Posted on 04/01/2008 4:23:02 PM PDT by NYer
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February 16, 2004 - Reported in Spirit Daily.com online newspaper. "In 1992 my life changed dramatically," says Father Donald Calloway. "I had a profound conversion experience after reaching rock bottom."
Rock bottom indeed! Now a 31-year-old priest who serves as assistant rector at the National Shrine of the Divine Mercy in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, Father Calloway had been a runaway youngster who was immersed in everything from drug abuse to theft.
"I had gone through all a boy could do up to the age of twenty," he says. "My mother had been married three times and we had no religion. The family was very hedonistic. There was a downward spiral in my life."
It started in Virginia Beach -- where his stepfather was based in the military -- and continued when the family moved to California. Drugs, sex, smoking, and drinking -- all by the age 11. "It escalated to the point of getting out of control," he now recounts. "We moved near Los Angeles. Then to Japan. That rocked my world."
Uprooted so continuously from friends and his environment, young Donald Calloway had decided to teach his parents a lesson. As soon as they got to Japan, he became a "living hell" for them. He tied in with the wrong crowd and started doing "unbelievable" quantities of drugs -- opium, heroin, alcohol every day, even inhaling the fumes of gasoline.
That escalated to where he ran away from the military base and fled around the foreign country, committing felonies -- stealing "massive amounts" of money, cars, mopeds. He even got involved running errands for the Japanese "mafia."
"I had no concern about anything or anybody," says Father Calloway, whose mother had a breakdown, ended up consulting a priest, and became a Catholic -- something young Donald knew nothing about. She was also forced to return to the U.S. without him. Police even tapped phones to the military base to try to get the youngster, and finally did apprehend him. When they did, Calloway spat in the face of one of the military cops. By now he was 15 with long hair and a profane mouth -- so wild that he was shackled and deported.
Thrown out of Japan, Calloway returned to the United States, where he told his mother he hated her but agreed to enter a rehabilitation center. In short order he ran away from there too and went back to drugs on an even grander scale. Heroin, crack, LSD, uppers, downers. And there were the girls. "There came a point where I started following the 'Grateful Dead' and living in places like a tree trunk," recounts the priest. "In Louisiana, I ended up in jail. It was an absolute mess."
He was a drop out, his hair down to his belt. He was tattooed. It was "a life cycle of death." There was another attempt at rehabilitation, but of course, that fell short again. In fact, the drug use got even heavier.
"Then one night in 1992 I knew that my life would radically change, that something was going to happen in my life to cause a radical change," he says. "I knew something was going to happen. Something was coming."
It was this peculiar, sudden, and powerful intuition that changed his life -- a feeling so powerful that he turned down the calls from friends to come out to party as he did on a nightly basis. He still has trouble explaining exactly what happened. The prayers of a mother?
For a while Calloway remained in his room waiting for this unknown "something" to arrive, then went to the hall looking for a magazine or book to read as he waited, guided by an amazing internal feeling. "I wanted to look at some kind of magazine with pictures while I was waiting, something like National Geographic, with pictures, and I went out there and there was a book that caught my eye," he says. "On the binding it said, The Queen of Peace Visits Medjugorje."
It was a book about the apparition site in Bosnia-Hercegovina by Father Joseph A. Pelletier and Calloway couldn't comprehend what the words meant. He wondered if his parents had taken up a foreign language! Looking at the pictures, he saw six children staring up into nothing. It was the seers during an apparition -- something he had never even heard about. He read the caption and it said they were looking at the "Blessed Virgin Mary." He was so poorly versed in religion that he didn't know who the Blessed Mother was. "I thought Jesus was like Santa Claus," he recalls. "I was a blank slate." Looking at more of the pictures, he saw other words like the Rosary, Communion, and the Eucharist that he had little idea about.
There was all this Catholic lingo, but he began to avidly read it. He couldn't put it down. "I read that whole book by 3:30 or 4 a.m. in the morning," he says. "I ate that book like it was life. I consumed it. And I said to myself, 'That is true. Everything in that book is true.' She was saying that Jesus was God, and I thought, anything she says is true. She seemed so beautiful and flawless. She captivated my heart. And I said, 'I give myself totally to this woman.'"
