 I started out with a wife, and we had a baby. Changed everything. I probably can't see it, but this was us, and we just had our first baby. I had hair. I had a lot of hair. Before I was married, it was down on my shoulders because then back in the heavy days. So I did have hair at one time. The number one question, I'll show you this picture too. That was 44 years ago. This is today. You can't see it, but now that's a picture of 19 grand. I have to say that my credentials for doing this is that I've learned everything the hard way. All of those kids are Catholic, and they are all nationally Catholic. And because of that, I guess my wife and I figured we must have done something right, and so I have shared with people what we did, and we really did intend to be radical about it. We never were normal. And our kids even said, yeah, mom has always been crazy. I remember when our child, by the way, I'm going to go through this paper, just hold on to it, all right? We'll talk about that in a minute. I'll just say a few disclaimers. I'm not a psychologist or a doctor. I ended up going to one day of college, and I'm not an expert on any of this and family counseling. I just have done it. I've lived with a woman not for 45 years, and I think I understand them better than I did before. And I've learned everything the hard way, and this is only a summary that we're going to talk about today. And I want to save a major part towards the end of this talk for questions, because I know a lot of people have questions. And hopefully, though, in a few things that I share, we'll answer some of those questions and we'll cover to the main. Those things will be less. So my wife and I, when we got married, I was only 21 and she was 19. And we were both evangelical Protestants. We didn't become Catholics for the other 18 years. Even as evangelical Protestants, we understood what marriage was, not as a covenant like the Catholic Church does, but we knew that a man and a woman were supposed to be married for a lifetime. And so we made a business plan. As soon as we got married, even in the process, and it was only two points, a business plan, we were going to prove to the world that a man and a woman could live together for a lifetime and stay faithful to each other with Jesus Christ as they head to their home. The second one is that we were going to prove to the world that you could raise good kids who would do the same. And everything in our life was focused on that. That was our mission statement. What I did for a living was not as important. Everything was focused on that. What I did for a living was done in order to facilitate that business plan. So anybody asked me, oh, where are you? I said, I'm a Christian and a father. Well, I mean, what do you do? I said, that's a totally different question. What I am is a Christian, a disciple of Jesus Christ, and I told people that all the time. That was our goal. I remember Al Crestor, most of you know him from Catholic Radio. We've been best friends since 1983. We do the math. That's a long time. And we were both just married, and we've been married a little bit, but we had little kids. But we decided together we're going to be very radical, and we'd help support each other. And we're going to homeschool our kids. I'll get to that in a minute. And we were going to raise our kids in a very radical, counter-cultural way. But what I'll tell you, things weren't anywhere as near as bad back then as they are today. But we still knew they were bad and getting worse. And we said, we're going to raise our kids very radical. We are going to live radical and be an example for our kids. And I'm going to let somebody else teach our kids. We're going to live a radical Christian life. And it's going to be the center of our life. Everything else we do falls into that. That is the important thing that we're going to do. And it was very fun because now Al, I think, has 18 grandchildren. And he is, with all of his kids now, they're all marvelously Catholic too. And we said, you know what, Al? Our scheme, we raised a lot of it against them. It worked. Now, I'm not saying that to make anybody feel bad. There's no perfect families. And we had a daughter that decided she didn't want to be Catholic and took operate years. It can happen to anybody. Not all families are different. You cannot control the kids. It's like God gives them free will and I had to respect their free will too. I remember when my daughter, she was 18, she decided to have, I don't think I'm going to be a Catholic. She wouldn't have problems with her older two brothers and sisters who were very Catholic. She didn't want to be held to that standard. So the best thing was to just squirt out and say, I'm not going to do it at all. And I said to her, shut up. And I said, that's fine. You're a very smart girl. So I had no problem going, okay, you're so smart. I know you'll be back and it won't take you long. And if you're not, then you're not as smart as I'm giving you credit for. And we just continued to love her and be a good example. I didn't push it. I didn't shove it at her. And eight years later, we started seeing on Facebook that she's picketing up abortion clinics and she decided to go to confession. So she should go back to mass. And then she was on fire more than just about anybody. And she said, but just don't tell me. So I'm just talking to you from experience. And all families are different. There's success stories. There's not success stories. People say, Steve, you're just lucky. Well, I probably am. I'm probably less than lucky. But I also had to say that we intentionally decided to do what we were going to do. We always viewed our family as a club. And I told our kids right from the beginning, this is a family club. Nobody can join this club. You have to be born into it and you're damn lucky you're in it. Because this is a cool club. We're going to have fun. We're going to have fun together. We're going to be loyal to each other. You know when you get older, you're part of the club. And then your kids will be part of the club too. And you're going to have a good time together. And don't you ever do anything stupid and get kicked out of this club. They wanted to be a part of that whole story that was being written. Where I also have always explained it as a great master. We're painting on the wall of a great canvas. And we're painting it together as a family. And we make mistakes and we go back and fix it. And we get the rank oils and paints. And we go and we fix it and we write our paints. And some day I said to the kids, this is going to be our masterpiece. And I want to see it hanging in the halls of heaven. I want God someday to look at our family and see that our urgency. That's what it was supposed to be. So I set the bar high for our kids right from the beginning. I set the standards very high. We are going to live this way. You are going to live this way but it's going to be a darn lot of fun. We're going to have fun being Christians. And we did. We had a lot of fun and we made it fun. Everything he did was around that. And I remember the kids with my wife's at Jehovah's Witnesses would come to the door and knock and I'd be at work that day. And she'd say, oh, of course we love to study with you. We're very open to learning more. And I'd get home and she'd say, Steve, the Jehovah's Witnesses are coming on Tuesday. And what were the kids' reactions? Oh, cool. Dan's going to argue with them. They were lying to sit up on the floor and they wouldn't miss one word of that. And then the Mormons came the next week. And then we had some atheists come in and we debated them. And then we started the Bible study in our house and the kids wanted to be part of it and we did fun things in the Bible. So we always treated our kids as equals and we always treated that they were always included in what we were doing and it was always going to be fun. It wasn't just going to church on Sunday and leave it up to the CCD teacher to teach the kids. No, this was our job. And I remember my wife in 1977. We had Cindy in 1978. She said, Steve, this girl's never going to go to public schools. She said, one out of five graduate, they can't read. And all of them are graduating now thinking that they crawled out of the muck. And my kids are going to know. My kids said they were made in the image of God. And so it was illegal in Michigan. And this is how radical we were in every way. It was illegal in Michigan. They were taking kids away from their parents, putting their parents in jail, putting the kids in foster homes for education on the black. This was in Michigan in the Aims. We moved out to the country. We bought an old farmhouse. We were going to heck out in the country. And we disappeared for eight years and homeschooled our kids. Nobody even knew that we existed. When the school bus came by, I told the kids, you have to come in at 3 o'clock because the big yellow dragon's going to go down and work out and have children. They knew I was being