Chapters:

00:00 Introduction
03:08 St. Mark’s College & Catholic Education
07:05 Faith Formation & the Diaconate Program
10:00 Converting, Reengaging, and the Beauty of the Faith
16:53 Welcoming Non-Catholics in Catholic Schools
18:24 Whole-Person Evangelization and Interfaith Experiences
20:00 Deepening Faith Through Theology and the Catechism
29:03 Lifelong Learning and Catholic Engagement Today
32:49 Reaching the Margins through Catholic Education
35:44 Hope for the Church and the Power of the Mustard Seed
38:58 From Mennonite Roots to Catholic Unity
46:33 The Lasting Impact of Catholic Education
50:06 Faith and Family: Raising Kids with a Shared Belief
52:16 The Cost and Funding of Catholic Education
55:24 Scholarships and Accessibility in Catholic Education
1:00:45 Encouragement and Outreach: Welcoming Families to Catholic Schools
1:03:32 Outro

If you are interested in our school, make sure to check out our website:
https://www.sjp2academy.com/

Follow us on social media:
Watch on YouTube
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sjp2academy/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sjp2academy
X (formerly Twitter): https://x.com/SJPIIAcademy

 

In this episode of Catholic Education Matters, host Troy Van Vliet interviews Dr. John Martens from St. Mark’s College at UBC, tracing his rich personal and academic journey into the Catholic faith. Dr. Martens shares how his fascination with Christianity led him from a Mennonite upbringing to Catholicism, through studies at institutions such as St. Michael’s College, McMaster, and international universities. Now the director of the Centre for Christian Engagement at St. Mark’s College at UBC, he discusses the college’s role in theological education, its collaboration with other theological institutions, and the growing demand for faith-based formation among Catholic teachers, deacon candidates, and lay ministers. They reflect on how deeper engagement with Catholic theology—particularly for those who didn’t grow up with it or took it for granted—can revitalize faith, inspire conversion, and equip people to serve meaningfully in church and community life.

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to Catholic Education Matters, the podcast that celebrates the beauty of Catholic education, highlighting excellence in academics, athletics, and the transformative power of faith. Join us as we share the stories of those making a lasting impact on Catholic education. Let’s begin.

[00:00:34] Troy Van Vliet: Welcome everyone, and thank you for joining us today here for Catholic Education Matters. My name is Troy Van Vliet and I’m with St. John Paul II Academy Foundation. And today I am very pleased and honored to have with us Doctor John Martens from St. Mark’s College in Vancouver up at UBC here.

[00:00:45] And welcome. Thank you. And I’m going to, if I may, I’m going to read some of your bio so that it’s just gonna and it’s gonna give us lots to talk about because there’s much to say about here as well. So and your bio is written in the in the first person but I’m gonna I’m gonna switch it around and and try and put in the second person here. So you were born in Vancouver and raised in South Vancouver in Richmond.

[00:01:12] Your mom and dad both passed in the last few years but you’ve got four siblings to whom all are local here as well. You got several numerous relatives throughout the Lower Mainland and the Fraser Valley and though you were raised in a large and loving Mennonite family, you were fascinated by a course on Christianity that you took with Father James Roberts at Langara and decided to continue your studies at St. Michael’s College, the Catholic College in the University of Toronto. And from there, your interest in Judaism and Christianity continued to grow and you completed your studies at McMaster University with stops at Eberhardt Carls University. Did I say that right?

[00:02:03] Tubingen. Yeah. In the University of Halifax. Also after you received your PhD, you began to teach at several institutions in Winnipeg but spent most of your time teaching at the University of Winnipeg while in Winnipeg. You also started a crisis line at Salvation Army and worked as a crisis counselor in clinic community health care center.

[00:02:29] In Winnipeg, your wife Tabitha and you entered the Catholic Church at St. Ignatius Church and soon after you moved to the Twin Cities Of Minnesota where you began teaching biblical studies at University of St. Thomas. My goodness, you jumped around.

[00:02:43] Dr. John Martens: Yes. Fantastic.

[00:02:44] Troy Van Vliet: You also taught at UST for twenty wonderful years, rising in the ranks to a full professor and director of the MA in Theology program at St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity. Yes. Wow! And then you came home to Vancouver to direct the Center for Christian Engagement at St. Mark’s College at UBC in 2021.

[00:03:08] Dr. John Martens: That’s right.

[00:03:09] Troy Van Vliet: Which is where you are still today.

[00:03:11] Dr. John Martens: That’s right. Alright.

[00:03:12] Troy Van Vliet: Wow! What a journey you’ve been on so far and love to hear more about it. There’s so much to say. First of all, we always talk about the Catholic education matters, It does matter and there are so many matters and you’ve experienced so much of it already, different aspects of Catholic education. And here you are today at St. Mark’s. Tell us a little bit about St. Mark’s first.

[00:03:39] Dr. John Martens: Sure. So St. Mark’s is the Catholic college at UBC. It’s been around since 1950s, ’19 ’50 ‘6, ’19 ’50 ‘7. It was founded by Basilian Fathers and right now, relationship changed.

[00:03:58] There’s a kind of an affiliation with the Jesuits now. The Basilians had sort of moved of that role. There weren’t that many Basilian Fathers to sort of continue that relationship. But St. Mark’s is interesting.

[00:04:12.920] It’s in that sort of theological neighborhood at UBC, Vancouver School of Theology, Regent College, Cary Theological, St. Andrews. There’s actually a lot of them and we do have good relationships with those schools as well, which is really important. But St. Mark’s is doing theological work.

[00:04:30] It’s the graduate programs because there’s also Corpus Christi, which is an undergraduate college and that handles sort of the Associate of Arts degree and undergraduates move from our college into UBC, SFU, Trinity Western, wherever they might want to go. But we do this sort of the graduate programming. We teach deacons here in the Vancouver area and we also have a BA in theology. And although the government won’t give us as such credit for the BA degree or will not sort of give it academic approval, it is accepted at the School of Education at University of British Columbia. And so a number of our graduates move from St. Mark’s BA in Theology and then they move into the Bachelor of Education program at UBC. And then they’ll teach in Catholic schools. We also have right now currently a student from Vancouver School of Theology who came from Toronto and she’s doing her undergraduate degree at St. Mark’s and then she’ll move into Vancouver School of Theology when she finishes that. So, it is a pathway that can lead people to theological degrees at a different level.