The young man went to his mother the next morning and told her he wanted to see a priest. She was shocked. He knew there was a chaplain on the base, and that's where he ended up going -- skipping with joy like a little boy, his long hippie hair flowing past marching Marines.
When Calloway caught up with the Navy chaplain, the priest told him to go to church and sit in the back while he said Mass, and then they would talk to him. Donald did as he was told, waiting as a small group of Filipino women recited a repetitious prayer -- which of course was the Rosary. Then came the moment that changed his life. The priest came out with robes. Calloway thought it was some kind of performance. He had no idea what was going on. "I was amazed. All these ladies were kneeling and standing at the same time."
But it just clicked. All of a sudden, this young man -- this drug abuser, this runaway -- "knew" what was happening, that what was transpiring was a "real" re-presentation of what had happened 2,000 years ago, and that it was being poured out again. "Time ceased," he says. "I saw myself at Calvary with the faithful beholding the sacrifice of the lamb." Everything about it captivated him. He felt the Presence of Christ -- knew He was there -- as the priest held up the "white circle."
He was twenty, going on 21, and "all I knew was that I was madly in love with God and Our Savior."
So touched was he by the Mass that Calloway was ready to go door to door to tell everyone about it. The enthusiasm exploded. After Mass he went home, tore down all his posters, grabbed several big black trash bags, and threw away just about everything in his room -- replacing it all with a picture of the Pope and another of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which the priest had given to him (along with a Crucifix).
"I don't remember ever having said a prayer in my life," he says of his return to his room. "I looked at the book, the six children, who were on their knees with their hands folded, and I did the same thing and just looked. I had no idea how it worked. I didn't know what was supposed to happen next. My eyes focused on the picture of the Sacred Heart and as I looked at that image something within me knew that was the God-Man hanging on the Cross -- and that everything the Blessed Virgin Mary said was for people like me.
"I cried profusely. You could have filled a bucket. I was so remorseful for the things I had done. Everything came on me at once. It was like every fluid in my body was coming out of my eyes. Yet at the same time I knew there was hope, and I was crying tears of joy. I was almost laughing. I knew that this Jesus died for me and loved me.
"After a long time I laid on the bed and for the first time in years I felt free. An unbelievable peace came over me. Something happened to me that I don't know how to explain. Right on the verge of sleep, something came from behind me and knocked me out of my body. My soul or spirit or whatever was leaving my body. I couldn't say anything, I couldn't move. The only person I knew to cry out to was Mary, and I cried out spiritually. I was terrorized with fear. I screamed with everything I had, "Mary' -- and all of a sudden I was pushed back into my body with the force of a universe come crashing down upon me and I heard the most beautiful feminine voice I have ever heard and will ever hear say, 'Donnie, I am so happy.'
"No one called me Donnie but my mother," he notes. "It was unbelievable."
And so was what was to come next:
Instantly, Calloway had lost his craving for all his vices -- from impure thoughts about women to cigarettes. There was no more desire to do anything he had been doing! "God had simply changed me, and it was unbelievable," he says. "Christ just overwhelmed me with His love. I started 'living' in the church, saying the Stations of the Cross until I was worn out, even slept in the pews. I began reciting the Rosary, wearing a scapular, reading everything I could on the saints."
He says he experienced a supernatural "infusion of knowledge" about the faith and became a Catholic within nine months.
Shortly after, he joined the Marians of the Immaculate Conception and discerned a priestly vocation.
Last September, he finally made it to Medjugorje -- where he delivered the homily as forty other priests joined him on the altar. "All I knew was that I loved Jesus," he says. "I loved every minute of Medjugorje. I'm going back in March. It's the edge of Heaven, wonderful." At the seminary, he says, most of his peers had also been there. "Our Lady is building up this army, this whole new generation, layer by layer. Rank by rank they are coming out of seminaries to take their places. There's a whole generation of priests coming, and they're just like me. No nonsense. I always tell people, get ready, because it's coming to a parish near you. We've only known one Pope, and he's a saint. We've been formed by the Blessed Virgin Mary and her apparitions. So many of the guys I knew in the seminary, they loved things like Medjugorje or Betania or Amsterdam or Kibeho. They don't have a problem with it. They bite onto truth like a shark, and they're going to be the guys in the seminaries teaching. They're going to be in the parishes. One cardinal said if it were not for Medjugorje, he would have hardly any seminarians. I compare it to Guadalupe."