funny about it. But they also knew my point. And they, all of them, went through a period of, I don't want to do homeschooling. Look what we're missing out on. But all of them now thank us. And they're all homeschooling our grandkids. The, there are so many things to begin with. I just, my grandson, when I first gave this talk, his name is Sebastian, he was 10 years old. I said, Sebastian, I'm going to talk to people about how to keep their kids capped. What should I tell them? This 10-year-old kid said, this is my grandson. He said, pray with them, teach them. But if you don't practice it, they will fall away. This 10-year-old kid told me that. If you don't practice it, they will fall away. In other words, I've come to the conclusion that kids will love what their parents love. Not always. But if a father spends all of his free time sitting on the television, drinking beer, eating potato chips, and watching sports, what are his kids going to do? They're probably going to do the same thing. If you love the Lord and you evangelize, my dad was this way. I remember, this is probably how I got it. I got it from my dad because he had just from a pagan beer drinking cigarette, smoking, chasing around. In 1953, he became safe. In one moment, he dropped all of that, and I was born a year later, and my dad used to hand out tracks to everybody, and he talked to everybody about the Lord. Once I went to an ice cream store, he bought two ice creams, and he saw a poor man sitting on the ground behind the ice cream store. Next to that man by the dumpster said, Sir, would you like an ice cream from the man? He said, yes, I would. My dad says, good. Enjoy that ice cream, and while you eat it, let me tell you about Jesus. This was the way my dad raised me. He taught us to do that. He had tracks in his pocket everywhere he went to. He was giving people tracks about Jesus. Loaning them money, praying for them everywhere we went. And so that's what I did with our kids. And Janet came right along with me because she was excited about it, too. And so this is the way we raised our kids. We raised our child in the way he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it. And that's not a promise. It's a proverb. It's a statistical statement. If you raise up a child in the way you should go in the long run, it's a pretty good chance he's going to stick with it. So I'm going to just do some... I want to watch that. I don't go past 20 after, so we have a lot of time for questions. So, and I want to deal first with raising kids so that they will stay Catholic, or hopefully will. And then I want to do what happens with those who left. And now what do we do? We're in a mess, and I bet you there's for everyone in here that's here to hear about how to keep kids Catholic, there's nine in here that are here to find out what to do about the kids that didn't stay Catholic. So I'm going to treat you all fairly, as best we can. So I wanted to just touch on some of these first. This is the number one question I get in conferences, so I know how important it is. The best thing you can do to keep your kids Catholic and solid citizens is to have a father in the home who is acting as a father. There is no substitute for having a father in the home. In Detroit, there is 50% illiteracy. 75% of the children in Detroit do not have a father living with them. And then you hear the statistics that the prisons are full of black young men and it's because we're all racist, right? It's because those young men don't have fathers. I talk to a lot of people who work in prisons and they say that I when you go to the prisons, there's not one of those young men in that prison that had a father racing. When you have in the black community in general, 75% of boys are raised without a father. The Hispanic community is 50% and the white community is 25%. They have fathers homes. This didn't happen back when I was a kid. This is something that is now because of the whole welfare state and the whole drop in morals that it's now almost an honorable thing to get a divorce and leave your life with the kids and so on. It's a big mess. But the number one thing that we can do to keep kids Catholic and sensible is to have a father in the home who's a strong father and who's leading the family. It's not possible for everybody. There are people whose husbands have died or they've left and this is not possible for everybody. So we have to then make alternatives like find good male figures for them. We would just take a photo just to Wisconsin and there was some grandparents there and they had a 10 year old boy with them. I said just your grandson. They said no. He's just a boy without a father and we kind of adopted him so he can have a day out there. And so we can maybe find situations where a man can do for his children in that home is to love their mother. I'm not saying not go to church or anything but the number one thing that father can do for his kids is to love their mother but the kids know he loves and respects their mother. When our family their kids always knew I loved my wife and I used to kiss her in front of them and hug her and all this and they and their friends would come over and I'd kiss her and hug her and they'd say, dad, dad, that's embarrassing but the kids were astounded because they never saw their parents do that and the kids show and demonstrate the love of a father for his wife and the mother of the kids. That's a very powerful thing and the father also should be keeping peace in the home and controlling the family and not letting the kids be little rebels. There's two often at home today, kids run the house they scream and they cry and everybody just wanted to know what to do and the kids get away with everything and when they get over they think they can get away with everything too. You don't have to raise your voice to your mother. You raise your voice to your mother you say no to her, you had me to deal with and boy did they find the wrath of dad once in a while and then put it to this day they had to order their mother. So the father is the domestic priest he is the head of the home. The men need godly examples and girls also need the love of a father because if they don't have a love and the appreciation and the father telling them how beautiful they are and I remember when my daughter started getting breasts and they go dad it's kind of scared you don't want to grab my daughter, sit around my lap and tell her how beautiful she is tell her she's gorgeous and I love her I'm going to hug her every day of her life she didn't have to go out and find some sleaze bag in the back of a car because dad loved her and she was never going to jeopardize that and she didn't have to find the appreciation of a male figure in her life because dad loved her. Dad still sat around his lap and hugged her and kissed her at a red bookstore and right in the family, that's the way it should be and the father sets the whole tone for the family one of the things we did and if you want to keep your kids Catholic just get rid of the television and that's saying get rid of the box with the screen but go behind it and cut all the wires that can have to take we all have televisions big wives from televisions and guess what we watch I love Lucy Andy Griffin all the great movies from the past where they still boy was a boy and a girl was a girl you know if two naked women came to your house and said can we come in and spend the evening with your children what would you say? get out of here I'd say a lot more than that they wouldn't walk away very healthy but as soon as you kick them off your front porch you come in and turn on the television and what are your kids watching all the evening most of the time without any parental guidance or they have their computer up in their bedroom and they flip on porn hub or something else and watch that because kids do that they're curious and mom and dad don't have a clue most of the time we've had television but it was not connected to anything we watched DVD back in those days it was video concession most of the time but now we have DVDs and we stream things and we have very careful selection of what we have and it's fun because there's none of those nasty girls commercials and we can sit and watch movies or the kids and we can pause it and get ice cream and we can talk about what we're seeing we have never ever watched a movie where we didn't stop and discuss it along the way I know that people say shut up I don't watch the movie but I wanted my kids to learn how to think about what they're seeing and to think about how to don't just take it but think about it the most important thing is to get rid of the television and spend time with kids reading books with me you know one of the reasons I am who I am today is because my dad always had the same job at Ford Motor Company for 35 years he never got promoted we never had a lot of money we always had a simple house we never went on vacation we never went somewhere else and I asked my dad when