[00:05:48] But yeah, the British Columbia government simply does not certify theological degrees for any church or for any school. Interesting.

[00:05:59] Troy Van Vliet: Maybe it’ll change one day.

[00:06:00] Dr. John Martens: I hope so. Who knows? Our degrees are certified by the Association of Theological Schools, which is a Canadian and American governing body. So we have completely certified degrees, right? These are accredited and accepted anywhere.

[00:06:16] So that’s interesting because I

[00:06:17] Troy Van Vliet: mean on your resume you’d still put you’ve got your BA in theology. Yeah. That’s right. I’m not accredited by the BC government but I have my BA in theology. So, a lot of the students start at Corpus Christi first and then end up at St.

[00:06:33] Dr. John Martens: Mark’s? That’s interesting. We do have a cohort of course of BA in theology students and they might move on from their theology degree to a master’s degree in theology or something like that. But many of our undergraduate students actually move on to other schools because they’re not able to get the full BA in liberal arts, let’s say, or the humanities or in business. And so then they’d move on to Sauder, let’s say, after two years at Corpus Christi.

[00:07:05] We get more students coming back like Catholic school teachers who come to do master’s degrees, who want to get a deeper understanding of their faith. And of course, it’s good for their careers as well. But I think so many of them find the faith development really significant. So, I have a friend actually that’s going

[00:07:25] Troy Van Vliet: through the diaconate program right now as How long is that program at St. Marks?

[00:07:32] Dr. John Martens: So, they take generally a couple of years. The diaconate program, I’m not sure the number of years that are sort of governed through, of course, the archdiocese as to how long that program is. But they would take basically the same number of courses that you would for a master’s degree.

[00:07:49] Troy Van Vliet: Okay.

[00:07:49] Dr. John Martens: And, you know, I’m teaching right now. I’m actually doing an individual study because there is one diaconate candidate who wasn’t able to take his New Testament course with the rest of the cohort. So I’m doing a one on one right now. I’m doing one on one with a wonderful diaconate candidate. I won’t mention his name only because he might not want it.

[00:08:09] Fair enough. But he’s terrific. So I’m saying nothing but good things about him and his hard work. So you can see the dedication that these men and their wives have, of course, to the diaconate program and to the church and it’s terrific to work with them.

[00:08:24] Troy Van Vliet: I know another friend who became a deacon later, who’s also a physician and he’s become a deacon. So I call him, you know, deacon doctor or Doctor. Deacon. So it’s really quite comical, but a lot of people, which is really quite encouraging. There’s a lot of people going through that program right now to help out and relieve some of our pastors in our parishes that are a little overworked right now.

[00:08:56] Dr. John Martens: And we get pastoral workers from churches who take our degrees and I think that kind of training is really helpful for them in their work in the parishes. We need lay ministers, of course. And so we’re there for lay ministers, we’re there for school teachers, the jack in it. For anyone who really wants to broaden their horizons, you mentioned to the doctor when I was in Minnesota teaching in the diaconate program there as well, I had a surgeon who actually diagnosed a back problem. I know who you should go for surgery.

[00:09:31] So that was an added benefit. Terrific guy and other doctors as well. So a lot of people see this kind of training and it’s a little bit more than training, too. I mean, it is theological training, but it’s also a deepening of one’s faith. Right?

[00:09:48] Right. Preparing one to serve in the church more fully. I mean, you don’t have to have theological training to serve in the church, but it helps, right? Yeah. It helps to understand the depth of our tradition and the depth of our faith.

[00:10:00] Troy Van Vliet: Absolutely. And a lot of these things, we were talking before this and I said, you know, I was cradle Catholic, I

[00:10:07] Dr. John Martens: was born

[00:10:08] Troy Van Vliet: Catholic and quite often or guilty as Catholics when you’re born into the church, a lot of it gets taken for granted because it just becomes, you know, tradition or this is just what we do. You don’t question things or you might not well and we learn it at such a young age where it’s just not interesting at

[00:10:28] Dr. John Martens: that time. You know,

[00:10:29] Troy Van Vliet: you’re just like, oh well, you know, I’m not here because I want to be, I’m here because I’m told I have to be and so we end up taking a lot of it for granted. Well, I’m speaking for myself, I think can say that. You take a lot of it for granted and then there’s the rich history of the church and if you start questioning things, it’s funny when people, a lot of people question their ideas with the church or their beliefs with the church, but they fail to actually do the research before they either leave or fall away or whatever. They fail to dig into it and that might be because we learn so much of our faith at a young age that we don’t appreciate it. Then what I have found a fascination just for myself is even watching others that have either reverted to the faith or converted to Catholicism, even from other Christian denominations, and we’ll get into that.

[00:11:34] They just started learning more and more about their faith and as they dug into the history and dug into the original fathers and they started going, wait a minute, we’re supposed to be Catholic. That’s where this all stemmed from and, you know, we’ve kind of just split away and started a whole bunch of different versions of Christianity. But I see as we get older and the more I dig into it and the more you start getting interested is, well, why do we do this? Oh, that’s why we do this, you know, as we’ve just been practicing these rituals forever. So it’s a real, I encourage everybody to actually, you know, dig into your faith more and learn some of the history and because it’s relevant.

[00:12:21] It’s not just history, it’s relevant to what we do and what we practice and how we worship today and why it matters. Absolutely. I’m encouraged that there’s a lot of many students would be at St. Marks?

[00:12:37] Dr. John Martens: In the graduate program we have about 80 students and then there’s a few hundred at the undergraduate level. And so, of course, we always would like more students. The graduate programs are all virtual now and that started with COVID. But the reason why I think it was maintained and I think it’s a good reason. I mean, there are some I mean, it’s more fun to be in class with students, even in graduate programs.

