Each participant in this past Sunday’s diocesan Rite of Election has a unique story to tell about his or her path to the Catholic Church.
Many of the catechumens (and candidates) were led to Catholicism through a spouse, fiancée or family member. But for Jonathan Shetler, the story began at a Marine Corps boot camp; for Larry and Tracy Rota, it started with a conversation with a neighbor at a park. The COVID-19 pandemic played a key role in Megan Bellantis’ decision, while social media and podcasts brought Hilton Porter to the Church.
Shetler, 18, who is taking RCIA classes at Dublin St. Brigid of Kildare Church, joined the Marines upon graduation from Dublin Jerome High School in 2021. During basic training at Parris Island, South Carolina, he snapped a thigh bone while attempting to scale a 9-foot wall.
That led to a stay in a hospital ward at Parris Island and a temporary halt to his plans for a military career, but it also led to the Catholic Church in a way Shetler never could have imagined.
“Because of paperwork delays, it took a month and a half from the time I was hospitalized until I got home,” he said. “In the meantime, me and other injured recruits were put into work parties, meaning we did what we could – filing papers, cleaning and other menial chores, depending on our injuries – to fill time until we were discharged. Our pay was stopped, there was no TV, no games. Meals three times a day provided about the only variety. It was the most boring time in my life.
“One Sunday, it was my turn to scrub the bathroom. Another recruit who was Catholic invited me to go to Mass at the camp chapel. I was hesitant to do that because I come from a non-religious family, but attending church was an acceptable way of getting out of bathroom duty, so I decided to go.
“I was feeling pretty much like a failure at that point because my injury had kept me from the military career I wanted. Then the priest at Mass started his sermon, and it was all about overcoming what you see as failures in your life,” Shetler said.
“The priest said God loves us and wants us to succeed. ‘What’s happening to you right now may not be what you had planned, but just pray and pray, and things will get better, with God showing you a path you never would have considered,’ he said.
“As I heard the priest, I began to think how I was beating up on myself and didn’t need to be. From that point, things did start to get better. I would pray for the most menial things, like asking God to make sure enough food was available for everyone on the ward or praying to get out as soon as possible.
“Once I did get home, I no longer had that sense of failure and felt I needed to keep going to church. St. Brigid’s is the closest Catholic church to my home, so I began going to Mass there. It’s such a traditional-looking, beautiful place, and I could feel a sense of holiness whenever I was there,” Shetler said.
“One of the things I never knew about the Catholic Church that’s important is that everything is rooted in the Bible. It’s not something that someone made up. You can point to references all over the Scriptures to explain Catholic teaching. It also took a while to understand that both the Bible and tradition have importance, but as I’ve been reading the Catechism of the Catholic Church, I’m understanding how things fit together and make sense.”
Shetler is working for a company his father owns that makes key chains. He has been talking to an Army recruiter and hopes to resume his military career in that branch of the service. His baptismal godfather and confirmation sponsor will be Bob Kane, a longtime friend of his father’s.
Larry Rota, 66, said his father was a non-practicing Catholic and his mother occasionally went to a Church of Christ. His wife of 31 years, Tracy, 64, said she was raised in a Lutheran family and was “a more regular churchgoer.”
“When we got married, we agreed to find a church we could both attend regularly,” Tracy said. That turned out to be Liberty Presbyterian Church in Delaware County, which has a history that dates to 1810 and has grown substantially in recent years because of population increases in northern Franklin and southern Delaware counties.
Larry was employed as a software developer until retiring in 2021. Tracy is a medical assistant at the wellness center of the Dominican Sisters of Peace, who hired her in 2018 after she had spent 11 years working at a physician’s office.
“I was looking for a new job because the work had become very difficult,” she said. “I could tell the staff and managers there were somewhat hostile to my being a Christian. It also had a pretty drab atmosphere in other ways. For one thing, there were no windows. But I was afraid of how hard it might be to get another job.
“Larry and I took this to prayer, and one day we took a walk in the Columbus Park of Roses, which is near our home in Clintonville. We went on a different path than we usually do and ran into Susan Brown, a neighbor who is a registered nurse and works with the Dominican sisters. She knew I was looking for work and said they had a position available that she felt I could fill if I was interested.
“I interviewed with the sisters and got the job, and it made an immediate difference. For one thing, I had my office and it was full of windows, and I didn’t have to be concerned about being a Christian.
“Sometimes I could hear the sisters singing in their chapel, and it was magical. One day, a mobile mammography vehicle came to the center. I had a mammogram, and learned I had breast cancer. At my old job, I would have been too busy to take the time for a mammogram, so this job may have saved my life,” she said. She’s had radiation therapy and two surgeries for her cancer and says she is doing well now and having regular checkups to make sure the cancer doesn’t return.
“Soon after the mammogram, the sisters had a ceremony of wellness and prayed over me,” Tracy said. “I was impressed by how much they cared for me. I began to pray in their chapel, and once while there, I could feel the presence of someone walking around me, going from left to right and right to left. I knew someone was there, even though I couldn’t see anyone.
“I saw Sister Mary Ann Fatula in the hallway and told her about this, and she said, ‘Tracy, you know the Eucharist is there.’ ‘What’s the Eucharist?’ I asked. ‘It’s Jesus,’ she told me. I learned more about the Eucharist and realized I wanted to be a Catholic.”