I got over dad why in the world did you never get promoted you were an excellent employee at Ford Motor Company you should have been the head of it by the time after 35 years he said well Steve said I didn't offer promotions all the time he said they called me into the office he said Charlie we got a promotion for you he said but I always asked him a question he said do I have to work evenings and weekends and he said of course it comes with a responsibility I am very sorry because I have three boys at home that need me more than Henry Ford does and this is the result of that this is why I am willing to work because even when I was 15 I was raised in the 60s I was already 73 I went through that bad time and I would I never did drugs I never once did I do drugs all my friends are doing LSD come on Steve you're a chicken you're a chicken I said no I'm not I said my dad loves me and I'll never do anything to hurt my dad now if I hadn't had a dad like that if my dad gave his life to his work and never was home guess what I would have done I wouldn't be standing here in front of you today where I have a whole different story but because of my dad and mom my mom decided to stay home she could have gone to work too maybe they could have gone on a cruise once a year but I bought a nicer car without the rusty fenders slapping when they drove but they didn't and because of that I'm here and now it's rolling down to my kids and down to my grandkids so this is how we keep kids Catholic is we have a home we have a family that emphasizes the things that are important that puts Jesus Christ at the center that gets rid of the television and spends time reading stories together none of my grandkids have televisions all of them have TV screens but they don't have television all of them have my son has one of those big minivans big Mercedes cars he's got eight kids now number nine's on the way and they drive around a lot and the whole top of that book he put bookshelves and the whole top of that van has over a hundred books in there that the older ones read to the younger ones while they drive and this is what they do for fun and this is what we need to do as a family because most of our kids are being educated by television they're being educated by friends at school they're being educated by their neighbor kids and bad company corrupts good moves another thing is the father should be in charge of teaching the kids we give it up to the CCD director or the teacher at school even if your kids go to public school some people may not have the option of the money to go to a private school or the homeschool or something like that but even if they go to the school the father and the mother need to be still their primary educator you need to overrule that the teacher teaches them if you have to you need to know what they're being taught you have heard all about the Louvre County and New Jersey and the things that they're teaching the kids today they're stopping the third and fourth graders deciding what would you like to be a boy or a girl next they're going to ask would you like to be a dog maybe you can if you really feel like going on all fours maybe you could identify as a dog who knows what's going to happen in the future but the father and the mother should be overseeing it even if they go to a Catholic school not everything that's taught in the Catholic school is correct so many people say my kids went all the way through Catholic school and they still left and somebody said to me today a Jesuit school boy when our kids went to we homeschooled them all the way through and that was tough took a lot of commitment, Janet could have worked she stayed home and took care of the kids and raised them and the boy was like glad I did because her sister has three kids that went out and just profited drugs, sex, everything else one time we thought you were crazy for homeschooling but we should have done and we would have had different results so that is an important thing now when it came to college I told my kids knowing what college is due to kids I think the vast majority of Catholic kids that go into a university come out on the other end having lost their faith people came up to me today I don't know how many told me that that my kids were great Catholics but they went through four years of college and they came out on the other side of the team they said don't believe anymore they gave it up now they don't I told my kids you can go to any university in the country you want to go to I won't stop you go to anyone you want but I will pay for these five I'll be Maria Steubenville and guess which ones they went to the ones that I offered to pay for and I also told them I'll pay for the whole thing I don't care even if I take loans out or whatever I'll pay I don't want you to graduate I'm not everybody can do that my son has eight kids and he can't do that they're doing a lot of work the Lord bless us I have to do this but I said you have to get straight A's to get that kids will live up to the standards that you give them usually my kids all got straight A's it's not because they're smarter than many other kids because my son got a B one time in math that he paid for the next semester because I'm not a tough dad I don't care it's not fair you knew the rules but this is the way we can do it you've got the money you've got the money in your pocket you can control them to a great degree which schools are you going to go to this one this one this one and we made our kids do the first two years at the local community college so they stayed at home that way I knew what they were doing and who their friends were and I knew they were going to be serious before getting big money for them to go somewhere else so the first two years they got the basics done at the local community college near home then they stayed home and then after they proved themselves to me then I went out and my daughter graduated my oldest daughter graduated from Steubenville she graduated here with her degree in philosophy and she also got her MRS degree here now some of you know what that is it's a joke Mrs she found her husband here and she got her MRS Mrs Cindy Brown and he got his PhD in theology and they went to Catholic University after that and the parents so because kids will love what parents love it's you have to be living the faith you can't just assume it's going to come out all right if you go to Mass and send them to CCD it has to be where you actually are living this yourself and enjoying it and having fun being Catholic imagine if you go to Mass and with the kids and you come home and say Christy just went on and on again what a boring homily and you know at least these people it's not friendly and growling you're playing all the way home from church you think the kids are going to want to do that and they get old and if the parish that you go to isn't a lively parish doesn't have it I know people sometimes live where there's not I always I am one who says vote with your feet because that's the parish you go to I'll give you an example we raised our kids at Christ the King in Ann Arbor it was a charismatic parish 23 men in the seminary at one time on it that one parish they had life team kids come to the life team they had parties together my kids went there and they said they had one of the reasons we're Catholic today is because of where you took us to Mass and we met friends and they had life team and the team was stupid and built conferences they wanted to go to the local and near him on the other side of town and it was kind of a liberal one but it was close to home and all three of his kids are gone and he said I should have gone to Christ the King too so find a parish because you want to have your kids involved find a parish if you can if you don't even have that get them involved in other good things there's a lot of things in the Catholic world today finding them, look for them the Steubenville youth conferences they're a great great advantage of those kind of things with the kids do things as hobbies together I think number one thing too is to teach your kids to be rebels kids are already going to be rebels God has built into them a mechanism that when they get into their teams they start to break away from their family they're going to go out on their own they can't be mama's boy all the time as they get older there's this independence God built into them it's not a bad thing that they start to get independent and want to do their own things and go their own way that's built into them by the very nature of who we are but you can control that to some degree you can control that and use it and channel it and I told our kids from the very beginning we're going to be rebels in this house I want you all to be rebels and I remember one time my son came home with his friends and he said dad we went to the cedar point big ass roller coasters and stuff and my son had picked five guys, they were friends together from our parish and they had what they called