[00:13:05] But we can get people from Northern British Columbia in our classes. We can get people from the island. We can get people from all over the place who would have a difficult time getting out to Point Grey, getting out to the UBC campus.

[00:13:17] Troy Van Vliet: Beautiful place to be, but if you can’t get there then

[00:13:20] Dr. John Martens: you can’t take the course. So, our programs, we try to reach out through all of British Columbia. We have connections with diocese in the interior on Vancouver Island. Really welcome anyone to dig into their Catholic faith, as you say, because the more you dig into it, the more there is to know and the more beautiful it is. And this is from someone who started off with these sorts of questions.

[00:13:50] As you say, I didn’t grow up in the Catholic church but took a course. And I was taking this course and I was like, I didn’t know this. I didn’t know this. Now maybe I’m a theology nerd, right? That’s what I wound up doing.

[00:14:04] I mean, what can you say? If you’re drawn to it, you’re drawn to it, right? But when I went to a Catholic college and that’s the thing about Catholic education, I was welcomed. I wasn’t Catholic. I was welcomed there.

 

[00:14:18] I started to make Catholic friends, of course, started to go to church. Never been to a Catholic church. I mean, arrived on St. Michael’s campus. I’d never been in a Catholic church.

[00:14:27] I’d never been to Toronto, but that’s sort of the olden days, right? The Internet, I sent in a paper application, I was accepted, I arrived in Toronto and went to school.

[00:14:37] Troy Van Vliet: Isn’t that something? That’s great. So that’s how you were introduced into the Catholic faith. You just went to school there.

[00:14:44] Dr. John Martens: I went to school there. I had been taking this course at Langara with Father Roberts. I’d never really met a priest before either. I actually did deliver newspapers to St. Monica’s Parish in Richmond.

[00:14:55] My grandma and grandpa lived on that street.

[00:14:58] Troy Van Vliet: So there was your formal introduction.

[00:14:59] Dr. John Martens: Yeah, was my formal introduction. The priest would give me a dime, know, get a tip at the end of the month when you collect it, right? For those who don’t know about paper roots, you have to go and collect at the end of the month from all your people. You know, Father Roberts was my first and he was talking about the history of Christianity and he talked about how Christians had persecuted Jews in the Middle Ages and things. I was like, no, I was naive, right?

[00:15:24] I was like, no, that can’t be so. And I said, I’d like to know more about this. And he said, well, you should go to St. Michael’s. And I thought, okay, I was young.

[00:15:31] And it was a great introduction. I studied with Father Robert Behringer, who taught a course on Christian holiness. And we read the church fathers and mothers, like the desert fathers and mothers, these early monastics, read about the tradition in the Orthodox Church. I’d never heard about that either really. And so we were digging into all of these texts.

[00:15:57] I learned about Eastern Christianity from a Ukrainian Catholic priest, then studied the Bible, but I was surrounded by priests, right? And they were really supportive and really helpful. And so it drew me into the tradition. And I have to admit for me that intellectual tradition came first. That’s a real attraction for me.

[00:16:19] So there’s a lot of different ways that people will get attracted, I think, to the Catholic church. For me, was that intellectual tradition. There was that great beauty in it and 2,000 year old history. I mean, it’s amazing. But there’s a liturgical tradition that started to draw me in.

[00:16:36] There’s a spiritual tradition, the formation. Lots of different ways, so I’d let people know that in terms of Catholic education there’s a lot of different paths in and it’s worth exploring them. Yeah, it is.

[00:16:53] Troy Van Vliet: Our school, Saint John Paul II Academy, we’re a tiny school right now.

[00:16:59] Dr. John Martens: Right now.

[00:16:59] Troy Van Vliet: The doors are opening in September for the new campus and it’s going to explode and we know there’s going to be a lot of non Catholic, well we already have a lot of non Catholics that are applying saying, do you have to be Catholic to be here? No, absolutely not. I know. And I think a lot of those families that are looking for that are just looking for something solid, maybe an introduction to some sort of faith, some kind of grounding, some kind of moral compass and we had one of our graduates this year stand up and was talking at the open house to attract more families and he was one of our non Catholic kids that stood up and talked and he said, I’m actually gonna be getting baptized this spring. And I was like, well, that’s why we’re here.

[00:17:50] This is what we’re here to do. So he felt welcomed by the faith. We welcome everybody. But some of the comments online on our Facebook page are really quite comical when people are asking this and then other people would pipe in and say: Why would you go to a Catholic school if you’re not Catholic? That’s not the Catholic speaking, that’s somebody else, you know, piping in and saying some things like that.

[00:18:13] So some of the conversation is really quite interesting there. So that’s one thing that should be known is that you don’t have to be Catholic to be going to Catholic school and you’re a perfect example. Yeah,

[00:18:24] Dr. John Martens: mean, it’s a kind of way of doing whole person evangelization. Right. Because it doesn’t have to be coercive. You just have to be present for people and you have to make real for people the love of God and the love of neighbor. And I think that’s how you really show people the gospel, right?

[00:18:46] You live it out and you welcome them. I have a podcast through the Center for Christian Engagement called What Matters Most. And one of the things we do is we do have guests on that represent other religious traditions. So, yeah, most of our guests are Catholic and some other Christian guests as well. But we’ve had a few guests also who represent other religious traditions.

[00:19:08] And I didn’t know this, but the Sikh chaplain at UBC, Indrajit Singh, was born in Malaysia. He went to a Catholic high school in Malaysia and it had a profound influence on him. And he speaks so glowingly of his experience at this Catholic high school.

[00:19:25] Troy Van Vliet: Yes, it’s wonderful. We’ve even had a few, not local, not native American or native Canadian, but Indian families too that have come from India that have gone through the school system. The Catholic school system there is quite prominent and that’s what they’re seeking for their kids here now too. They’re coming to us and say no we’re not Catholic, we’re Sikh but we want our kids to go to the Catholic school or whatever. It was a great experience for us in India and now we want to have here.

