Posted on 04/26/2010 10:46:05 AM PDT by NYer
SOUTH BEND -- One evening in the fall of 2001, when the Rev. Mark Kurowski returned home from work as pastor at a Methodist church in Gary, he told his wife it had been a good day because he had had time to pray the Stations of the Cross (a common Roman Catholic devotional exercise) without any interruptions.
He recalls her looking at him and commenting, "We won't be Methodists very long."
The following summer, after leaving his pastorship and the Methodist church he had served for more than 10 years, he converted to Roman Catholicism.
How did Kurowski arrive at this turning point in his life?
"I was seeking truth, and I was seeking a closer relationship with God," he says.
He has since moved back to his native South Bend and is an active parishioner at Little Flower Catholic Church, 54191 N. Ironwood Road.
"But it hasn't been all ecstasy," Kurowski says. "It's been periods of loneliness. I left friends. I left my identity, my source of income."
He had willingly given up his Methodist pastorship, but not his calling.
Methodist invitation
Although, as an infant, he was baptized in the Catholic Church, Kurowski says that he never attended Mass or thought about God until he was a sophomore in high school.
That year, a school music teacher invited him to sing in the choir at a Methodist Advent service. From that day on, Kurowski enthusiastically attended Methodist Sunday services. Sometimes as many as three in a row on the same day, he recalls.
"I was so excited about knowing there was someone out there who loved me for me, and that someone is God,"
Kurowski says.
Over the years, he experienced many more moments when he felt born again.
Kurowski thought he was in the right place in the UMC because John Wesley, Methodism's founder, wrote about experiencing more than one moment of feeling God's love and salvation through Christ.
Wesley's belief that Christianity is presented in Scripture, illuminated by tradition, lived in personal experience, and confirmed by reason also attracted Kurowski.
After graduating from Indiana University South Bend in 1990, Kurowski earned a license to preach in the UMC.
Two years earlier, and before they married, his wife, Sandi, a Catholic, converted to Methodism so their children would be raised in one faith. Back then, Kurowski never considered converting to Catholicism, believing "(Catholics) were idolatrists toward Mary."
Strong interest in reform
Wesley's belief that Christianity is presented in Scripture, illuminated by tradition, lived in personal experience, and confirmed by reason also attracted Kurowski.
After graduating from Indiana University South Bend in 1990, Kurowski earned a license to preach in the UMC.
Two years earlier, and before they married, his wife, Sandi, a Catholic, converted to Methodism so their children would be raised in one faith. Back then, Kurowski never considered converting to Catholicism, believing "(Catholics) were idolatrists toward Mary."
Strong interest in reform
In 1992, Kurowski began studying in the seminary at Duke University, where he eventually earned a master's of divinity degree. While there, he examined the "church fathers," men such as Macarius, Justin Martyr and Augustine. Wesley encouraged his followers to read them. The church fathers recorded early Christian worship practices that some modern Christians do not see as central to the faith because they are not outlined in the Bible.
"It made me ask the question: 'What was the first true faith? Is it Scripture or is it tradition?' " Kurowski says. Christians existed before the New Testament was written, and "the Bible did not drop from the heavens" but was written by Christians who were starting to form the church, he says.
Examining the church fathers and their contributions to liturgical worship was a critical turning point for Kurowski.
"I thought I could be part of a movement to reform the church back to Wesley's standards of high worship with piety and evangelical field preaching," Kurowski recalls.
Resistance to reform
After graduating from Duke, he was ordained a UMC minister and assigned a church in Brookston, Ind., then one in Gary. There, Kurowski pushed for weekly Communion. Although he increased its frequency, he never succeeded in making it a weekly event, he says.
Meanwhile, Kurowski saw area Methodist churches, including Willow Creek Community Church in suburban Chicago, embrace styles of teaching and worship that, in his view, differ too much from early church traditions.
"I just came to the conclusion that Methodism was going to try every form of gimmickry to stay alive. It's very sad to me," Kurowski says.
He grew further disillusioned when the UMC honorably dismissed ministers so they could create nondenominational churches that focus on church growth more than on the traditions of early Christians, he says.
"I felt as though nobody cared, or the majority didn't care" (about following the church fathers' ways), he says.
Spiritual turning
While reading the church fathers, Kurowski found that "they (were) saying all these things that agree with Catholicism."
Through prayer and study, he gradually accepted the Catholic teaching that the Communion bread and wine contain the presence of Christ's body and blood. The early church fathers he had studied never questioned if the bread and wine actually contain the presence of Christ, he says. As a Methodist, he had been taught to view them symbolically.
In addition to Communion, Kurowski realized he saw all the sacraments as acts in which recipients experience God's grace, a belief in sync with Catholic teaching. According to the UMC, the sacraments are "certain signs of grace."
"I found that saying that the sacraments were mere symbols was a denying of the power of God," Kurowski says.
By that point, his office in the Methodist church contained a crucifix he had inherited from his grandmother and a kneeler.
"I became very conflicted," he recalls. "I started to question my own ordination."
Return to beginnings
One thing Kurowski says he never questioned was his calling to be a pastor.
"There's no higher honor I think than to be asked to represent God at somebody's deathbed by being pastor there," and he loved his job as a UMC pastor and the people he served "more than you will ever know," he says.
Because the Catholic Church requires that priests be celibate, giving up his role as pastor was the most difficult part of his conversion.
"At that point, I thought it was impossible to be a priest," he recalls. However, he felt he couldn't remain in a faith that did not fit his beliefs. Korowski felt so strongly that tradition is as important as Scripture that he went ahead with his conversion.
After moving back to South Bend with Sandi and their five children in 2002, he and his wife renewed their marriage vows in a Catholic ceremony.