a babelert sounds pretty bad, doesn't it but what it was was that he said dad we came up with a babelert today because when we were at the amusement park half the girls don't wear any clothes and he said whenever one came walking down the road whoever saw it first would go babelert babelert and we'd all look the other way we decided that we're going to keep our eyes pure for our bride, for our wives and so all of us guys got together and we made this club and we had the babelert morning and he came back one day and he said dad I think I'm going to get a tattoo and some earrings I said not in this house, you're not going to first of all, but why would you want to he said dad we want to be different we want to be different in standout I said so you want to be different we want to be interesting in tattoos well how is that going to make you different I said son if you want to be different and you want to stand out being authentic Catholic you can't stand out more than being authentic Catholic you're going to get nervous all the time and that kid took me up on it he got his first car when he was 16 he'd been saving money for it, I also talked to kids how to use money from the very beginning and then he got in and his buddies went to, he picked up this car these two big sheets of plywood and he painted big pro life signs and he drove all through Ann Arbor which is one of the most liberal towns in Michigan in our university town and they drove around all day with those big pro life bumper boards on their car and he said dad we never had more fun in our lives he said it's fine guys he said everywhere we go they're giving us something and he said God loves you too save the babies they're so lucky on the screen and then they came back and they smoked cigars in the garage and played cards the rest of the night but we made Catholicism fun be a rebel go ahead and smoke cigars our kids they could always have glasses of wine and beer with us it's better to do it here than out with people out on the street there was no big deal I remember when my daughter was 8 years old Cindy all she was hearing about was this rock music Michael Jackson and all this rock music and she wanted to start wearing a white glove and do all this stuff so I said the best way to deal with this is to pull the fuse out of the bomb before it ever gets lit if she wants rock music I'll give her rock music I said how would you like to go down to Joe Louis arena to a rock concert I took her down to a real rock concert where everybody smoked marijuana and we didn't get home until 3 o'clock in the morning I had the youngest date of anybody that rock concert she was 8 years old I wanted her to see what it was and she saw as we went out into the car people puking in the parking lot sick hanging over their cars puking and vomiting everywhere and I said see this is what this lifestyle does Cindy do you want to live like this these are the kind of people that come to rock concerts look at the result of it and I watched her the day after she was with her friends and they said how was the rock concert what was it like she said it was no big deal I think I prefer the wall be I heard her say because we taught our kids to think I took her to places and showed her things under my wing of protection and when she got older I heard her talking to a bunch of kids because she's a professor now and she said to them I never did drugs in my whole life I never drank anything except with mom and dad at the dinner table I never drank outside I never did drugs I never had sex before marriage and I'll tell you why because my dad taught me he showed me he took me places I saw the people who do drugs and drink I saw the people who do this I took her down on the street and he tried and I showed her the prostitutes of my kids and I said you know what they do for a living this is what you end up doing teaching in class and saying the reason I never did any of those things is because my dad took the time to love me and take me places and show them to me and teach me how to think about morals in life this is how you keep your kids Catholic it takes time it takes an investment it takes a lot of energy to do it now this handle let's talk about this they actually stapled it wrong so if you just do this you're not on the top now you've got it right this is the kind of thing I did for our kids this is and after this I'm going to switch to getting kids back and then we'll go to question this is something I made for our kids it's called if you were a detective whether you like it or not since you live here and what I did is I showed the two possibilities there are only two possibilities of how we get here this is really powerful today because all of this atheism is coming in this anti-God all the nuns we're non-religion we want to be spiritual maybe but we're not religious and we don't believe and we certainly aren't going to be Catholic so what I did is I made this up for the kids and I said that there's only two possibilities of how we got here we got here by time plus chance plus matter matter in the universe is eternal and that's all there is that's eternal and somehow just by time plus chance plus random mutations you and I end up here which really doesn't make a lot of sense it takes a whole lot more faith to believe that than it does if there's a God who created us the other possibilities are something else that's something has to be eternal whether it's matter, time, space and chance or the other possibilities that there's something personal a person, something else that's personal that is the other possibility or something that's eternal and then you start going through like I did in this and I said you have two clues you have the clues of the world around you you're a detective, you see there's world there's order to it there's beauty to it there's symmetry to it you have a personality you're not like a rock or a tree you can communicate, you can have abstract thought you can create all these things you also have something it's called what I call the personality God is impertinent you know there's something beyond us because it's built into us to know that we have some value above and beyond just the material universe but anyway, I gave you this just as an example so then what I do is I follow through on the right left hand side we say well what happens if there is no God everything that's eternal is really just matter plus place, plus time and on the other side if we start out with it that thing is eternal, how would that one look and we follow it all through I taught the kids to be philosophers they were philosophers I'm not a philosopher but this is philosophy and a simple thing that they could follow, I just gave it a 2 as an example if you're raising kids do these kind of things and use this, that was just an example another thing is you are needed to always emphasize sexual morality I always told my daughters that they were princesses and that they have a unique ability to bring a new human life into the world which I can't do I remember one time, this is the kind of thing I did with my kids, we lived in the country and there was a station wagon parked in the cornfield right in front of our house and I knew what they were doing with that car it was 12 o'clock in the night and my daughter was in the car and we pulled up behind that car and I turned on the bright lights and I put on the horn beep and there was two bare butts in the back of the window and my poor daughter she was like, dad, what are they doing and I just sat with the horn on and the lights and waited until they got dressed and she said, what are you going to do, dad? I said, I'm going to let them go home now and I backed out and drove away do you know what kind of teaching moment that is for a young girl what are they doing, dad? the next morning, I said we'll talk about it the breakfast next morning she came and I said dad, I don't even know what they were doing she says, well they had chickens and rabbits and chickens and rabbits do what I think they were doing and then they had babies and we talked about sexuality and I said, do you think the girl in that car felt like a princess last night? No why do you think she went out with him? she went out with him because she wanted a boy to love her she wanted to feel special she wanted to feel like a princess no, she didn't I said, why do you think she let him do that to her? he treated her like a boy toy don't ever let a boy treat you like a boy toy you are very special you have something God gave you to create a baby a human soul that will live forever with God I can't do that but God gave that to you you have the special gift from God don't ever let a boy play with that this guy do you think he is going to take care of the baby or is he going to drag her down and make her rip the baby out of her womb and what if she has venereal disease gonorrhea is simple as chlamydia or AIDS even did the boy tell her that he had herpes before he took her toes off my daughters