[00:20:00] Yes, all are welcome. A question on that at St. Mark’s College, what percentage would be Catholic there if you had to guess or you might know the exact number? In

[00:20:13] Dr. John Martens: our program, in our graduate and theological programs, almost all people are Catholic. I would think so. Yeah, I mean, it’s that kind of formation. We do have one or two students who are not. So, mentioned a student who’d come from Toronto who’s preparing to go to theological school at Vancouver School of Theology, the Protestant School.

[00:20:31] And so, she’s not Catholic, but she’s being trained in her BA in theology and Catholic theology. Of course, she’s more than welcome. But I think, as you say, the vast majority of people who are going to be trained theologically in Catholicism are going to want to use that training either as teachers, as deacons, as lay ministers or just for their own. Don’t want to say self improvement, because it’s not like sort of a self improvement program, right? It’s a deepening of your faith and there are people who want to do that.

[00:21:09] I had a student when I was in Minnesota at the St. Paul Seminary who is a lawyer and she was coming to the end of her career and she said, I can’t even give you references anymore from my former professors. They’ve all passed.

[00:21:25] Troy Van Vliet: Wow. Well, then she could say anything she would. That’s right.

[00:21:27] Dr. John Martens: But she said, I’m not sure I can write a paper anymore. And I said, well, look, you’re a lawyer. You’ve been practicing law. Take a couple of courses. See what you think.

[00:21:33] See how you like it. And so she did that and she did fine and she loved it. That was even more important. So she was like, I’m going to do a whole degree in Catholic theology. So I’d encourage people to take a course if you’re interested, because it’s grounded in the Catholic faith.

[00:21:50] Yes, we ask real serious academic questions, intellectual questions for a deepening of the faith and a growing of the faith. But there are some of us who just want to keep doing that and we’d encourage anyone who wants to join in.

[00:22:07] Troy Van Vliet: Much would be based on or how many references would there be made to the catechism? Well, it’s sort of

[00:22:16] Dr. John Martens: a constant reference in a sense. I had a former student who described the Catechism as the fruit of theology. These are the teachings of the church in a sense sort of not boiled down, but this is what theological training does. It gives us the catechism. It comes from the church.

[00:22:37] And so it’s an interesting question because, I mean, if you’re studying scripture, and you go to the Catechism, you see what the Catechism says about scripture. And so the Catechism is sort of the fruits of what we do theologically. And so what it allows us to do in theological training and education is to really dig into those truths at a deep level. The Catechism, for instance, I’ll talk about what I know best. I’m a scripture scholar.

[00:23:10] It talks about the three stages of development of the biblical tradition. You have the teaching of Jesus. You’re talking about the New Testament in particular. You have the teaching of Jesus, then you have the passing on in stage two of the oral tradition, even before the Gospels are written. And then at stage three, have the written Gospels.

[00:23:30] But it starts with Jesus himself, then the apostles, then the New Testament. And so the catechism talks about these three stages. What we do in a scripture course on the gospels is let’s pull that apart. How was the oral tradition passed on? How can we trust that the oral tradition that the Apostles passed on in their churches was true to what Jesus taught?

[00:23:54] So we sort of go into that in-depth. And so that’s just one example. But there was in Minnesota something called the Catechetical Institute that laypeople from all sorts of parishes would come and they’d go through the catechism over a year. That’d be great to see something like that.

[00:24:13] Troy Van Vliet: Well, speaking of Catechism in a year, I’m not there yet because on the hallow app I’m in the midst of the Bible in a year, which still in the Old Testament, the book

[00:24:24] Dr. John Martens: of Numbers and stuff, bit dry. Is that Mike Schmitz?

[00:24:27] Troy Van Vliet: Yes. He was a student of mine in Minnesota. Was going to ask you about

[00:24:31] Dr. John Martens: that because Catholic education bears fruit.

[00:24:33] Troy Van Vliet: Yes, it does. Wow, what a testimony to yourself there.

[00:24:37] Dr. John Martens: No, it really isn’t. I’m joking. I just taught one course, Letters of Paul. But this kind of education bears fruit, right?

[00:24:51] Troy Van Vliet: Yes, absolutely. And one of the things, I mean, the beautiful part, I’m going get way off here for a second, the Bible in a year, which is I’m going through that right now. Father Mike Spitz, you know, he talks about each, you know. Exactly. Yeah, he goes in and does an explanation and if you didn’t have that explanation, you’d read it and go: what the heck am I reading?

[00:25:18] Exactly. Need that explanation. You need that all the way along. And without the catechism, so like there’s the Christian faiths that are based solo scriptura. Right.

[00:25:31] Well, okay, so you’ve got that and saying: Well, the Bible is the foundation of our faith. It’s like, okay, but who’s interpreting this? That’s right. You know, and the Catholic church has got these guiding leaders in our church that can say, no, this is what this means and this is how we believe it. And it’s the same throughout all of the Catholic church.

[00:25:59] Around the world it’s the same, like we’ve all got the same thing. So we don’t have, you know, this church saying one thing, this one saying another thing, this one saying another thing. So there’s this kind of this one guiding light in the catechism that helps keep us all on track with that. Of course we’ve got one Pope. So,

[00:26:19] Dr. John Martens: I Well, yeah, what we have in Catholicism that’s so wonderful is you have Scripture, of course, and you have the Old Testament, which of course was what Jesus is talking about when he’s talking about Scripture. Then you have that interpreted in light of Jesus and by Jesus himself. He interprets Scripture. And so, you have Scripture now including obviously the New Testament and you have tradition, the church fathers, the tradition of the church as it’s grown over the centuries. We talk in centuries, right?

[00:26:49] Not decades, not years. And you have the magisterium, right? The magisterial teaching of the church. And I think this is what offers Catholicism this understanding that moves beyond just the individual. Of course, there’s room to ask questions, there’s room to grow, there’s room to understand.

[00:27:08] Dei Verbum from the Second Vatican Council talks about our understanding growing and developing but within the church. So with Scripture, Tradition and the Magisterium you have this threefold, in a sense, structure that gives meaning, that gives purpose. And as you say, interpretation, because there is this problem. If I say, well, I don’t like the way they’re doing it, I’ll start my own church. The church of John.