To fill the void in his life, Kurowski is developing his Web site, http://www.myspiritualadvisor.com/, giving spiritual advice and posting articles about theology and church history. "So I could still exercise some sort of ministry," he says.
Then, through the Web site of the Coming Home Network, Kurowski came into contact online with a few married priests who had been ministers of other Christian denominations before converting.
In 2003, Kurowski contacted Bishop Dale Melczek of the Diocese of Gary and sought permission to enter the seminary. After several months of corresponding with the Vatican, Kurowski was named a candidate for the priesthood in December, says the Rev. Kevin Huber, the Gary Diocese's vocation director.
Kurowski, relieved, says, "At least I have a direction now." Since he left pastorship, there have been periods of unemployment; he found short-term jobs as the outreach organizer for Congressional Democratic candidate Joe Donnelly in the fall and before that as development director at St. Joseph's High School.
Soon, he will be assigned a location in northwest Indiana, where he will complete three years of formation. If the Vatican determines that he has completed it successfully, he will be ordained.
Kurowski's wife says she is "slowly getting used to the idea. "Because I grew up in the Catholic Church and priests weren't married, it just sounded so bizarre."
Until the Council of Trent in 1545, which affirmed the practice of celibacy for clergy, Catholic priests were allowed to marry, "so it's not as though this never existed," Sandi Kurowski says.
The family most likely will have to move to accommodate Kurowski's goal of joining the priesthood.
"Parts of it have been stressful," Sandi Kurowski says of her husband's spiritual journey. "But we as a family will be OK in the end because of our faith. I have absolutely grown stronger in my faith. To me it was a great homecoming."
As he proceeds in his faith journey, Kurowski says the past does not burden him.
"The Methodists are beautiful people that I love," he says. "Beautiful people who are good to me. They took me in and loved me when I was an unlovable kid."
On a recent Sunday, Kurowski cantered the responsorial hymn at Little Flower.
"Here I am Lord. I come to do your will," Kurowski sang from Psalm 40. "I have waited for the Lord and he stooped toward me and heard my cry. And he put a new song into my mouth, a hymn to our God."
I’ve heard of ordinations of married (former) Anglican priests...I’ve heard of ordinations of married (former) Lutheran pastors...I think this is the first (potential) ordination of a married (former) Methodist pastor that I’ve ever heard of.
Not saying that this is a first, but it definitely is a first that I’ve heard about.
Much of Protestantism today centers on denying God any power not explicitely explained in the Bible.
I use to be a, Democrat and now I can't imagine being Christian and supporting that party. I cast down my anguish from politics at the foot of the cross.
“Much of Protestantism today centers on denying God any power not explicitely explained in the Bible.”
?
Sounds like something Joseph Smith might have said.
It hasn’t happened yet.
Does your question mark mean that you don’t understand what I’m saying or that you don’t actually understand the topic well enough to comment on it yourself?
This is a truth that I have slowly come to realize. Protestants confine God to the words of Scripture, even though Scripture itself claims He is more and that should that more be written about, the world itself could not contain all the books.
Exactly, if the Bible doesn’t explicitely say something they believe it didn’t happen.
Allow me to help...
Catholics=spititual
Protestants=dumb
Have a nice day,
Tom
spiritual
John 20:31 But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.
Scripture is there for us so that we may believe. Every word is true and edifying for our salvation. It never says that it alone is ALL that God has revealed to us.
The Catholic accepts that much is unknowable due to our limits as humans. The Virgin Birth, The Passion, the Resurrection are all unknowable to us outside of faith. But, what we do know is that with God they are all possible.
**”I was seeking truth, and I was seeking a closer relationship with God,” he says.**
Bingo! Protestants need to take note of this man’s wisdom.
Excellent observation! Thanks for the post and ping!
Volunteering for a Democrat candidate.. Has he never read Humana Vitae
As an ex-Episcopalian myself, frankly I’ve always felt that it was sort discriminatory for the Vatican to be ONLY allowing the Anglicans in as married priests, but none of the other Protestant denoms. Granted the Episcopal liturgy most closely resembles the Catholic, but many of these other denoms produce clergy who are every bit as educated and as firm in their faith as the ex-Episcopalians are. If they are motivated enough so as to leave their careers behind to become Catholic in the first place, then surely they can learn how to say a Mass with appropriate reverence. And if someone like this guy has been a Methodist pastor, then he knows how to lead a congregation, take care of people, and handle the day-to-day business and pastoral end of it.
Well, I could appreciate what you are saying to a degree. I have heard of a couple of Lutheran pastors being granted the "pastoral provision," as well.
Granted the Episcopal liturgy most closely resembles the Catholic, but many of these other denoms produce clergy who are every bit as educated and as firm in their faith as the ex-Episcopalians are.
Well, I don't think it is so much a matter of liturgy, but a matter of theology. Yes, lex orandi, lex credenti, but there are still a whole lot of differences in the credenti part of the matter. And there is nothing to say that a former protestant minister would not be able to go through seminary just as anybody else.
I guess the point is that I am glad for the sake of those who have been granted a dispensation. But it is a dispensation.
Protestantism is not a monolithic religious category. There are many different theological positions within that nebulous category called Protestantism. Some Protestants have Sacraments, and they even believe that Christ’s body and blood are truly present and not merely represented. Methodism is closer to Catholicism in many ways than nearly all the other Protestant denominations. Anglo-Catholics would be closest.
I watched the program and learned so much about John Wesley and the Methodist Church. Interestingly enough, our parish acquired a 160 y/o former Methodist/Episcopal Church that we are restoring and reconfiguring into a Catholic Church. We were all very surprised to see an altar rail and kneelers (no altar, though). The stained glass windows were all magnificent and we just finished having them professionally restored.
Thanks for the post and ping.
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