Why Be Catholic

By Ken Geraci

As a kid, I was forced to go to Church every Sunday. In my senior year of high school I gave up faith and religion altogether and embraced being agnostic.

I sought the American dream by co-founding a $4.5mil software company and pursued money, fitness, and success, but none of that ever satisfied or gave me peace.

One day my business partner, a devout Catholic, asked me how I reconciled my behaviors and beliefs? Through historical research, intellectual honesty and this thing called “prayer,” I moved from being agnostic, to “spiritual,” to non-denominational Christian, then, ultimately home to the Catholic Church.

Why Be Catholic? is not exactly my journey, but it is the Journey of the Church. This book will help you make sense of the logical and historical realities that reveal how and why the Catholic Church is who She says She is. This book will address the questions What Did Jesus Do – give us a Church or Bible; and how can you know?

• Language: English
• Publisher: TAN Books
• Release date: Apr 6, 2021
• ISBN: 9781505114324

Book preview

Conscience

Preface

I never wanted to be Catholic; I just wanted to be happy.

To be honest, as a young person, if someone gave me this book or invited me to hear the mission talks that this book is transcribed from, I would have simply said, No thanks. Like most Americans, I have spent a considerable amount to time, money, and effort trying to achieve my version of happiness. As a young adult, faith was never on my radar; nor was God. I was too caught up in the stream of self-interest and worldly pursuits to be bothered with such a notion of God, Faith, or Religion. If I worshiped anything, it was the un-holy trinity of me, myself, and I.

I grew up in a typical 1980s Catholic family in the suburbs of Houston, Texas. We went to Church every Sunday and we went through the motions. We always sat (or stood) in the back of the Church every Sunday, because I hated going to Mass and was often the cause of us being late. Our family went through the motions of faith: church on Sunday, CCD on Wednesday, and the notorious second collection at every Mass. I never remember hearing a homily on sin, redemption, or the Real-Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist; I also never remember talking about any of these things as a family. What I do remember is fighting my parents to get out of the house to get to Mass, fidgeting through the entire Mass, donuts after Mass, and wiping down tables after doughnuts. Yes, there was the obligatory CCD class, but that was just another classroom setting I had to sit through to graduate into adulthood. Sports, schoolwork, and activities and other family pursuits were always the focus.

My family was not immune to the difficulties of the times and entered entered into our own set of difficutlites. Between my behavioral outburst and my parents’ decaying marriage, I found myself spiraling into my own personal darkness. During my senior year of high school, my parents separated and ultimately divorced. During this time, I played my mom against my dad and I was able to give up faith and religion altogether. I thought college was the way to reach the levels of financial success that would ultimately make me happy, so I set off first to community college, then to a state university. I would love to say that I chose my university because it was one of the best business schools in Texas; that would be a lie. I went because my girlfriend attended that university; we broke up three months into the first semester.

What I have not told you yet, is that, historically, I was an academic flop. To date, I still struggle with severe ADHD, dyslexia, ocular function, and a variety of learning disabilities that make reading nearly impossible. (#irony, you are reading a book by a guy who can still hardly read.) I was a C student in high school and college; at one point in high school, my principal and guidance counselor discouraged me from attending college because I would just fail out. My saving grace in academics was the work ethic instilled in me by my parents and my own geekiness. Mom and Dad always encouraged me and my brothers to find a way to succeed and to always strive to be the best. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but it does need to be done. I slugged my way through college, never reading one of the eighty-dollar books we had to purchase, but graduated with a Bachelors of Business Administration with a 2.42 GPA by sitting in the front row and never missing a class.

At the end of my junior year of college in 1997, the internet was just merging into the mainstream and I was enamored with it. My roommate at the time was a Computer Science major and we, along with many friends, would geek out together about the latest development in technology, build computers in our living room, and play various network video games until the early hours of the morning. These interests and influences led me to choose the topic of the internet’s effects on business and marketing for my junior year term paper; I entitled the paper Nothing but Net. As providence would have it, during the semester break, two managers from the Advanced Research and Development department of a Fortune 500 computer company approached one of my professors asking if there were any students who could conduct primary market research, compile statistics, and produce reports specifically related to technology. Based on my professor’s recommendation, I was given a part-time job with this company to work directly for the Director of Advanced R&D conducting primary and secondary research on MP3 players and eReaders.

