“From Baptist to Catholic to Seminary”: Talking Catholic Interview with David L. Gray – My Conversion Journey, The Saints, Peter as Rock of the Church, Journey to the Priesthood, Black Catholicism, and Response to George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery

I invite all of you to go check out the interview I did with David. L Gray this week for his YouTube channel on his show “Talking Catholic with David L. Gray.” David Gray is a Black Catholic author, theologian, historian and YouTuber who is also a convert to the faith. On his show he discusses a wide range of Catholic topics, but he also uses “Talking Catholic” to interview Catholics about their faith and their journey to the Church. Guests in the past have been people like Christine Niles of Church Militant, Randy Shed, who I interviewed last year, and a Black Catholic who converted to one of the Eastern Catholic Churches.

Now it was my turn, and we ran the entire gamut from my journey to the Catholic Church, to praying to the Saints, to the significance of Peter being the Rock of the Church Christ built, to my vocation story, to the state of Black Catholicism in the U.S., to my thoughts of recent events surrounding George Floyd and Ahmaud Abery. We filmed this interview on Tuesday so things might have changed in those cases in the days that followed.

It was released yesterday on his channel and site, and is below. The entire interview is over 2 hours (we really had a good talk!), but in the coming days and weeks he will begin to release smaller segments that deal with the certain topics we discussed.

It ended up being way too close to my laptop camera so please forgive me for that!

This is also reminiscent of the interviews I did with Brad Schepisi of Laudare Outreach in which we also covered my conversion, vocation, being a Black Catholic, and my reaction to the sex abuse crisis blow up in the Church during the summer of 2018. Be sure to check those out as well. I will post them below, too.