Journey Home

Michael Mason found his faith both challenged and deepened at the Southern Evangelical Seminary. When it all sounded more Catholic than Protestant, he came home to the Church.

After her husband died, Jennifer Southers looked for ways to grow stronger in her faith. A pilgrimage to the Holy Land led her to Catholicism and a deeper relationship with God.

Baptized Catholic, Dustin Quick experimented with Islam as a teen. But after much study, he felt the truest expression of Christianity was in the Catholic faith he’d left behind.

Growing up a preacher’s kid, Deb Scaravilli fell in love with a Catholic man. She saw differences between Catholicism and her Evangelical roots, and found her true spiritual home.

Matt Gerald, raised in a Methodist Protestant family, discovers the beauty of the Catholic faith after marrying a Catholic. The podcast explores his childhood in a Bible-based church and his struggle to convert due to familial ties. It also discusses his personal journey towards Catholicism, the authority of the Church, and embracing the sacraments and community within the Catholic faith.

Dr. Brandon Vaidyanathan, raised Hindu, discovered new perspectives on the nature of God through a Catholic youth group and embraced the Catholic Church. The podcast covers his childhood in a religious household, unanswered prayers, a transformative encounter during a retreat, journey towards belief in Jesus, and acceptance and understanding of Hinduism. It also emphasizes the importance of meaningful conversations and relationships with people of different faiths.

Erik Baldwin was serious about his Presbyterian faith, until a scandal in his congregation led him to reevaluate everything. He realized he could no longer treat his interest in Catholicism as merely an academic exercise.

Lawain McNeil grew up in a strong Christian home, and early on, felt a call to ministry. He pursued a degree in Biblical studies and ended up serving in the Church of Christ. A number of factors in his life led him to begin exploring the Catholic Faith, including an interest in the Catholic literary and artistic tradition, and friendship with others who shared his background and were also interested in Catholicism. He shares how all those threads came together as he made his way home to the Catholic Church.

Kevin Shinkle was baptized in the Church of the Nazarene, but his family left the church when their pastor told his parents they had to stop smoking, and that brought an end to Kevin's churchgoing days for a while. He went on to college, and met some friends who were devout Catholics and helped him develop an initial curiosity about the Church. When his career as a journalist began to become more intense, he decided he needed a foundation of faith, and those seeds planted by his Catholic friendships began to bear fruit.

David Dean came from a Presbyterian background, and went on to college at Kansas University. At the time, it had an Applied Humanities program that focused on classical studies. Through the course of the program, a number of the professors and students became Catholic because of what they were finding about the Church’s role in the great philosophical and theological tradition, and David ended up entering the Church his senior year of college. He went on to spend a number of years working in Catholic education, and now serves as Superintendent of Catholic Schools for the Diocese of Tulsa.