Bishop James Conley - Former Baptist and Presbyterian
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.
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Fr. Michael Nixon - Former Hare Krishna
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.
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Fr. Scott Wooten - Former Episcopal Priest
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.
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Dr. Matthew Wiseman
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.
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Rhonda Gruenewald - Former Agnostic
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.
JonMarc Grodi and his guests address the personal obstacles, doctrinal objections, and the irresistible attraction to the Church Jesus founded 2,000 years ago.
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