With two semesters of college left, I was working twenty to thirty hours a week in the industry of my dreams. I was surrounded by the latest technology and by the people who knew all about it. I doubled down in school, taking twenty hours each semester and working the remaining time. I slept about five hours each night. My work ethic and job performance continued to meet and exceed expectations, allowing me to transition into the software-testing department once my internship expired.

This dual discipline of having a marketing background with a deep technological understanding was exceptionally valuable. The day after my college graduation, my boss approached me about an idea for a new software company unrelated to the work we did for our current company. He said he could not pay me but would offer me a share of ownership in exchange for my efforts. On top of our regular paying jobs, five others and I began this new endeavor. After about nine months of development, ups and downs, we found a venture capital group that saw the value in the software we were developing. On April 1, 2000, an initial investment of $4.5 million dollars was transferred into our banking account. We all quit our jobs and moved to Austin, Texas, to take on this endeavor full time.

Being less than one year out of college, having my name on articles of incorporation and making a substantial salary, my attitude and ego was becoming too much. Somewhere in this journey, Mike—my boss, business partner, and friend—approached me and presented me with his experience of me. Summarizing a series of conversations, what Mike said was, Ken, professionally I have no problem with you, but personally I do. Depending on the people we are around I will hear you say that you are a Christian and even Catholic. But you have told me you do not believe in God, you do not go to Church, you do not pray, and some of the stories you tell are unbecoming a man, let alone a Christian. So which is it?

Though some would think such a challenge offensive, I know, rather, that it is evidence of true friendship. Mike was not a jerk about what he said; rather, he was pointing out the duplicity he saw in my life. Mike is a devout Catholic and has a great love for his faith and God. Seeing the duplicity in my life, he challenged me to Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ (Mt 5:37). He also went the extra step and invited me to come to Church with him and his family and to feel free to question him on articles of faith and religion.

A beautiful part of my conversion is that it started with the call to natural virtue, integrity of life, and authenticity of spirit. This simple call to let my yes be yes and no be no began to open the doors to grace. Another tremendous gift that God had given me in this journey was that of intellectual honesty—to understand that everyone approaches a situation with a bias or their own perspective—this is not a bad thing, it is just human nature. Regardless of whatever my bias might be, I was faced with the reality that I needed to be open to the question of God’s existence, the possibility that religion was by God’s design not man’s, and that sin could possibly be a real thing. I would have to lean into the questions, data, and evidence to come to a right and proper conclusion, even if that meant abandoning my then shallow belief system.

Over the next three years, God continued to put men and women in my life that would continue to challenge and encourage me. And with the benefit of hindsight, I can clearly see that God was always and ever present. I would say my conversion was equally a journey of the intellect and a journey of the heart to God. However, even as I say this, I feel this statement should be inverted. Meaning that as I tell this story, it might sound that I did the work and journeyed to God. But as I reflect, the reality is that God was ever present and feeding me every time I opened my heart or mind. One could liken my conversion to a fussy child in a highchair who is starving and screaming for food but equally fighting the parent who is trying to feed them. St. Augustine says it best in his Confessions:

Late have I loved Thee, O Beauty so ancient and so new; late have I loved Thee! For behold Thou were within me, and I outside; and I sought Thee outside and in my unloveliness fell upon those lovely things that Thou hast made. Thou were with me and I was not with Thee. I was kept from Thee by those things, yet had they not been in Thee, they would not have been at all. Thou didst call and cry to me and break open my deafness: and Thou didst send forth Thy beams and shine upon me and chase away my blindness: Thou didst breathe fragrance upon me, and I drew in my breath and do now pant for Thee: I tasted Thee, and now hunger and thirst for Thee: Thou didst touch me, and I have burned for Thy peace…. Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.¹

My reason for saying this is to emphasize the reality that God is not a uninterested or wrathful deity but rather a truly loving Father. He will tolerate bad behavior and move mountains for the sake of the needs of his child. It kills good parents to watch their children suffer, whether it is the suffering that comes from our fallen world or suffering that is self-inflicted. A a good parent’s love never fails; this is God’s love for the world, for your children, for you.

As mentioned previously, this book is adapted from the audio translation of my preached parish mission series Why Be Catholic? The remainder of this book, like my mission talks, is not my conversion story but rather the story or journey of the Catholic Church.

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