[00:27:38] Troy Van Vliet: Big problem.

[00:27:39] Dr. John Martens: That’s a big problem. You wouldn’t want a church that I started. You really don’t. This is not to fundamentally criticize others who, know, the Lutheran Church, let’s say, or the United Church. I mean, these are brothers and sisters in Christ.

[00:27:55] We know that. And so we want to always be reaching out to them. And that’s what we do at the center as well. Right? We connect to, we reach out to, we join together to whenever we can because it’s important that we seek unity, that we seek to understand.

[00:28:14] But I remember, will say this, there was a very good New Testament scholar Arland Haltgren at the Luther Seminary in Minnesota. So, there’s a lot of Lutherans in Minnesota as well. And we gave a talk at a Methodist church. I was giving a Catholic perspective, he was giving a Lutheran perspective. And he said about sola scriptura, these are his words.

[00:28:36] He said, after 500, Lutherans have their own sort of tradition. And so the question is, where does that tradition begin? Right. And from a Catholic perspective, we say that tradition begins with Jesus himself and the apostles. And so that’s that deep, deep tradition that goes back to Jesus’ own incarnate ministry and the people he called to follow him.

[00:29:03] Yeah, wow. Yes, so there’s formal Catholic education and then there’s continuing Catholic

[00:29:12] Troy Van Vliet: education, which is kind of what I’m well, I had a Catholic high school education. I had a Catholic education growing up, you know, in the church through the catechism programs and what have you. And then now I’m at this stage of my life where I’m trying to learn more about faith different ways. You know, one of the beauties of the internet and podcasts today is like, oh my goodness, there’s so much. If you don’t know something and you need to learn it, it is right there.

[00:29:42] It’s in front of you. We’re all carrying our cell phones around with us all day and it’s right there. You have a question? It’s right there. You need an explanation or something inspirational on a specific topic?

[00:29:52] Right there.

[00:29:52] Dr. John Martens: Here

[00:29:52] Troy Van Vliet: we So there’s no excuse to stop learning about and if you’re learning a bunch of negative things, whether it’s about whatever the topic is in the church, you might be typing in the wrong questions as well because you’ll find what you’re looking for on the internet, good or bad.

[00:30:10] Dr. John Martens: That’s right.

[00:30:11] Troy Van Vliet: So

[00:30:12] Dr. John Martens: yeah, it’s a fascinating thing. So this is where the Center for Christian Engagement that I directed at St. Mark’s College comes in. Like we’re in terms of continuing education and also finding things on the Internet. So we do have a podcast as well called What Matters Most.

[00:30:28] Beautiful. And so we talk to people like Catholic theologians about questions. We had had Bill Kavanaugh, who teaches at DePaul University in Chicago, talking about our idols consumerism and nationalism and how ultimately these don’t satisfy. I had Jenny Martin from the University of Notre Dame who directs the De Nicola Center there talking about how wonderful it is that we exist, how beautiful it is that we exist. And because we both love gardening, we got into that and how gardening is a great expression of theology.

[00:31:04] You need to put down roots, you need to grow in the sunlight. So I’d encourage people apart from this podcast, you should listen to what matters most. We also do lectures and so that’s part of continuing education. One of our goals is to reach out to people. And so we do lectures.

[00:31:22] We just had Father Andrew Laguna from California, a Jesuit priest, talk last week. He came and he was talking about the wonderful work of the Jesuits with immigrants and immigration and how difficult a position that is right now, but also how as Christians we have to really be there for people and really be present for people in terms of caring for our neighbor. So these are all things we do. We also have a conference coming up May called The Promise of Christian Education. So we’re looking at the whole of Christian education.

[00:32:00] I’d really invite Catholic school teachers, but anyone who wants to come that we’re going be talking about things like Catholic school funding that might be boring for a lot of people. But also, how do you deal with a diverse population in a Catholic classroom when you’re teaching Catholic theology? And so I’m really pleased to say that I taught a class last summer at St. Mark’s called Catholicism and Interreligious Dialogue. And three of the papers being presented at this conference are by Catholic school teachers, wow.

[00:32:31] Two from Vancouver and one from the island because they have on the ground experience. Right? Right. And they’re bringing their knowledge and their understanding. We have someone from CISVA who’s also going to be presenting at the conference.

[00:32:44] Troy Van Vliet: Who from CISVA would be?

[00:32:45] Dr. John Martens: Rosette Corea. I believe I’ve got the name correct. I

[00:32:49] Troy Van Vliet: don’t think I know her.

[00:32:49] Dr. John Martens: So I’m happy to have her present as well. So, yeah, this is what we’re trying to do in terms of outreach, right? We want people to connect to the Catholic church. We know that for some people they might have been hurt, for some people they might have just drifted away as you’re talking about. And this we think is a kind of a low key way to draw people in.

[00:33:13] Come to one of our lectures or listen to that lecture on YouTube. All of our lectures go up on YouTube. Join us in that way. Even our lectures, because UBC is hard to get to, we also live stream them so that people can watch from home. But we’ve also had people all across Canada and The US watching our lectures as well.

[00:33:37] Troy Van Vliet: That’s great. That’s the beauty of podcasts. Wow. I know we had somebody in Ireland, somebody in Italy watch our shows last week. You get that feedback.

[00:33:49] Yeah, really?

[00:33:50] Dr. John Martens: Really? Watch this on

[00:33:51] Troy Van Vliet: the other side of the world. That’s great. Fantastic. Yeah, here we are in little Vancouver here and kind of pumping out some good information regarding Catholic education. You know, as we said, there’s so many different topics that you can go into with Cathedication and the overlap and it’s so needed.

[00:34:07] It’s so needed now more than ever. Mean there’s probably been generations before that have said that as well, but where we’re replacing religion. It’s kind of fallen in the West especially. It used to be the grounding for our lives and the West was built on Judeo Christian values and what’s happened is that’s kind of just falling away and we’re falling into more selfish type lifestyles. And as the church crumbles or has become less valuable then so goes the family and the family starts to fall apart.

