Recently, my son Peter asked whether we planned to hear Scott Hahn, who happened to be speaking here in San Antonio. By the time we looked, the event had already sold out. I asked Peter whether he was going. His answer surprised me only for a moment. “No,” he said. “I can learn more from podcasts than I would sitting through a lecture.” At first glance, that might sound like a preference for convenience. Instead, it caused me to realize something much deeper. Peter had learned to think that way because, years before podcasts existed, our family spent countless hours listening to Scott Hahn’s cassette lectures while driving across the country. Those long drives did far more than fill the miles. They helped form a habit of sustained listening, disciplined thought, and serious engagement with the Catholic faith. His answer did not mark a departure from that formation. It revealed its fruit.
https://youtu.be/QFjkWlIRHuc?si=TvQ6ehX3_KGRf7Zw
The Catholic faith was not asking me to think less rigorously than engineering, but more rigorously
I met Ted at Texas A&M in 1981. I was studying electrical engineering. By that point the habit of disciplined study had already become part of who I was. Engineering demanded careful reasoning, orderly thinking, and respect for reality. Problems could not be solved by wishful thinking or by repeating slogans. You learned to ask good questions, follow the evidence wherever it led, and build carefully upon what had already been proven. Long before I knew the phrase fides et ratio, that habit of mind was already taking shape.
My parents had given me the best Catholic education they knew how to provide. I attended Catholic schools for thirteen years and received a solid foundation during the years before the full effects of the post-conciliar confusion reached many classrooms. I was grateful for that education and assumed it had largely completed my formal religious formation. I was mistaken.
Ted was not Catholic and had never been baptized. As we began dating we also began attending St. Mary’s, the Catholic student center at Texas A&M. At first I went primarily to accompany him. I expected to enjoy the experience, but I did not expect it to change me. I thought I already knew the faith reasonably well. Surely thirteen years of Catholic education had provided what I needed. Instead I discovered how much I had yet to learn.
Looking back now I realize how providential those years were. Many Catholic universities and student centers during that period were struggling. Historical criticism had become, in many places, more than a scholarly tool. It had become a lens through which the supernatural character of Scripture and the confidence of Catholic tradition were quietly diminished. Much that had once been received with gratitude was now approached primarily with suspicion. St. Mary’s was different.
The pastor and those who formed the student community possessed a seriousness that immediately impressed me. They were not interested in chasing every new academic fashion or reshaping the faith to fit the spirit of the age. They returned again and again to the Church Fathers, to Sacred Scripture, to the living tradition of the Church, and to careful theological reasoning. John Paul II was still early in his pontificate. The Catechism of the Catholic Church had not yet been published. Many of the resources Catholics take for granted today simply did not yet exist. Yet somehow St. Mary’s already possessed the qualities that would later become so recognizable in the renewal of Catholic intellectual life: fidelity, confidence, historical depth, and a genuine love for truth.
For the first time I realized that the Catholic faith invited a lifetime of serious study. That realization surprised me. I had always loved learning. Engineering had taught me to approach difficult subjects patiently. You could not master calculus, circuit theory, or electromagnetics by skimming the textbook. You learned by working problems, checking assumptions, correcting mistakes, and gradually seeing how each principle rested upon another. To my surprise, the Church was asking exactly the same thing.
Scripture deserved careful reading. Doctrine deserved patient study. History mattered. Primary sources mattered. Context mattered. Questions were not threats to faith; they were invitations to understand more deeply. Almost without thinking about it, I began treating theology the same way I treated engineering. The same green engineering paper that held circuit diagrams and mathematical calculations soon held notes from Scripture studies and theological lectures. The notebooks looked remarkably similar. The method had not changed. I still listened carefully. I still took organized notes. I still tried to understand arguments rather than merely memorize conclusions. The method was familiar. The subject was simply larger.
Looking back across four decades, I can see that this was the beginning of something much greater than I understood at the time. I was not merely acquiring religious information. A particular habit of mind was being formed. Faith and reason were not competitors. They were companions. Reason disciplined my study of faith. Faith enlarged the horizon within which reason worked. Neither diminished the other.
St. Mary’s did not satisfy the hunger it awakened. In many ways it intensified it. Every class, every discussion, every lecture convinced me that the riches of the Catholic intellectual tradition extended far beyond anything I had yet explored. When Ted and I eventually left College Station for graduate school, I carried more than memories with me. I carried a conviction that would quietly shape the next forty years of my life. The Catholic faith was worthy of the very best intellectual effort I could give it.
That conviction would eventually lead me to new teachers, new friendships, countless hours of study, shelves filled with books and recordings, and a lifetime spent discovering that the treasures of the Church are never exhausted. The hunger had begun. It was about to meet the teachers who would help nourish it.