if you like kids I talked to them about sex before they were even asking questions our kids are going to school now they are teaching them all about sex they are asking questions about it but it's a totally wrong message my kids all said thanks for talking to us about that dad because we didn't have to learn it from magazines and from porn and from other people we knew because you told us the truth about it from the beginning I was never shy to talk to my kids about sex and it was nice to live on a little farm because we have animals to be examples that always helped well I could go on and on but I want to get to together and ask together study scripture together having Bible studies if you sit at the dining table we had our meals together and we would always talk about a Bible passage or memorize things together made it fun, challenges and things like that so I want to skip ahead to about those who have this is a whole long talk I gave on conferences but what happens for those who look back with older kids who are gone this is not to criticize anybody or to feel bad I could my daughter could have just kept going and not come back the 18 year old blessed be God she did but there are many families that the kids have liked for various reasons and I think the number one thing is don't beat yourself parents come up and they cry and they cry in front of me and say I blew it I really screwed up I don't know what to do my kids love first of all if you have kids that have left the faith don't beat yourself up nobody may have taught you what to do if you had hurt like you he's got two three two little kids along the way if he screws up it's his own fault he's here in this now shame on you if he screws up it's after we're encouraging people like you to do your homework learn how kids think take them everywhere with you sit at Mass and tickle your kids my dad did that at church he tickled my ear at Mass and even though dad was pretty fat this but you know we love to go to church cause dad would always put his arms around us and play with our ears and it was like I thought dad wasn't paying any attention he was just paying attention to me because he was touching me and I watched parents at Mass are so holy and their kids are fidgeting and I think what a shame they could bring the kids along just sit on my lap come over here I'm going to tickle you and my dad always had candies in his pocket we were good for the ten minutes he'd give us the candy and then they were good for them and for kids that's fine that's a good thing and if you don't and if the kids are bad take them to the cry room and even if they're older take them to the cry room and explain to them what's going on in the Mass once in a while so you could talk back then explain to them what's going on so they get excited about what they're seeing me doing but anyway if you make a mistake you didn't maybe somebody never told you these things I'm nobody told me my wife and I just were really serious and we worked hard at learning and reading books James Dobson I don't know if you've heard of him focused on family he was our mentor we read all of his books there were many times that we were up until 3 or 4 in the morning because we'd say you know what these kids it's going beyond what we know what to do we better get James Dobson out again family guy and he was invaluable for us and I gave my kids even Catholics all of them many of his books well hey I'm married I'll have to do but the first thing for families with kids that have don't beat yourself up what you should do is say today is the first day of the beginning of my new relationship with my kids I apologize I confess that I didn't know it I acted in ignorance I acted selfishly whatever it was and just say Lord I blew it I didn't do all that I could have done I put myself too much into my career today parents are going to say I spent too much on my iPhone and my kid was sitting there demanding my attention and I didn't give it to him because I was on my iPhone but whatever it was put the past behind say okay the past is the past I can't change it I cannot go back and rewind I can't do it it's not going to happen so what I've been telling people to do is with those kids depending there's so many different varieties and things that happened if you did something that actually pushed them away or hurt them you'll have to deal with that but in general let me say it this way I think the good thing to do is to sit down and write your kids a letter take time to do it pray over it shed tears over it say dear son son I want you to know and tell them about how they were born tell them about what you thought about the moment that they were born and how joyful you were at their birth and how much you loved raising them and how cute they were and how ready they were at times but you still love them and then tell them I'm sorry but you still love them I want you to know that I love you no matter what no matter what you've done who you become or what you're doing I will love you unconditionally and I may have gay marriages or something like that obviously we can't accept that but you can still love them unconditionally across the street from our house they've been married for 15 years and they live together across the street the Catholic family that lived next to us when we were buying the house did you may not want to buy that house because there's two guys across the street and it might be a bad example for your kids my wife and I looked at each other and I said we're buying that house because this is going to be a good example for our kids why? because those two guys are men made in the image of God who had an estimable value for God and He loves them more than anybody can tell and so we decided that we were going to be there and make friends with those guys and we were going to love them and befriend them and let them know that we didn't approve of their lifestyle but we loved them and in a short time they watched our house when we were away we watched their house when they were away and it got to the point where Patrick used to come over and say can I talk to you and sit on the couch for an hour and he started listening to Christian music and asking us to pray for them we took it as a long-term evangelistic project and our kids learned that you can love someone and talk to them and respect them even though you don't like their lifestyle and disapprove of it and I know those guys when they first came to our house there's pictures of John Paul II we got to meet them, there's pictures of us meeting them and there's statues of marriage and we are supposed to be the enemy of gays, right? they hate us, they think no, they didn't know what to think about us because we loved them but we also let them know we didn't approve of their lifestyle but I said but even that, even though glad you're our neighbor and they're our guys so this is even if the family has problems like if your family is into the LGBT or something like that they still love them without approving of their lifestyle and this letter that you can write to them not only tells them how much you love them and how much you care for them and then you will always love and care for them you can say but you also understand our position about why we cannot accept this or that and we will respect and love you but we also would ask that you respect them a lot and then you tell them that you are unconditional love and then I would say the next chapter of that one letter can be I want you to know that I'm sorry for letting you down I gave too much time to my job I gave too much time to this I didn't oversee your education I didn't get involved in your life and I should have been more of a father and it might be humbling to write this letter it may be very hard and I know when I wrote my letter to my dad like he was so angry at me then I already told you what a great dad he was he just punched his face you must be slitting and sitting in a bachelor and even thinking about being a Catholic you have no idea how grieved I was that my dad responded that way my book Crossing the Tiger that I wrote my conversion story was never going to be a book it was a love letter to my dad I did to my dad exactly what I was suggesting you do I sat down and started writing a letter that book started with Dear Dad and I owe you an explanation and the first pages I ever wrote were covered with my tears because I'd hurt my dad and he didn't understand and I wanted him to understand because I couldn't turn my back into Catholicism but I also didn't want to turn my back on my dad so a letter was the way I saw I tried to do it and since then I realized this is a great way for a lot of family situations because it's hard if you go up to your son and say son I don't like the way you're living and I want you to know I love you enough and it's going to be very uncomfortable and sometimes they're going to say mom why don't you just shut up but if you write a letter they're not there to argue back it gives you