Hell broke open in the Church, Calloway opines, due to a lack of emphasis on both Mary and the Blessed Sacrament. "You take away the Eucharist, and you take away a priest's passion, his understanding of who he is," he says. "And when Mary was deconstructed -- made just a sister -- it tore priesthoods apart. I attribute a lot of the problems to feminism. We need to go against that."
Homosexuals in the church are the result, he believes, of "the devil twisting" priests and seminarians. "With no Mary, there is a lack of tenderness and they seek in a new way," he asserts. On the current culture, says Father Calloway: "It's not the kingdom of Heaven. We're going back to Sodom and Gomorrah, and we're there. And we better get ready for the Father's discipline. He loves us, and because He does, He's going to chastise us." With youth, the biggest problem is indifference, he notes -- the attitude of "whatever." Everything is okay.
What is the most important thing parents can do?
"The best thing that a kid can see in the parents is for a man, a father, on his knees," says Father Calloway. "That is strength. When a man is on his knees, that is stability. When a kid sees that, it's a confessional statement. It speaks volumes. And when they see a mom and dad being kind and loving to one another, that's also important -- showing kindness to each other."
As for his conversion, Father Calloway notes: "There are no accidents in life. Everything happens for a reason, because of God the Father's plans." And as for Our Lady of Medjugorje: without her, he says, "I might be dead."
They're no longer Catholic or Orthodox. They're pagan.
Which leaves the actual Catholics, who worship only the Blessed Trinity.
So there it is ... the question was simply beneath contempt.
The Torah was memorized in the beginning, it was not written down.. Not until the Septuagint and Masoretic text was the Torah written down.. For much of Isreal's history Gods word written was not encouraged.. Even today most religious Jews hate writing Gods name down.. They omit letters(from the word) to betray this relucence.. Every synagog has shrines for the Torah.. SHRINES.. in gold and brass.. The Torah is worshipped..
No it wasnt beneath contempt.. It was just a question.. Kind of snarky but still only a question.. Excesses in all religions "happen".. even in protestant religion.. Denying the excesses displays weak arguments..
No, it was not just a question. It was a slander masquerading as a question. It was arrogant presumptuousness masquerading as a question.
"Weak arguments" are often designated by being presented as loaded questions. As in this case.
It was and is beneath contempt.
After Sinai, we have received progressive revelation, culminating in Jesus Christ, the Living Word. God's Mind, God's Wisdom, Jesus Christ is fit to be worshipped. The paper, the cloth, the binding is not. Big difference.
True I have a tendency to believe my lying eyes, I'm a terrible person..
You havn't traveled in Latin America much have you?..
The Santoria in Cuba take idols of Babalu, then mold(in clay) RCC idols of Saints(Mary) over them made to look like RCC icons.. then fire and paint them.. And then they worship Bobalu with an "infectuous grin"...
Where are those practices prescribed by the Roman Catholic Church?
They are, as I told you earlier, pagans.
The people you have described are not Catholics. They have mixed santeria (correct spelling) with aspects of Catholicism but they are not—I repeat—not Catholics in any kind of good standing with the Church.
This needs to be made perfectly clear before anyone refers to santeria as “Catholic”.
Also, I see that posters are not allowed to “read minds” on FR religion Forum.
Maybe there ought to be some addressing re: the “heart” reading that goes on here as well.
” my question is not to explain to me what the Protestant range of interpretations of the scripture is, but where the contradiction of the Catholic mariology is with the scripture.”
“I do not ask why sola scriptura people (who depend on warrants for chewing gum, apparently) do not venerate saints, I ask where Catholic praxis is contradicted in the scripture”
This request is similar to Pelosie requesting General Petraeus not to give them a positive report of the surge in Iraq.
“This is a prooftext (Luk 11:28 “But he said, Yea rather, blessed [are] they that hear the word of God, and keep it.”) for veneration of all saints, Mary chief among them.
