Church in Waterville, the area where they were living at the time, to talk with the priest there. That experience led his son to Catholicism and eventually led Morris and his wife down the same path.
“We were questioning and looking into the history of the Catholic faith, and we just found so many things that made sense,” says Morris.
As a history buff, he says he marvels at the fact that the Catholic Church can be traced back to St. Peter and to when Christ was on earth. He says the consistency of Church teachings also resonated with him.
“You don’t have many different interpretations of the liturgy. It doesn’t matter which Catholic church I go to; the liturgy is always going to be the same,” he says. “I can see that this is how our Lord wanted it to be: consistent, taught the same way, because our God is not the God of confusion.”
Morris describes joining the Catholic Church like finally having all the pieces of the puzzle, a feeling shared by DiAnni.
“I feel like I’m finally putting together the puzzle pieces that God has always wanted for me in my life,” he says. “I’m 26 years old, but after everything I’ve been through, this is what I’ve always been looking for without even knowing it.”
DiAnni says he dropped out of high school his senior year and began using substances, which led to a five-year struggle with addiction. He says as he took the first steps in recovery, which included attending Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meetings, he began to feel drawn towards God.
“Everything that we talk about [in AA] always goes into the direction of God, into the direction of your higher power,” he says. “That’s what you have to do when you get clean and sober. You need to give all your problems to Him.”
DiAnni remembered that his grandfather, who raised him, had always encouraged him to someday pop his head into the nearby church, so that is what he decided to do.
“It just felt like I was where I was always supposed to be,” he says. “It just felt like I was finally taking a step in the direction that God wanted me to go.”
It would lead to a desire to be baptized and to his participation in the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults (OCIA), the process through which individuals enter the Church.
“It’s been amazing knowing that I’m learning what God wants me to learn to be better for Him. That’s what I pray for every single day: ‘God, please help me be the person that you need me to be today.’”
Jeremy Hance, from St. Paul the Apostle Parish, says he, too, struggled with drugs while attending high school. He says he went to rehab in New Jersey, where he was living at the time, and then came to Maine to participate in Calvary Residential Discipleship, a one-year program for men and women in recovery, which is part of Calvary Chapel Bangor.
After the program, he settled down in the Bangor area and got married and, along with his wife, continued to attend Christian churches and Bible studies. He says, however, with family roots in Catholicism, he also felt an attraction to the Catholic Church.
“I’ve always had this deep feeling that I would one day be Catholic. Even as a kid, I would talk to my grandparents about it,” he says.
A discussion with his wife about Catholicism and whether Catholics would go to heaven spurred him to do some online research.
“I started with some debates, and I was much more impressed with the people on the Catholic side,” he says. “Father Mike Schmitz on YouTube, he was a great resource for me. Bishop Robert Barron has been huge in my whole journey.”
He says his stepfather was also a great resource, as was Deacon Luis Sanclemente from St. Paul the Apostle Parish.
Hance says he had many questions about Catholicism, but God would always provide answers.
“It felt like every day at the start of this process, I would have this qualm with the Church—I love this so far, but I don’t know if I can believe in that—and then almost every day, God would be like, here is the answer,” says Hance.
Through the journey, Hance says his relationship with the Lord grew infinitely.
“The journey to Catholicism is all about Jesus Christ, and my relationship through that process has grown a ton to where I feel so much closer and so much more love for our Lord,” he says.
Nicholas Babaya, from St. John Paul II Parish in Scarborough, says being able to experience the love of Christ through the gift of the Eucharist is what he has been anticipating the most.
“When I came to an understanding of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, it has made me long for it very much,” he says.
Babaya, who is originally from South Africa, attended a Baptist church as a child but describes his family as “pretty nonreligious.” He says he had never been to a Catholic Mass until he moved to Maine and attended with a family he met here.
“I was really taken in by the beauty and reverence of the liturgy,” he says.
Babaya says the experience led to a lot of prayer, a lot of discernment, and a lot of online research.
“I’m quite a nerd for Christian apologetics and theology and philosophy, so I decided to really look into what was meant when Jesus says to Peter, ‘You are Peter, and on this rock, I will build my Church,’” he says.
Babaya also had lengthy discussions with a close friend from South Africa who had recently converted to Catholicism.
“I had all these questions for him—you know, the Marian dogmas and the authority of the Church, the papacy, all sorts of things that I wasn’t really used to believing as somebody who came from very much a Baptist, Protestant Christian background. He explained them to me in a way that made a lot of sense,” says Babaya.