00:34:46] And when the family starts falling apart, the society starts falling apart and we look to replace that religion with something. You know, we all believe in something. Now whether it’s the financial lures out there that we’re striving for or government tends to want to put their replace religion with more government, more government, more government and rely on the government. The government should do this, the government will take care of you, the government will, you know, and that’s the wrong direction in my humble opinion. We need to get faith back in our entire society, you know, so with strong faith comes strong families and from that becomes a strong society.

[00:35:36] So hopefully our education, our Catholic education systems will contribute to that and keep it going in the right direction.

[00:35:44] Dr. John Martens: Well, I’m hopeful, though, the church is always even Thomas Halik, this great Czech priest, talks about the fact that, you know, maybe the church has less of an influence in some ways, but he says maybe this is a way for the church to regain its footing again. The church started small, started without any kind of political power, started without any kind of influence. But the way it gained that influence was simply by living out the gospel and convincing people of it in that manner. Look at how the Christians live. Look at how they do it.

[00:36:24] And so he uses the image of the mustard seed and says, maybe Jesus wants us to get smaller so that we can spread more widely. And it’s a really interesting image that, of course, we can’t give up hope in the church because it’s a church that Christ founded. So we just have to recognize that the Holy Spirit is always at work, that the same Holy Spirit that came on the apostles at Pentecost is still active today. And so we have to trust and have that’s where our faith needs to be, too, that God is still working, that God is going to work in many ways through our center, we hope through your school, through our school, you know what I mean?

[00:37:04] Troy Van Vliet: And quite often in strange ways.

[00:37:05] Dr. John Martens: In strange ways, in ways you might not expect.

[00:37:08] Troy Van Vliet: You think why am I going down this road? And then all of a sudden, oh well, if that didn’t happen then none of these other great things would happened. Know, that’s the thing you pray for strength and that’s like well it’s gonna make life hard because you don’t get stronger by things being easy and simple and nothing worth doing of course is easy. Anything rewarding is difficult. You have to put in a lot of effort and you have to come over through a lot of challenges.

[00:37:36] Quite often I’ve said if I knew in this school would have been this challenging, you know, again this school I would have never done it. But I think many people say that about everything that they’ve done that they’ve accomplished since I think

[00:37:47] Dr. John Martens: that’s right. I was thinking actually about when I moved to Toronto to go to St. Michael’s College. I had nowhere to live. I thought I did, but I guess, you know, back then I thought I had a dorm room, but apparently there wasn’t one.

[00:38:04] I don’t know if my application got lost or what because it just sent out a letter and I only had $537. And I was like, well, here I am. I’ve to find a place to live and I’ve got to

[00:38:17] Troy Van Vliet: go to What a challenge.

[00:38:19] Dr. John Martens: Yeah. But, you know, maybe being young is helpful in some ways. Yeah. You know what I mean? Just here I am and you just got to do it.

[00:38:28] But yeah, when I think about it, you can see God leading, right? Ultimately into the church and ultimately into what my vocation is and ultimately back to Vancouver after thirty nine years away. My goodness, welcome back.

[00:38:42] Troy Van Vliet: Thank you for coming back.

[00:38:43] Dr. John Martens: Yeah, love being in Vancouver again. It’s been wonderful, right? To be around family when so long I was not. Except for my own family.

[00:38:55] Troy Van Vliet: Yes, of course.

[00:38:58] Dr. John Martens: Now your wife did not grow up Catholic as No, didn’t either. She grew up

[00:39:02] Troy Van Vliet: in the Mennonite Church. In the Mennonite Church. And that’s the same as you. Same as me. Yeah.

[00:39:06] You met in back Easton, Ontario?

[00:39:08] Dr. John Martens: In Winnipeg. In Winnipeg. Yeah. And so that is where we both decided that we wanted to enter into the Catholic church. It had taken me a long time and part of it was that I didn’t I loved the kind of faith that my family had.

[00:39:25] It was a deep faith. We were very involved in our church on Number 5 Road in Richmond. Now it’s a highway to heaven. Richmond Bethel Church was a Mennonite brethren church there and it’s still on 5 Road, but I don’t think it has the same name. I think both of us felt when we’d grown up in a church where faith was really significant and really mattered, but that we had been called in a variety of ways.

[00:39:54] And one of them was, you know, there’s so many different churches, as you had mentioned, and we felt one sign of unity is coming into the Catholic church, saying, I’m not giving up the beautiful things I learned from my family. My family was sustained by their faith. My dad grew up in Ukraine, that’s where he was born in the Mennonite communities there and his father was killed in the Stalinist purges like millions of others. And then in the early 1940s, they were going through Poland trying to escape the war and wound up in a refugee camp for three years. And what sustained them before they got to Canada was their faith.

[00:40:36] And in the face of great terror, persecution. And so I wanted my parents to know this is not something I feel like I’m turning my back on, but that I’m trying to become a part of something greater and maintaining the roots that I was given as a Mennonite as well. I have a friend, Gerald Schlaubach, also a Catholic theologian, but raised a Mennonite as well. And he started a group called Bridge Folk, which is Catholics and Mennonites together. So I think it’s one way that he could do that is because he knows both those traditions.

[00:41:13] Troy Van Vliet: Yeah, we need more of that. Yeah, we definitely need more of that. But in today’s world too, as Christians get persecuted, we need to unite not as an army, but as those of us with the same belief. There’s way more that unites us than what

[00:41:29] Dr. John Martens: separates us in Christianity.

[00:41:31] Troy Van Vliet: And I think once we realize that and grow to understand, because quite often we just don’t know. We don’t have the information as to why we’re Catholic or where the Catholic church started from and the traditions of it and we don’t know where some of the Protestant faiths came from and what happened. None of us were there during that time when these things, you know, so there’s history there can be shared and you know, I think that enriches, you know, even if you stay Protestant or you stay Catholic or whatever, we know more about it

[00:42:09] Dr. John Martens: and you can be much more understanding and supportive of Christianity in general. And I will say that’s why it is called the Center for Christian Engagement. I didn’t name it. That was named already by the donors to the center. It was distinctly supposed to be a Catholic center.