The Rotas are taking RCIA classes at Columbus Our Lady of Peace Church with parish evangelization director Anthony Rosselli, Deacon Jeffrey Fortkamp and Father Sean Dooley, pastor.
“They’ve made it really enjoyable to learn about the Church each week,” Tracy said. “The history is so fascinating. It’s been a transformative experience, something really hard to explain. I’ve always felt I was a religious person, but now I sense an overwhelming feeling of grace I’ve been missing before.”
“We keep ‘cheat sheets’ to remind us of things that are new to us or questions to ask,” Larry said. “The biggest surprise for me was that the Immaculate Conception refers to Mary and not Jesus. It’s an awfully technical thing, but I always thought it was the other way around. I knew Jesus had to have been sinless but didn’t realize that had to apply to Mary, too.”
Megan Bellantis, 34, who is taking RCIA instructions at Columbus St. Andrew Church, went to a Lutheran church as a child with her mother but grew up in what in many ways was a Catholic atmosphere.
“I had 12 years of Catholic education at St. Teresa School and Catholic Central High School, both in Springfield,” she said. “I loved the Catholic Church and thought I might become a nun someday. Father Richard Walling, the pastor at St. Teresa’s, allowed me to be an altar server, and I took advantage of the opportunity every chance I could.
“Then I went to high school and started dating someone who went to a non-denominational church and got involved with the youth group there. I didn’t walk away from the Catholic Church, since I wasn’t a Catholic to begin with, but got more involved with the other church.
“After I met my husband, Colin, who is a cradle Catholic, I realized I knew more about the Catholic Church than he did,” she said. “We both worked in children’s ministry at the Vineyard in Columbus, another non-denominational church. After five or six years there, I felt that something wasn’t right and perhaps I should become a Catholic but was conflicted because we had many friends at the Vineyard.
“Then COVID hit, and the world shut down. It gave us sort of a free pass not to attend the Vineyard. I felt a strong yearning to go to Mass again, and in June 2020 I began doing that with my grandfather, Tom
Lynch,” whom many area residents know as owner of the former Woodhouse Lynch Clothiers across the street from the Ohio Statehouse. Lynch will serve as his granddaughter’s godparent and sponsor.
“The more Masses I attended, the more I wanted to know,” she said. “I was on fire. I couldn’t learn enough. Gus Lloyd’s book A Minute in the Church: The Mass taught me a great deal, and I had my grandfather’s example of being a faithful Catholic. I knew joining the Church was what I wanted because it made me feel at peace.”
Bellantis went to Mass with her husband and grandfather on Christmas Eve 2020 and told them she wanted to take RCIA classes. Colin, because he is a baptized Catholic, is not required to be an RCIA participant but is relearning Catholic teaching with her.
“I knew a good bit about the faith from my earlier experience, but RCIA has given me a deeper understanding of the Church and of its symbolism,” she said. “I’ve admired my grandfather’s faith so much and wanted it to make sense to me, and now it does. I was concerned about what my Vineyard friends and my brother, who is a Lutheran pastor, would think, but their reaction was better than I anticipated.”
She and Colin have been married for 11 years and have two boys, ages 6 and 8, who are being homeschooled and attending the St. Andrew Parish School of Religion. She has a nursing degree from Ohio State University, owns a Jazzercise studio and serves as needed as a nurse at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. Colin is employed by Abbott Laboratories.
Hilton Porter, 41, had a grandfather who was a Pentecostal preacher. “Because of him, I had a distant respect for religion but wasn’t much of a churchgoer as I grew up,” he said. “I became a Christian after I was married, for a time was a youth minister and developed some Calvinist convictions.
“I’m on the road a lot as a home health nurse for the Adena Health System in Chillicothe and listen to a lot of podcasts while traveling. A gentleman I was following on social media who came from a Baptist background and was then an Anglican started sounding more and more like a Catholic, so one day I asked him, ‘Are you Catholic?’’’ Porter said.
“He said he was taking RCIA classes, and I began to think I needed to tell him why he was wrong. We had some discussions that in time led us to the early Church fathers, and he referred me to the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
“I began listening on the Creedal podcast to another man who underwent a similar transformation and sent an email to him. He got me in touch with Casey Chalk, a writer for Called to Communion (a website for former Protestants who have become Catholic). Casey really challenged me on questions I had on subjects such as who has authority in the Church, and so did Dr. Matthew Thomas,” an Oxford Ph.D. who teaches at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley, California.
“I really didn’t want to be Catholic, but these folks went out of their way to talk to me and encouraged me to take their views to my Baptist friends. I did, but my friends didn’t seem to want to listen. I found myself defending the Catholic Church more and more.
“The big breakthrough came while reading a book on Martin Luther by a theologian named Alister McGrath, who had studied Luther’s theology for 25 years. He said Luther’s theology was a completely new thing in its time, and a light came on in my head.
“I thought, ‘If what Luther says is true, why didn’t we hear about it for 1,500 years? This was not the view of the early Church fathers.’ That made me feel humbled and humiliated and was the final thing that convinced me to be a Catholic.”
Porter is taking RCIA classes at Chillicothe St. Peter Church. “I intend on being involved in parish activities, but think I want to take a year just to focus on being Catholic and settle into the pattern of the Church year,” he said.