There is nothing in the verses that says”Mary chief among them”. However, following that logic then all of the following should be equally “venerated” as Mary in RCC praxis.
Mat 5:3 Blessed [are] the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Mat 5:4 Blessed [are] they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.
Mat 5:5 Blessed [are] the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
Mat 5:6 Blessed [are] they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
Mat 5:7 Blessed [are] the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
Mat 5:8 Blessed [are] the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
Mat 5:9 Blessed [are] the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.
Mat 5:10 Blessed [are] they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Mat 5:11 Blessed are ye, when [men] shall revile you, and persecute [you], and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.
Mat 11:6 And blessed is [he], whosoever shall not be offended in me.
Jhn 20:29 Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed [are] they that have not seen, and [yet] have believed.
Rom 4:8 Blessed [is] the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.
Jam 1:12 Blessed [is] the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him.
Rev 1:3 Blessed [is] he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time [is] at hand.
Ricky Ricardo!
Well, for completeness, I think we should note that Paul doesn’t seem to agree.
Two problems: (1) The one word "rather" gets a mighty specific interpretation in your paraphrase, non impossible but not necessarily in the original.
(2)Shall we argue that Mary did not hear and obey?
Have you read the conversation so far? We've already looked at and discussed that text, and I've offered an interpretation which does not violence to the text. Not that we're done, of course.
Mary says, (Luk 1:48) “For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden: for, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.”
So it's your contention that They will call her blessed but they will be wrong to do so? The textual tradition is incomplete and the full text is:
“For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden: for, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed, darn it.”
No, what I said was,
"Jesus responds, not by denying that Mary is blessed, but says in comparative terms those are greater blessed that hear and obey.
Luk 11:28 “But he said, Yea rather, blessed [are] they that hear the word of God, and keep it.”
Jesus uses the same comparative formula concerning the righteousness of the Pharisees and the person of John the Baptist. He does not deny that the Pharisees are righteous, He says that kingdom righteousness exceeds that. He does not deny that John the Baptist is considered great, He says that those of the kingdom are greater."
Notice the "δέ" translated "but" in Luke 11:26 is the same word translated "notwithstanding" in Mat 11:11.
So, if we stipulate that some RC's worship Saints (which I don't, but were I to) then I should admit that we all do and I do and that that's what we teach? That doesn't make sense. Paul VI once prostrated himself before some Orthodox Patriarch and kissed his shoesies. Is it silly and disingenuous to question whether Paul VI was worshipping the patriarch?
What we have here is a kind of provincialism. You guys are limited in your language of gesture and consequently you see a protsration and think it is "Latria" because you cannot imainge a portration for any other reason, while we have a far more expressive and enthusiastic language of gesture.It may not be disingenuous but it's silly.
Oh yeah, and mind reading. That good old Sola Scriptura evidently has room in it for overlooking what is said about how only God can see what's going on inside. Sola Scriptura when it doesn't interfere with the assault on the Papists.
Look how ugly this has gotten. And MY part in that is because when I lay out a lengthy discussion it is completely ignored and when I refute an argument I am told I am just in a sate of denial.
And then the general statement about how all Catholics Worship Mary is excused on the grounds that some prostrate themselves before images of saints.
This is not about the Truth. It's about winning.
Regarding the "blessed", indeed all these are blessings worthy of veneration. It is primarily through the example of the saints that we learn the Beatitudes.
The fact that Mary is chief among the saints comes not from her being simply "blessed", although that she most certainly is, but filled with grace, "kecharitomene" (I am sure the "doctor" has the proper phonics on that as well), -- as a Mother of God and Queen of Heaven, through whom the abundance of grace came to un in the person of Christ.
And yes, while Mary heard the word and kept it as nobody else did, we do also venerate those whom we believe to be in the company of the blessed. Not "equally" but certainly similarly. Ever hear of the LItany of the saints? A Novena to Sainte ( A little French lingo there) Therese of Lisieux?
Then you all tell us that we are idolaters for doing so. But we DO venerate all the saints. Heck, we even have a day, you may have heard of ....
I am at peace since I have God's Holy words as my final authority, not the false traditions of men.
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