[00:42:25] But these connections with the other faiths are really significant. So we’ve done work with Regent College and Vancouver School of Theology on we had a talk on artificial intelligence and what it means for the Christian faith and some of the problems with that in terms of not really taking seriously our embodied humanity, that we are all created in God’s image. And so we’re going to continue to do this work with the other colleges. A number of the local colleges are supporting our Christian education conference from May by buying ads in our program So Regent, Vancouver School of Theology, and we’re really thankful. St.

[00:43:06] Andrew’s College, the Presbyterian College. That’s great. And I’m connected with a lot of these Protestant groups to start a writing group called The Bell, and this is bringing Protestants and Catholics together. Tom Cooper has been involved in this, so that we write from a Christian perspective about things that matter to the whole community. And we’re connecting with other Christian podcasts.

[00:43:35] Troy Van Vliet: That’s so refreshing to hear.

[00:43:37] Dr. John Martens: Yeah. So we’re doing all we can. And, you know, I have to say with some of my Protestant friends and Catholic friends, we have a beer once a month. Yeah. Oh, great.

[00:43:48] We get together involved in Christian education together and just talk about the work we’re doing. I love hearing that. It’s a good thing to do. It’s good to have a beer, but it’s even better to be with

[00:43:58] Troy Van Vliet: friends. Exactly.

[00:43:59] Dr. John Martens: And to just connect.

[00:44:02] Troy Van Vliet: That’s great. Your family getting back to your family, your siblings, they all remained Mennonite?

[00:44:12] Dr. John Martens: You know, not in a sense. I mean evangelical. So, of them go like my brother and his family go to South Delta Baptist.

[00:44:22] Troy Van Vliet: Okay.

[00:44:23] Dr. John Martens: And most of my family, you know, parents always remained active in the Mennonite church. My dad was a deacon in the Mennonite church. My mom and dad a deacon couple in the Mennonite church. So, they always remain connected. My family are all connected, I would say, if not to Mennonite churches and more evangelical churches.

[00:44:45] Right. Yeah. Okay. And some of that might have to do just with location, too. Yeah.

[00:44:50] I have a sister in Los Angeles. She’s been there for over forty years. Yeah. My sister in New Brunswick. Like don’t know that the Mennonite communities are all that strong there like they are in the freezer right here or Manitoba.

[00:45:02] Things like that. Yeah.

[00:45:04] Troy Van Vliet: My first encounter with the Mennonite community was playing basketball against MEI. MEI Eagles? In the Eagles.

[00:45:12] Dr. John Martens: The basketball team.

[00:45:13] Troy Van Vliet: Yeah, they were. We had a hard time with them all the time. I think we may have split decisions in terms of the win losses with them, but yeah, we struggled with them. They’re great and we got along great with the community out there. So that was fantastic.

[00:45:30] Dr. John Martens: Yeah, I mean, it’s really interesting. I think part of my connection, of course, to the other Protestant and Anabaptist traditions is that that’s a tradition I grew up in. So I know about the great love of Scripture, the great love of Jesus. And I was raised not just by my parents, but by older relatives, my great aunts who had come from Ukraine as well. They were all single.

[00:45:55] I mean, they’d gone through horrible times there, but they ran their own little farm in Yarrow out near Chilliwack, these three great aunts, and they never learned to speak English. They always spoke German. I think probably because they didn’t have husbands, they didn’t have children and went and learned English. But they were wonderful models of great love and a great dedication to scripture. And so that kind of model, I think, is what really encouraged me to keep seeking and keep asking questions about Scripture.

[00:46:30] In

[00:46:33] Troy Van Vliet: your teachings, outside of Father Mike Schmitz, do you have any examples of I know this isn’t a question we gave to you before, but do you have any examples of any students or something that you think their lives changed or that they were really hugely impacted by the Catholic education that they’re receiving.

[00:46:56] Dr. John Martens: Yeah, I think so. My mind goes to two students and I’m going to try to think about some more because but I think of two students. I had a student, David Turnblom, who’s now a theologian at University of Portland, and he took a Theology one hundred course with me. Actually, was 101. Theology one hundred one is what it was called at University of St.

[00:47:22] Thomas. And he had just come to university to do a business degree or something. And he took that Theology one hundred one course and he said, I think I’m going to be a theologian. I had no idea what happened to him. And I wrote for America Magazine and I was introducing Scott Hahn at a talk in New York City.

[00:47:43] And somebody came up to me at the reception after and said, David Turnbloom wants to say hello to you. He wasn’t there, but a friend of his from graduate school was there and he was at Boston College doing a PhD. So that was one. Another one is someone I’m even closer to, priest, Father Kevin Zilberberg. Kevin took my New Testament course as an undergraduate.

[00:48:07] Now, he was already in a minor seminary, an undergraduate seminary, which University of St. Thomas had. Most of those young men, though, don’t go on to become priests. But Kevin did and he went on to become a biblical scholar as well. And he now teaches at University of Salamanca in Spain, One of the oldest universities in the world.

[00:48:28] And so we’re still in touch. He asked me questions about scripture. What are you reading on the Apostle Paul? Because he sort of moved into a new direction. He’s an Old Testament scholar, but he’s teaching Paul there.

[00:48:40] So, talk fairly regularly about what books are you reading on the Apostle Paul and try to keep him up to date on that as he grows into that new role. But yeah, I do think you hear from a lot of students in general, they don’t have to become Catholic theologians for the education to have an impact. That’s a thing. And that’s important to keep in mind. Those ones jump to mind because you think, Ah, you know, it really took root in specific way.

[00:49:08] But I can think of lots of students who recognized the seeds that were planted after they left university, started families, had kids, had businesses, run into the realities of life. Sometimes it’s hard, sometimes it’s tough, sometimes you lose a job, sometimes a child gets sick. And that’s when their faith really becomes a comfort to them and a strength for them and is important for them to really recognize. Yeah, what we were learning then was even more important than my courses in entrepreneurship. Nothing against studying business or anything like that.

