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Name: Jeffery Schwehm
Age: 36
Parish: St. John Evangelist Church, Kohler
Occupation: Assistant professor of biochemistry
at Lakeland College, Sheboygan
Book recently read: “The Story of a
Soul: The Autobiography of Saint Therese
of Lisieux”
Favorite movie: “The Passion of the
Christ”
Favorite quotation: “The church is
a hospital for sinners not a museum of saints,” by
L.L. Nash, a 19th century Methodist minister (Catholic
Herald photo by Sam Arendt) |
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Books on theology, spirituality and church history take
their place alongside books on chemistry, physics and
protein structures in assistant professor of biochemistry
Jeffery Schwehm’s shelves at Sheboygan’s
Lakeland College.
According to Schwehm, the books reflect his commitment
to what he considers every Catholic’s primary vocation — to
do the work of the church while living your daily life.
Schwehm, the oldest of five children, was born to a Missouri
Synod Lutheran mother and a nominally Catholic father
in southern Louisiana. When he was 5 years old, his maternal
grandmother died. In her grief, his mother turned to
Jehovah’s Witnesses, who offered her comfort, and
answers. “It’s not uncommon,” Schwehm
observed, “to join a cultish type group when going
through a major crisis in your life — losing a
job, death of someone close to you. These groups appear
to have answers to life’s difficult questions.”
Eventually his father and some extended family members
joined as well. Throughout his childhood, Schwehm’s
family encouraged him to become deeply involved in Jehovah’s
Witnesses. He spent many hours going door to door, passing
out literature. To the delight of his family, Schwehm
went to New York at age 19, to serve at the Jehovah’s
Witnesses’ headquarters in Brooklyn.
In Brooklyn, he met and married Kathy, another Jehovah’s
Witness. They moved back to Louisiana, where Schwehm
enrolled in college. However, his experience in New York
and his furthering education widened his field of vision,
leaving him unsatisfied with the easy answers given by
Jehovah’s Witnesses.
By the time he earned his doctorate in chemistry from
the University of Arkansas in 1999, he and Kathy formally
split with Jehovah’s Witnesses and began searching
for a faith with which they felt comfortable. Since he
was offered a job teaching at Concordia University in
Nebraska (owned and operated by the Lutheran Church-Missouri
Synod), and his mother’s family had been Lutheran,
they decided to try this denomination on for size.
“While Lutheran, I read the early church fathers,” Schwehm
said. “And as Cardinal (John Henry) Newman said, ‘to
learn about church history is to cease to be Protestant.’ St.
Ignatius of Antioch was a big eye-opener for me. (In
his writings) the early church appears very, very Catholic,
with a hierarchy already in place by 100 AD.”
He remembered how he began reading “The History
of the Catholic Church” by Eusebius. As a Lutheran,
he found it too intense and threw it away half-read,
he said, “although I did get it back out and finish
it.”
He turned to Internet Catholic chat rooms, searching
out more viewpoints. Through this medium, he met up with
an old high school pal, a former Presbyterian but now
an Eastern-rite Catholic priest, Fr. Jim Badeaux. They
exchanged ideas and opinions on matters of faith, all
of it pointing to the fullness of truth found within
the Catholic Church. It got to the point, Schwehm said,
when Fr. Badeaux confronted him: “The Holy Spirit
is calling you home. When are you going to do it?”
For Schwehm, however, that decision involved major lifestyle
changes. As a professor at Concordia, he said, he was
bound to hold out the Lutheran Confessions as a true
exposition of the Scriptures. Becoming Catholic would
leave him unable to fulfill that commitment. Additionally,
he and Kathy had been considering in vitro fertilization
to assist them in becoming pregnant — and the Catholic
Church does not permit in vitro fertilization.
Still, he said, the day came when he told Kathy — “If
I’m going to be honest with myself and God, I have
to become a Catholic.”
Kathy herself had been raised Catholic, even confirmed
in the faith, before joining Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Maybe it was the effect of a seed planted in childhood
that led her to join him in RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation
of Adults) classes at the Cathedral of the Risen Christ
in Lincoln, Neb.
Between his studies and the RCIA program, Schwehm said,
he was converted on an academic and doctrinal level, “but
my heart was not yet converted.”
Then at Christmas of 2002, Kathy gave him the “Diary
of St. Maria Faustina Kowalska,” a Polish nun who
wrote compellingly of God’s mercy. Schwehm and
Kathy read the book together twice. With an increased
understanding of God’s mercy, he said, “my
heart caught up, and I reconciled with the church on
Pentecost in 2003.”
Now, with the support of their pastor Fr. Thomas Lijewski
at St. John the Evangelist Parish, Kohler, Schwehm and
Kathy lead adult classes at their parish, to enliven
the faith of fellow parishioners.
Schwehm believes if people understood their faith better,
they would be less likely to turn to groups like Jehovah’s
Witnesses in times of crisis. This fall, they are presenting
an adult spiritual formation program using Steve Killmeyer’s
book “Sex and the Sacred City: Meditations on the
Theology of the Body.”
With the election coming up, he said, many cultural questions
are being asked today. People know the church is against
things like gay marriage, but often cannot explain why,
he said. “This is a powerful presentation about
the church’s teaching on sexuality.”
The Schwehms bring their experiences of faith and conversion
to people throughout the country, giving testimonials
and leading retreats. Earlier this year, on May 10, Schwehm
appeared on EWTN’s The Journey Home, chronicling
his conversion to the Catholic faith. He also reaches
out into cyberspace, through articles he writes for The
Catholic Exchange, a Web site sharing his passion to
educate people in the Catholic faith.
The couple have not abandoned their desire to have a
child, but are secure in their belief that the outcome
is in God’s hands, a God who knows what is best
for them.
After rejecting in vitro fertilization, they turned to
the Pope Paul IV Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction
in Omaha, Neb. Admitting infertility is a struggle for
the couple, they hope a procedure Kathy recently underwent
will increase their chances for a child.