time to measure your words and what you're going to say and it gives them time to digest it a little bit without being defensive they may be defensive at first but when you tell them how much you love them unconditionally and you apologize for letting them down and not overseeing and not being the dad that you wish you were and if I could go back and do it again oh would I ever but since I didn't would you mind if we start again fresh would you mind with my apologies and my sorrow I could choke up even talking about it would you mind if we start again because I would love to be more involved in your life and I love to do this and whatever there's a lot of kids that would rip that up and throw it away maybe they would but it would grow on them and it certainly is I think the best approach that we can possibly have to start rectifying maybe some of the relationships with family grandparents how many are grandparents here we have a big responsibility to play too we can't be too pushy we can't be domineering but we can be wonderful loving examples even if the kids are not being raised in the faith there are many times that you can bring them over and do things with them take them out for lunch and go to a beautiful church and take them on a tour of the church and explain to them what's in the church take them to a shrine teach them to pray the rosary maybe their parents may object to that to respect the choices of the parents but I know some grandparents that it's not the kids I've been around bad times we have some clout as grandparents sometimes again it's money sometimes there's money with it my kids knew from the get go that if you live by my rules I'll always help you financially you live against my rules and go outside of the mountains and don't get a dime they knew that and sometimes as grandparents we can do the same there's a certain amount of clout that we have but I think that we can spend a lot of time with our grandkids reading story stories you know what I do because some of our grandkids that have moved to other states now I've been reading good stories with my iPhone with a recording app and so I've already got like some audio books that I've made for my grandkids and I record them here chapter one, chapter two and then I send it to the parents and the kids spend Saturday listening to Papa read those stories and I make little jokes along the way Sammy wake up, what are you fall asleep Sammy stay awake while Papa's reading to you and one that's really emotional is I read the book Ha'i to my mother when she was dying 100 years old and then my mother would make these little comments and jokes along the way with her dying voice and now the kids have that story that they can listen to the rest of their lives with their great grandma talking in the background and asking questions about the story these are things that are powerful that are easy to do it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure you can just take a smartphone read a story, you just sit at the couch and read a story a chapter a night on a disc and say here's for your grandkids, I hope they enjoy the story of that to them and this gives you an end even if they don't want you involved in their kids' lives they're not going to mind if you read them a nice story like Ha'i that's not forcing the catechism down their throat but the story of Ha'i is tremendously a good moral story so those are some ideas grandparents have a lot of birthday parties you can have I also and I'm not doing this to get business but taking kids on a pilgrimage when I took our kids on a pilgrimage I've taken our kids a lot of times and they will tell you my older daughter and son will say that one of the things that made them love the Catholic faith was going on a pilgrimage and seeing that all those places are really true and hearing about them and understanding that Jesus was really right here and they've said that it's now and we know it's true with the capital T parents spend $100,000 to send their kids to college where they're going to lose their faith why not spend $5,000 sending them to holy rants where they'll never lose their faith I think grandparents my son right now is starting building off what I've done and he's just getting it started and what he wants to do is you know how the Jews send their young people over for a lifetime they charter planes and they send thousands of young Jewish kids from the United States over there and then they have guides and they drive on and it's called a heritage tour where you're Jewish heritage and they go to the western wall where the Saddam all of this and the kids just get it makes their Jewishness real to them so my son wants to do now to start the same thing it's called the inheritance tour Catholic donors to start contributing and parents would only have to pay $800 for their kids and they go for eight days to the holy man and they would go as a big group of high school and college kids and we'd get donors to cover it and they would go there and have a heritage inheritance tour and understand see what Jesus was crucified and buried where the Eucharist first person in the room but anyway that's a real good thing my daughter and then we open for questions and she was eight years old and we went to the holy land once with her she came with us a number of times no she was 15 and said I'm sorry and she was 15 and she'd been there before and she said I want to go to the Holy Sepulchre and pray well we always stayed at a hotel in Notre Dame which is only 10 minutes walk from the Holy Sepulchre she went over with her friend to pray at the Holy Sepulchre she came back an hour later in tears threw herself on the bed just sobbing and sobbing and I thought oh my goodness I should have gone with her right now but I said Emily what's wrong the same dad I've been in that tomb of Jesus with you so many times in the past but this time I realized he was really there she was crying because the Lord spoke to her there she met Jesus in that tomb and she'll tell you today she's never been the same because of that and this is what the kind of thing we got to give our kids experiences you don't have to go to Israel to do it there's shrines we just did through Wisconsin with 100 people we drove through Wisconsin and went to the shrines and what an impact it had so you don't even have to go to the Holy Sepulchre you can do those kind of things with grandkids here make it a fun day and visit some churches visit some shrines tell them about the saints teach them how to pray the rosary and the carol and the white I remember my sister was a pagan my older sister and she had two sons and she dropped them off with my mother so it was my mother's daughter she dropped my grandkids off with my mom to babysit and she'd tell my mom don't you dare talk to them about religion don't you dare talk to them about religion or read them the Bible but my mom did do you know what? my mom died of married mother's day of this year maybe I shouldn't have said this I'm not going to get it out my nephew the young man who was not supposed to hear about God in the Bible stood up at my mother's funeral and said I'm a Catholic today and a Christian because of grandma because my mom wouldn't talk to me but grandma did grandma told me about God and I'm a Christian today because of grandma she was my substitute mom grandparents talked to the grandkids take them under your wing, love them I know sometimes they're far away spend some money bring them back spend a week with them and it's like family money is nothing okay I told you we'd ask take some questions hopefully we answered some of them yes so your question is just what's going on? many of us are God parents and I know that we don't take that seriously too often you obviously are right they hate the statement they think you're good I love it and I am the Godfather for several and I have to admit I'm a negligent one I'm so busy with my own kids and grandkids but that kid is lucky to have you I would say first aid you pray for them all the time and you know we say pray for its kind of becomes a cliche for us but I like to tell people this especially with kids that have left the faith remember the unjust judge he was sleeping and she said hello up there sleeping I need justice and he says he opens the door go away I'm sleeping wake up I need justice Jesus is the one that told this terrible finally the guy came down and he's angry he says I'm not down here because I'm a good judge I'm down here because you're driving me crazy what do you want and he gave it to her and Jesus said how much more will your heavenly father give you what he needs you're a persistent so I tell people with kids that have left the faith or other important issues like this take a piece of paper and draw two lines and divide it into thirds and on the left hand side put down your request whatever that name is this is what I want for this child this, this, this and this then put in the middle column the date that you asked God to do it and