19. At the Foot of the Cross: A Scientist's Catholic Conversion with Father Peter Turrone

In honour of the month of the Most Holy Rosary, and the Feast Day of Our Lady of the Rosary on October 7, we present a series of episodes dedicated to Our Blessed Mother and the Holy Rosary.

The first in our special series is the powerful vocation story of Father Peter Turrone, the pastor of Holy Rosary Parish in the Archdiocese of Toronto.

Father Turrone is a former missionary with the Consolata MIssionaries in Mongolia. He was the pastor at the Newman Centre Student Catholic Chaplaincy at the University of Toronto for five years. He holds a Masters Degree and a Ph.D. in Medical Science and Neuroscience from the University of Toronto.

A former atheist, he shares his story of conversion after reading St. Augustine's "Confessions." Father Turrone also shares his experience as the Catechist for popular Canadian podcaster and cancer survivor, Mrs. Tammy Peterson.

Father Peter Turrone’s incredible journey from atheism to faith is a testament to the profound ways in which science and spirituality can intersect. With a rich background in neuroscience, Fr. Peter shares how his analytical mind found harmony with his spiritual calling, all sparked by a vivid dream of the Virgin Mary and his future mission work in Mongolia's Gobi Desert. As we unravel his story, we explore how personal tragedies can rock the foundation of our beliefs, yet also become the catalyst for rediscovering the grace and hope that faith offers. Through deep reflections and the transformative power of the Holy Spirit, Fater Turrone reveals the intricate balance between the hard questions of faith and the beauty of embracing divine mysteries.

Listeners will gain insight into the communal nature of faith, learning how relationships and mentorship can light the path towards a fulfilling spiritual life. From the stirring words of St. Augustine to the moving symbolism of the Easter vigil, Fr. Peter illustrates how ancient texts and traditions remain relevant in today's world. Through personal anecdotes and stories of others on their spiritual path, like Tammy's preparation to become a Catholic, the episode underscores the harmony between faith and reason. Witness how living in accordance with Christian values can be a beacon of hope in times of existential crisis, helping younger generations navigate the tumultuous waters of modern life.

To reach Holy Rosary Parish in Toronto, Ontario, please visit:
https://holyrosary.ca/
https://www.x.com/@HolyRosary_TO

Daily Mass TV, October 7, 2024, Fr. Peter Turrone: Presider and Homilist
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPUE_sYSOlI

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Chapters

• 0:18 Journey of Faith and Redemption
• 4:23 Father Peter Turonne's Journey from Skepticism to Faith
• 9:56 Journeying with Tammy Peterson towards her Confirmation

Transcript

Father Peter Turrone: 0:18

All of alvation history is presented to us in the liturgy, we are able to remember actively what God has done for us In this great liturgical experience, which Augustine called the mother of all vigils, that spans from the creation all the way to our redemption, pointing towards the future in the church over two or three hours. Each individual person is unique. We all have different experiences that bring us to the Lord, but the Holy Spirit is operated in each one in a different way. To be able to journey with these people and to see where they came from from, and then to be able to not just look outside, from the outside of the church, but have the courage to kind of cross the threshold and enter into the church and that is itself the action of god's grace. And once you enter into the church again, you see her in her beauty. I'm giving a talk in a couple of days and it's on science, philosophy and faith, and one of the things I talk about is belief in God. So what are the obstacles to belief in God? And I think that one of the big obstacles to belief in God is really the problem of suffering. One of the big obstacles to belief in God is really the problem of suffering.

Father Peter Turrone: 1:58

My name is Fr Peter Turone and I am a priest of the Archdiocese of Toronto, a diocesan priest, and I am the current pastor of Holy Rosary Catholic Church. I was on a Marian pilgrimage when I was a seminarian, and so one night I'd gone to bed and I had this unusual dream and the Virgin Mary said to me. She said, "f you receive a big grace, don't be surprised if it's covered with sand. So I woke up and I thought how can a grace be covered with sand? I go, how is the desert a grace? So I grabbed my phone and then I ended up typing it in and sent it to myself as a message, because I go, I can't forget this. And then, on August, the 15th 2010, my plane lands in the Gobi Desert, and then it all came together at that point and I thought so this is the grace that Our Lady was speaking of. I think sometimes you have to be very dramatic in terms of my call, because I was particularly stubborn.

Father Peter Turrone: 2:59

I started off my earlier life as a graduate student, so I did my Master's and PhD in Neuroscience and Medical Science at the University of Toronto and at CAMH (Centre for Addiction and Mental Health), and Medical Science at the University of Toronto and at CAMH, and I worked in the area of schizophrenia and discovering the and trying to understand at least the causes for why people develop certain side effects around these medications. While I was in university, I had to serve my vocation. I'd come back to the church from atheism. Even as a scientist, I struggled with certain things scandals in the church, there were a lot of things personal sin, right. It's much easier to not believe in God and then just do what you want to do rather than know that God exists and then afterwards have that kind of sense of guilt. One of the big obstacles to belief in God is really the problem of suffering. So I think that and that was my experience as well this is one of the main reasons why I was I kind of. I lost my faith, my childhood faith. My aunt was dying of cancer, my best friend died in a car accident and I thought of they were such good people, you know, why would God allow this to happen? So I just stopped praying and then, when I, when you stop praying, I stopped asking questions, which is a big mistake, and it took years before I started asking questions again.

