Journey Home

It has been a longstanding tradition in the Coming Home Network, which is located in the Diocese of Columbus, to invite the sitting bishop to share his story on The Journey Home -- even if he's not technically a convert! In the case of Bishop Earl Fernandes, there is a lot of story to tell -- from his immigrant parents' faithful handing on of the Catholic Faith, to his vocation to the priesthood, to his appointment as the first Indian-American bishop in the USA, it's a fascinating journey!

Deacon Matt Halbach grew up Catholic but wasn’t very well formed. As a young man, he began to struggle with depression and anxiety, and was even thinking of suicide at one point. In the midst of that, a coworker began to share his Catholic faith, and invited Matt back to Mass. Finally, he agreed to go, and went back to Confession. Everything changed for him from there, and he had a major conversion. He went on to do youth and family ministry, and eventually discerned a vocation to the diaconate.

After beginning a personal relationship with Jesus as a teenager, Joshua Mangels felt a call to ministry and eventually became an Assemblies of God pastor. As he studied the Church Fathers, he discovered a sacramental worldview that was completely new to him, and he had to know more. Initially, he and his wife hesitated to dig deeper for fear of risking their ministry. However as Joshua began teaching about the Fathers to his congregation, more of his members became interested in Catholicism. They connected with the Byzantine Eparchy of Phoenix, and some of the Mangels’ congregation entered the Catholic Church along with them.

Bishop James Conley was raised Presbyterian, and studied Applied Humanities at Kansas University in the 1970’s, falling in love with the Great Books. That led him to become Catholic his junior year of college. He traveled Europe for a bit after that, considering a monastic vocation, before following a call to diocesan priesthood, and eventually becoming an ordained bishop. He has since become increasingly passionate about the importance of solid Catholic education, and a powerful voice in regard to caring for mental and spiritual health in the context of the sacramental life.

Fr. Michael Nixon was born in Hawaii to parents who were Hare Krishnas. When he was in elementary school, his whole family became Catholic, which was a radical change for him. He began the process of discovery of the Catholic faith among fellow Catholics his age who had known all this stuff from birth, and that perspective as a child discovering Catholicism in the context of his family’s conversion led him to an openness to a call to the priesthood, and a desire to use his gifts to evangelize through new media.

Fr. Scott Wooten grew up firmly Anglican, but attended Catholic school. As he continued toward ordination as an Episcopal priest, he persisted in the belief that the Anglican, Orthodox, and Roman churches were all legitimate branches of the true Catholic Church, so he didn’t feel that there was ever any need for him to become a “Roman” Catholic; he considered his form of Anglicanism to be legitimately “Catholic." Eventually moral questions in the Episcopal church forced him to decide whether to stay Episcopalian or join the Anglican Church of North America. Pondering this question about the ultimate character of Christian authority, Fr. Wooten finally felt fully convicted to become Catholic, being received and eventually ordained a Catholic priest through the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter.

Dr. Matthew Wiseman was raised with strong Baptist roots, and even as a young child, he was constantly reading and studying the Bible. His family attended progressively smaller churches, and even a house church, determined to live the Scriptures as faithfully as possible. Their ongoing study of the Old Testament story led his family toward the Hebrew Roots Movement, a form of Messianic Christianity. As he grew older, he began to discover that some of these elements of Jewish patrimony had been preserved in traditional Christian liturgies, and this led him to a brief time in the Anglican world. He continued to immerse himself in the study of Scripture at St. Andrew’s in Scotland, and it was there that he finally realized that all the threads of his life had been pointing toward the Catholic Church all along.

Rhonda Gruenewald fell in love with the Church through her husband, and went on to found Vocation Ministry, which equips diocese to promote and nurture religious vocations.

After working on ecumenism initiatives as a Lutheran, Dr. Michael Root’s convictions led him to Catholicism in 2010 where he continues to be an important voice of Christian unity.

Matthew Levering found himself developing something resembling a Christian worldview through reading Dostoevsky and Walker Percy. This foundation led him to the Catholic Church.