then put God on the spot say God this third column is when you answer the prayer I'm not going to back off God you said I could not and you'll hear you'll answer my prayers I don't know how you're going to answer the prayers you do but I already know what I want done and here's the date I asked and you better deliver God's a fun father you can talk to him like that my dad was a great dad so I always learned that I felt very free joking around and talking but make a list like that put that down do everything you can when you're able to keep friends with the mother do things for her take special things over give her a bottle of wine on her birthday because it's very difficult when you love her for her not to let you and keep how did I resolve the relationship I'll say with our parents because old parents used to talk to us for a while this is how good my dad was when we became Catholic my mother refused to come to the Mass when we were received in but my dad came but he said Steve I'm totally opposed to what you're doing and I'm going to sit in the back because I don't want anybody to know I'm part of this and I'm totally opposed to it but I'm coming because I love you so my dad I did read that book and our kids I said to them grandma and grandpa were getting old you should go visit them and get to know them so my kids after becoming Catholic went over there every Tuesday afternoon and brought lunch to grandma and grandma and spent the afternoon with them and that was only a couple months later you guys joining the Catholic Church I can't argue with the results especially with those kids and so I said now we're proud of you that you are where you're supposed to be now with my mother on the other side she was not going to listen to me hurt my father in law said why didn't you take my daughter out of the Protestant church over to that cult he was really upset so I said boy they're never going to listen to me so I did the unjust church thing I said God I'm going to knock on your door every day I did the three columns I said I'm not going to back off on this I'm going to come after you every single day multiple times I found out that my mother in law had been camping with another family and they didn't even know they were Catholic and the lady, they're book club ladies and so my mother in law was talking to her friend Bunny and Bunny says Mary I just read the best book you got a gift oh great let me know what it is I'll get it well we'll talk about it she said it's called Crossing the Tiber my mother in law says who wrote it she said a guy named Steve Gray and my mother is just mortified she said that's my son in law you're kidding will you give me an autograph picture and I'm not toot my horn there but I'm just saying that's how God did their family from that point on they didn't become Catholic but from then on they were proud of us they were bragging about us because her friend and so I say that there are six things let me do this real quick there are six rules that I've come up with that I've actually added seven for dealing with non-Catholic family and friends I'll put it on my website again so that if you want to go to it's CatholicConver.com I'll put it up tonight so that you can find this article it's called Seven Rules it's actually six but I made it seven rules for dealing with non-Catholic family and friends and number one is don't argue with them discuss the topic don't argue in Birdbridge, is number two love them more than you ever loved them before because you can't argue with love pray and make sacrifices really do it pray and make sacrifices for the Lord in your life they're going to say what was he spoken I want that whatever it is if you're happy and joyful I want what they have you're joyful in the Lord the third one is do your homework so that when they do decide to come and ask you a question like why do you believe Jesus is present in you Chris and you go it's not good do your homework like you folks are doing here number six is have patience as big a hurry as you are and the seventh rule is ask God to bring somebody else into their life because they're never going to listen to you and that's what happened to our mother-in-law she wasn't going to listen to me but God brought bunny into her life and it changed everything so ask God to bring somebody else into your loved ones life and pray that every day and watch somebody at work somebody they're going to respect the sports figure that you're Catholic of course I'm Catholic all of a sudden there's a whole new respect and you should be talking to people about the Lord because you may be an answer to somebody else's prayer yes somebody in the back you had your hand out three times the theme of what you're talking about today is very much real for me I know it was the big product homeschooling a lot of our homeschool friends were homeschooled because their parents really tried to shelter them from the real world and I saw many of my homeschool friends including many of my own siblings get to college and taking those dive off the crazy tree that seemed to hit every branch on the way down so I swore up homeschooling no way now I've got children they're in the real world right and I am disgusted with what I'm seeing but I don't want to homeschool because of what I okay here's what you do you homeschool but you expose them to the real world like I did with my kids my kids they told us your kids are going to be so unsocialized when they get older they're going to do just like you said after you protected them and kept them in this little hot house they're going to go out and get a prostitute the first time they're going to be drunk no that's not the case because your homeschooling is not two plus two is four homeschooling starts the minute that baby is born you teach that baby to speak English that's a difficult thing you do that before they're five years old you're a great teacher you're in the real world you take your kids out my son I wouldn't take them to Boy Scouts now because they're all you know what I'm not going to send my kids out to a Boy Scout camp with some prowler crawling in the tent with my son but there are camp with so my daughter was in dance class she ended up being in a really good dance class so they had to go to Las Vegas and do dances in New York and they went and we went with them and I took my daughter down the shoulder we did all kinds of stuff our kids were the most socialized kids in the whole state and they were the most exposed to the world as anybody in the whole state the difference was we controlled their friends and we spent our time teaching them about the real world while we were living in it with them we would go do things I'll give you an example we went to Cedar Point and there was a big line to get to the roller coaster and I always teach my kids morals this way in the real world they were way ahead of me like a mile ahead of me in line and he's got a shirt that says no rules so I said to the kids I'll be right back I went all the way kind of all the way up in line and when I got to that guy I'd give him an elbow and I stood right in front of him and he said what are you doing I said I'm taking cuts I said this is a long line and I don't like waiting in it and he said you can't do that and I said yes I can read your stupid t-shirt I said that too across your chest but that's what we did see then I said so those rules only apply for you or did you just not think about that before you put the stupid t-shirt up but when I went back the kids were so impressed that they did that see this is how in the real world I taught my kids if you send your kids off to public school you have no control over who their friends are going to be they're going to get friends that are not going to be what you want and once those friendships are made very difficult for you to break them and there's going to be pornography on their iPhones on the school bus there's going to be all kinds of things that you can completely capitulate it and handed your kids over to homeschooling can be done really well we just went to told you Wisconsin on a pilgrimage guess who came with us 25 kids that were in my daughter's homeschooling co-op that my daughter goes homeschooled now does all those 25 kids came along with that and they sang for us and all the masses and they had a blast together they did all kinds of stuff they went out to restaurants we exposed our kids to the world but we controlled the exposure and then we had all kinds of fun together baseball games everything else and we had homeschooling friends and families that we did things with on the weekends now it's really nice because my daughter she started a homeschooling co-op with 150 kids and they do things they have sports clubs now with other homeschooling co-ops and they're competing in sports they're doing Shakespeare plays they're the most exposed to the things of the world that are good that you can get but they're not going to be exposed to the bad things but they have taught about