Father Peter Turrone: 4:23

When I started university, one of the first classes I had to take was on ancient Western civilization, and the professor made the mistake of putting the Confessions of St Augustine on the required reading list. So when I read St. Augustine's Confessions I went into a major existential crisis. Everything I thought about Christians was wrong, and then I recognized that here was a man who had a living relationship with God, a personal relationship with God, and that was something that I found to be very interesting and very different than what I had experienced and what I had heard other people experience as well. So I started to see the church in a very different light and I started to meet other Christians. So the Lord put all these different people on my path. I ended up getting invited to a prayer group one night. I hadn't been to church in years.

Father Peter Turrone: 5:15

I went to the church and then a deacon came to me and he said can we pray for you? So I said sure, go ahead. I didn't realize he was going to put his hands on my head and the whole bunch of people around me were praying and he said to me what do you want from Jesus? And then I said I want to start over again, and I had no idea that those words were going to come out of my mouth until that moment, and it was at that moment that I received what I would say today, the gift of faith. And that was the evidence was overwhelming for his existence.

Father Peter Turrone: 5:54

The answer to the problem of suffering, and innocent suffering, is really found in Christ crucified. We recognize that Jesus Christ himself is God and he is the only light of the world, and it's through our baptism that we receive this light directly from him. I'm not sure if you've ever been to an Easter vigil, so the church is quite dark, and then we begin with the blessing of the fire outside of the church. We take some light from the fire and we light the Easter candle. Then we walk into the church, we have people light their small candle from the Easter candle, the Paschal candle, and all of this is incredibly symbolic. One person will receive and then pass the light on to another. So we receive also the communal nature of our faith. It's through the spreading of the word of mouth right that we come to know the faith. So I receive the light from God. This light I pass on to another, and we can see that through parents bringing their children to church to have them baptized, friends and family. An example of the many beautiful people that I'll be baptizing and receiving in the church that night. We have approximately two to three people that will be baptized, and one of them will be baptized outside of the Easter Vigil later on. And then we have about four or five who will be received in the church and will also be receiving confirmation and Holy Communion as well, and Holy Communion as well.

Father Peter Turrone: 7:28

I know Tammy (Peterson) through Queenie Yu, so I was introduced to her just over a year ago and then we met here at the parish in my office, and then since then, I've been her catechist, so I'm preparing her to become a Catholic at the Easter Vigil. She's been the recipient of this miracle. We know that miracles don't produce faith, but they point to faith, they invite one into faith, and so, with Tammy, her journey is unique in that we're trying to unpack and help her understand all the things that she herself is experiencing. She's baptized. However, she didn't always practice her faith. It was through the influence of other people and through the illness that she developed that she had this remarkable experience, this gift that has been given to her by God.

Father Peter Turrone: 8:20

I was thinking about Tammy and Jordan (Peterson). Right, they're different people, but there's, providentidentially, you can see the hand of God at work in both of them. Jordan is to reason, what Tammy is to faith, and I think that my experience and Tammy's experience again, with her husband and kind of going through understanding the reasonableness of the faith and myself, as a scientist and a former atheist, I had had suspicions about the church. Unfortunately, some of the things that I had learned when I was at university were just patently false and that you had to choose between faith and science. They were in conflict. Faith was about feelings and science was about reason, and that, in fact, is incorrect. We use reason to understand our faith. It's inherently reasonable. My experience of knowing what it's like to live in existential despair when I was younger and then having gone through the different kind of ideologies, the different schools of thought, the things that I was exposed to when I was younger and then having had direct experiences of the presence of God, has been incredibly helpful in my own life, and seeing a similar sort of a pattern in the life of Tammy I believe is helpful in helping to form her along the way. I encourage her to continue to pray as she's doing and to share her testimony.

Father Peter Turrone: 9:56

We've known that the church is not convinced by arguments like people converting to the church, but it really comes down to word of mouth.

Father Peter Turrone: 10:03

So it's like mouth to mouth, sharing the news.

Father Peter Turrone: 10:06

Living a life that is worthy of the name Christian is really what's going to convince other people, because many people, especially our younger generations whether they would articulate it as such are going through an existential crisis.

Father Peter Turrone: 10:20

We see that the rates of depression and anxiety and suicides are skyrocketing, so is that not an indication that there's something wrong? If you're experiencing this anxiety, depression, you're just kind of going along the way and maybe it's not clinical, but there's this kind of emptiness and you don't have hope in the future, well, there's an answer to the questions that you have in life. Those answers are answered by a person and Jesus Christ, and I think that it's really important that they make an effort to try to reach out right To reach out and I promise you that if you do, you'll be surprised. What you see on the outside is very different once you enter into the church and the church is beautiful. She's our mother, she loves us, and it's really there that you can discover and experience what it means to be a human being, what it means to be fully alive in God and to have hope for the future um Thank you.