He says he was drawn in both by the intellectual foundation for Catholic belief as well as what he describes as the “evangelical power of the beauty of the liturgy of the Catholic Church.”
“The Catholic Church really gives you a means to kind of lift yourself up and put your eyes towards God and a structure to practice religion, and I’ve never felt closer to God as a result,” he says. “It’s been a reinvigoration of my faith.”
Alina Dau, a student at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, says what she has found through the Catholic faith is a sense of peace.
“I feel like I just have a lot more peace in my life. I think that is the biggest takeaway that I’ve had since coming into the faith,” says Dau. “When I focus on Jesus and when I refer back to the faith, I just find peace.”
Dau, who grew up in Louisiana, says both her parents are Buddhists, but she never embraced any religion.
She says once she started attending Bowdoin and forging her own identity, she became curious about faith. She says a pivotal moment for her was attending the funeral Mass of a childhood friend.
“Looking at Mary and feeling the energy, it was just a really indescribable feeling. I think that is where I had my first out-of-body encounter with the Spirit,” she says. “I credit a lot of my faith formation to that experience. And with the passing, I experienced a lot of grief.”
Trying to cope with the loss of her friend, she says she tried therapy and other approaches but says it was in the Church where she found what she was seeking.
“I needed the faith to really find peace in my life and peace in myself,” she says.
Dau says she now feels a lot of gratitude and eagerness.
“Being able to be in communion with Jesus is going to be, I think, something very special,” she says.
Dau’s journey took several years, something that was also the case for Chelsie Casey of Oakfield. Casey used to attend a Pentecostal church, but as a young adult, she says she felt more connected to the Catholic Church’s teachings on marriage and social justice issues.
Despite that, she says she never thought about becoming Catholic, and it would be four years before she decided to give Mass a try.
“A lot of it was kind of putting it off, and then, after a while, it kind of felt like, how long can you put it off?” she says.
Living in Virginia at the time, she says she didn’t know anyone who was Catholic, so the experience was foreign to her.
“When I first went to Mass, I didn’t even have a view of the Real Presence in the Eucharist or anything like that. I was just feeling that it was where God wanted me, and I had to finally obey,” she says.
Casey and her husband moved to Maine after her mother-in-law, who had owned a home here, died, and that is when she connected with Clare Desrosiers at St. Mary of the Visitation Parish in Houlton.
She began participating in what was then called the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA) but dropped out, feeling conflicted because her husband was attending a nondenominational church.
“I didn’t give up on God entirely, but I wasn’t serving Him. I wasn’t doing anything on my part,” she says. “Then, this past summer, God was drawing me in. Thankfully, He’s faithful when we’re not.”
She credits Desrosiers for her understanding and welcome.
“Clare has been absolutely wonderful. The OCIA program has been absolutely wonderful at St. Mary’s. I’m really thankful for it,” she says.
It’s a feeling shared by many of the new Catholics, who praise the OCIA process.
“It’s been very positive,” says Lucas Frantz, who came from a German Baptist background and who, along with Casey, participated in OCIA at St. Mary of the Visitation Parish. “Clare is amazing. I don’t know what I would do without her.”
“We have a great support system and group, and it’s just been really welcoming,” says Breana Lane, who was first introduced to St. Benedict Parish in Benedicta through volunteering at its Vacation Bible School but then, with the encouragement of her boyfriend, joined the youth choir there.
“I just felt so welcomed,” she says. “I just felt a sense of community.”
“It always just feels like a very welcoming community,” says Valerie Sanborn, who comes from a Methodist background but began attending Mass at Good Shepherd Parish in Saco with her boyfriend. “In high school, I started going to the Catholic church, and I just fell in love with the faith again.”
“It’s been amazing. I’ve learned so much already,” says Clemi Bushiri, also from Good Shepherd Parish. “They just go deeper and deeper in explaining things.”
Bushiri, the daughter of a Muslim father and Christian mother, says she has felt drawn to Catholicism since attending a Catholic school in her home country of Angola. She says she has attended Mass for years but never received the sacraments nor understood their importance.
“It’s been an incredible journey, and I am excited to know that when I get to have children, I will be raising them all in the same faith, and we will all be on that spiritual journey together,” she says. “I am just very happy and feel blessed to be a part of all of this.”
