The Anti-Sam Brownback Blog

[This C-SPAN interview will run on Sunday at 8pm and 11pm. My readers get it here first]

LAMB: When did you decide to become a Catholic?

BROWNBACK: It was about three years ago that I actually joined the Catholic Church. And I had thought about it from about four years prior to that. So it has been seven years that I‘ve thought, studied, considered doing that.

LAMB: What were you before?

BROWNBACK: I grew up a Methodist. Parker, Kansas, where I‘m from, that a town of 250 people, we kid that we lived up in the suburbs of Parker, we were a mile-and-a-half out of town, but we were on city water, so we thought, that‘s — we were in the suburbs of Parker that — on a farm there.

It‘s a one-church town, the Methodist church, and so I grew up a Methodist, then went to college and got involved with some of the youth groups on the college campus. The Navigators was an organization. And went to a Baptist church there for a period of time.

And most recently, before I joined the Catholic Church, was attending and still attend an evangelical — free, independent evangelical church in Topeka. My family didn‘t join the Catholic Church and so we go — I have a great Sunday morning.

I‘ll go to Mass, then I go to evangelical church. I get the Eucharist and the proceedings from the Catholic Church and the preaching and singing of an evangelical church, and it‘s really — it‘s a beautiful mix.

LAMB: Why Catholic and what lead to that? Who introduced you to it?

BROWNBACK: Really nobody did. It was a personal searching that took place. And you know, a deep feeling and calling. I did have a chance to meet Mother Teresa about eight months before she died. We hosted her here for a Congressional Gold Medal.

And I had read many of her writings, her speeches. She didn‘t write a lot. She gave a number of speeches and a lot of really piercing comments. And I was very attracted to the depth and beauty of the faith that she saw.

The Christian faith is a very hard faith to practice and to get it right. There — I guess, we‘re always practicing and never quite getting there. And yet, you know, you look at a person like her, and I‘ve seen others that seem like they have gotten an awful long ways along it.

And they still have problems. They still have difficulties, but seem to have perfected more the faith within them. And it was a beautiful thing to see.

LAMB: Why is the Christian faith hard to practice?

BROWNBACK: Actually, I think it‘s impossible to practice. Gandhi actually was quoted as saying this, that — and I‘m going to butcher this quote, but that would become a Christian if he could ever see one fully practiced.

It‘s a very self-sacrificing faith. It‘s premise is to love God and love one another. And that love is not limited. In its practice of love, it seeks fruit, it seeks you to show that fruit by caring for other people.

And these are all things generally really against human nature. So it has to be a real, you know, flowing through you for that to take place. And it‘s so easy for us to get our eye back on ourselves and our own selfish interests and desires and ways of doing things.