The First Time I Heard Of Scott Hahn
Back in 1997 I was traveling doing traveling ministry with REACH Youth Ministry, and our first retreat was in Washington State. We were doing a standard confirmation retreat at a small parish, and Sr. Mary was in charge of the group. As was common on all of our retreats, we had small group discussion time with the retreatents, and they kept telling us about this Scott Hahn guy that Sr. Mary made them listen to. Being the curious sort, after the retreat a couple of us asked Sr. Mary about Scott Hahn and why she used him so much with her confirmation classes. Oh, did we get an earfull, and she would probably still be talking if we hadn’t been on a schedule to get to our next retreat. I don’t remember anything about what she said, but as we left she handed us a stack of his famous Protestant Minister Becomes Catholic tapes.
A few days later we had a break with some time to hang around, and we decided to have a listen to this guy that Sr. Mary was so fired up about. WOW, did Dr. Hahn knock us on the floor with his story about how he became Catholic and the obstacles that he had to overcome to get there. Even having grown up in the bible belt, I had never experienced the kind of strong anti-catholicism that Scott Hahn described in himself and those who tried to keep him out of the Catholic Church. I had also never heard most of the biblical reasons that he talked about for the truth of the Catholic Faith. Of course, this was just the beginning of my journey into learning about how to explain and defend my faith, and I am very thankful to Dr. Hahn for that.