the bad things and so this I'd say the parents have to be at the very heart of education some people may have to send their kids a book so they may not have money to do otherwise sometimes in Catholic schools is no better there are good ones and there are really really bad ones and sometimes the Catholic school can be worse because the kids can't tell who the enemy really is at a public school they should know who the enemy is at a Catholic school you're learning this from your teacher and they're Catholic and they're teaching you these things it's so hard to know who the enemy is I almost read it or not if it's a bad Catholic school but anyway the father and the mother should be in charge yes he's one with the kids and I already gave him a hard time so I'll let him ask a question so I see the especially as a father those institutes I appreciate you talking about that and so one of the things that got it placed on my heart is to he's a pediatrician and he sees what we're talking about in the office to try to speak to dads and to like create a ministry or platforms to try to encourage dads to step into the lives of their children to be present and to find the joy in fathers life so I'm trying to build that and I wonder what advice or encouragement to build a culture with dads because he's a pediatrician and he sees the devastating effect of children without fathers and so he wants to start a ministry of helping fathers know how important it is you don't need to recreate the wheel that's what I would say don't start oh no what am I going to do there's Steve Wood write his name down on contact and it's called dads.org there's no need to recreate the wheel for 30 years and he works with dads bads.org start with that and Scott we have to see to get involved in doing all these things another thing but just I forgot not only get rid of the television but get rid of that iPhone for your kids my grandkids none of them have gadgets until they're 18 years old yes yep that has a big part in it so she's saying she feels like a failure because her three sons have left she tried to come to a Catholic family so I'm going to go around and say I think she's the crazy mom you're not the crazy mom and you have three wonderful sons so you are not at all a failure you have three wonderful sons in this world and that is a marvelous achievement and another self remember too that we cannot control it I've talked as though it's like 100% you can do this people get friends after they get even if they go to a good college they may make friends on a job they may make friends somewhere else they may read a book and these the world is a powerful powerful influence bad company corrupts good morals bad philosophy destroys good philosophy and people out in the world today and jobs when they get into a job Christianity is not the norm anymore when I was a boy Christianity was still pretty much the norm we still set the pledge of allegiance at school we created school that all quit very fast and it was not everybody kind of was a Christian but now it's the opposite we are a despise subculture it's difficult for us to be Catholics in the world the world tells you to shut up you can be a Christian it's stupid to be a Christian but you do it in your house and church and keep it out of schools in the marketplace and keep your mouth shut and that's the way it is you want to fit in and get along sometimes you have to reject it I'm not going to reject it I love being counter cultural I love being a rebel but not everybody does that your sons may have gone out and got a job and the job where they are it's permeated with this kind especially if it's in the media or in entertainment it's permeated with this hostility to God it's a religion in the Catholic church and our morals are in a situation like that and that's the world and maybe your father was aloof from you or something whatever there are many times it's going to happen but it doesn't mean it has to persist forever because a lot of people go out in the world and they end up finding it's very meaningless and it's not fulfilling and they end up coming back in the long run to the church you have no reason to believe that you're failure or that they're failures because they are still all potentials maybe a car accident maybe another problem maybe a loss of a job and all of a sudden they realize they're not as self-sustaining as they thought they were and all would be amazing just out there when I was signing books the people that came to me and said I left the faith I left the Catholic church and this happened and now I'm back that's praying for those guys they are goners if you start praying I know you pray for them every day make the church yes all my son I was very honest with him too I took him out and taught him how to watch the goats but I told my son and my daughter and I do talks at high schools and I just told the guys I told my son that guys and girls are very different guys are basically controlled by their testosterone and my wife said to me I wish I could have testosterone like you do for 24 hours so I could understand you better I said I wish you could too but I just told my son sexual morality is for marriage sexual activities for marriage and not until after because we made such a big deal of that all of our kids had chastity rings and we took it to the priest and the priest would pray for them and put that chastity ring on their finger and you know it got me in a lot of trouble sometimes because they knew they could ask whatever kind of ring they wanted so my son got one of the diamonds and a ruby and gold and the other one wants these three diamonds for the trinity and I'm not going to say no to that so all of them got some pretty nice rings but then we had a ceremony with the priest and they put that on their fingers and I said when you get married you're mother and I ain't a god so when I walked my daughter up the aisle I was crying all the way until I will tell you this too but I walked up the aisle and I turned to her and I said I held a hand and had that chastity ring on I said have you kept your promise to your father to your mother and I and she said I have so I took her over to Ben Brown who's also a graduate here and I said to Ben I said my daughter has preserved her salt pure for you and I said my daughter and he said I will sir I said Ben I'm giving you my daughter what a beautiful thing and guess what the next daughter she was never going to do anything other than that because she was crying so excited she also all of our daughters did the same thing three dollars a son but you don't have to necessarily say okay I saw Tuesday morning we're going to talk about the birds and the bees now it's more a lot of times you use teaching moments like I did with my daughter a moment like that and you and you talk about it two rabbits humping in the front yard and I said this is a great moment and it really is do you know what that boy rabbit's doing he's impregnating what do you mean impregnating death he's got a penis and you've got to forget the shyness of it all just say it like it is I did with my kids and they can't even ask me questions that would make any person blush because you might give them an honesty I should tell you a couple questions my daughter's asking but I'm not going to but yes so it sounds like the story that your nephew was talking about to your mother sounded like she could work with your father my mother and father never became Catholics but they were very devout Baptist I learned holiness from my mom and dad as a Baptist I learned how to be a husband and a father from my dad and they were to the end of their lives were devoted to Jesus Christ although they could never comprehend the Catholic part of it I could see them sometimes start to understand it and I'd see their eyes glaze over it was just in general my parents had been raised they became Baptists they became Baptists in 1953 and they were really into this fundamentalist thing and there was all anti-Catholic stuff and when you start that from the very beginning and you're now 70 years old it's in the marrow of your bones it's part of your tradition my mom would even say there are certain verses in the Bible that don't fit my Baptist belief so she admitted that the Bible had to fit her Baptist tradition her Baptist tradition didn't have to fit the Bible but to the day of their death my mom at right up until the end she'd say I can't wait to give to God and see Jesus he died for my sins I can't wait to get there and say thank you to him so she was a very developed Baptist and that young man he was also Baptist but after I became Catholic he argued with me all the time at Thanksgiving and so on but then he told me and said Steve I have to admit he said last Thanksgiving after our conversation I got on used bookstores and I bought a used copy of your book and I want to buy it from you and he said by the time I got to page 15 I knew you were right and I was there when him and his wife became Catholics