[00:49:49] You know what I mean? But they’re like, this is what really matters. Right? And this is where the depth of the tradition can sustain me and can nourish me. I know the older I get the more I appreciate my high school

[00:50:06] Troy Van Vliet: experience at St. Thomas More. Yeah, we reflect back on that and you’re just like, oh my goodness, that was sure good that I went through that. And quite often that happens, you know, where you go and you’re busy kids. Sometimes it’s when you have kids that you say, okay, life just got real.

[00:50:27] Now I’m not living for me or just me and you anymore. Now it’s us and how are we going to raise our child? Which is one of the reasons, you know, I try and still in my daughters too, it’s like it’s so important if that you end up with somebody of the same faith. Yes, works. Other relationships, yeah, it can work when you’re of a different faith and go but it’s just if that one thing is uniting you then there is so many more challenging times that you can overcome without having to worry about, you know, oh but you think this, I think this and now there’s a whole another thing to challenge us on a day to day basis and how you’re going to

[00:51:07] Dr. John Martens: raise your kids. Yeah, life has challenges, right? That it does. And this is where faith comes into play. Like what is our purpose?

[00:51:15] What is our meaning? And this is what drew me to theology and keeps me interested in connecting to people with this respect. Again, I think of it in terms of planting seeds and trying to nourish those seeds and to let God do the work that God will do. But it’s important to get out there, right? And I thought, the podcast is a good idea, right?

[00:51:39] Because people might be listening to it as they’re driving to work. They might be listening to it halfway around the world. I know we have listeners in Guatemala, in Asia, even at times we’ve had for our podcast listeners in Saudi Arabia.

[00:51:52] Troy Van Vliet: Yeah. That’s good. And even over there, if you’ve impacted them, like in this podcast, if somebody was to listen to us and say, well, I’m thinking about putting my kids in a Catholic school or a faith based school of some sort and they hear a podcast like this and go yeah, you know what I’m doing it. No, we don’t even know. We don’t even hear from these people.

[00:52:16] Don’t know it like we said it could be the other side of the world but all right, you know, there’s Catholics all around the world. The faith is everywhere. It’s not limited to where we are at. Now here’s a different sort of topic to get into. Catholic education, unfortunately, like all education, there’s a cost to it.

[00:52:36] Dr. John Martens: That’s right.

[00:52:37] Troy Van Vliet: And we’ve experienced that of course in our new school. It’s over a hundred million dollar build and that’s real money.

[00:52:45] Dr. John Martens: That’s real

[00:52:46] Troy Van Vliet: money. And we got to pay for it somehow. And we do, you know, we’ve capital campaigns, fundraising, Archbishop or the Archdiocese, Bank of Archdiocese with the Archbishop here, Archbishop Michael Miller. They’ve been supportive, of course they had the land, they had the money. Now that’s all donor money to begin with.

[00:53:05] So our entire program is based on donor money and also tuitions that we have to charge. Our founding principal at our school, Mr. Laurier, he was somebody that said always right out of the gate, was like, you know, look, we do not want to deny anybody a Catholic education for financial reasons. He said that’s got to be that’s a must. He said if I’m going to teach, if I’m going to be your founding principal, we have to have this.

[00:53:35] I mean we had him on the podcast actually a few weeks ago and he’s going to tell his story. I didn’t know why he felt that way, why he was so adamant about that and I was just kind of, okay, I guess we’ll do that. Alright, sounds like a good one I guess and we’ve abided by that. That’s been our mandate going forward. Anybody that’s come and said, you know, they have to kind of show it or approve it, that’s for the discussion because like they said, there are bills to pay and he said on the podcast, he had said, you know, I was one of those families.

[00:54:13] He came from a big family and it was at St. Thomas More as well in Burnaby and had to go there humbly and say, look, we can’t and they were like, no, come. All of you guys are gonna come here. And the Christian brothers at the time they put them through the schooling there. And then Mish was in the Catholic school system for over forty years now.

[00:54:32] He’s been teaching and his brother, Roger, same thing. He’s a principal at Notre Dame. Over forty years in Catholic education, which is huge. And had we not had had they not had the ability to say no, you’re going to come anyway. We will figure it out.

[00:54:49] And quite often, I’ve said to Mish had said to me too, how are we going to pay for this? Don’t know. We have to do it though. Let’s keep going. And St.

[00:54:58] Mark’s College in Corpus Christi. Same kind of thing. Was at a fundraiser last week or a couple of weeks ago.

[00:55:04] Dr. John Martens: Father Greg

[00:55:05] Troy Van Vliet: Fantastic speaker. Absolutely great. It was an honor to see him and meet him and hear him speak. It’s powerful. So what do we do at St.

[00:55:16] Mark’s for students and families that they might not be able to afford all the tuition because it’s not cheap either.

[00:55:24] Dr. John Martens: No, it’s not. There are a lot of scholarships. And this is the case for students at Corpus Christi as well. And so a lot of that money raised at the Father Greg Boyle dinner will be going specifically to scholarships for So, we offer a lot of scholarships, some even sort of like full ride scholarships. And at the undergraduate level, many of our students are not Catholic students and not Christians.

[00:55:52] And so we think that’s important to bring people in as well to give them that access to education like that. We also have scholarships available at the graduate level for Catholic school teachers, for instance, to encourage them to become the archdiocese. It has been really generous in giving us money as well. We raise donations to pay for scholarships as well. And I should say the Center for Christian Engagement is based on funding that started with Peter Bull, Andy Sox, Angus Reid, and the archdiocese.

[00:56:27] Troy Van Vliet: Right?

[00:56:28] Dr. John Martens: And so, I mean, that’s why basically all of our programming is free with the exception of the conference where we have our biennial conferences. We have one every two years. We had one on Pope Francis two years ago. We have this one coming up, but it only costs $60 for the whole conference. That includes reception and coffee breaks and stuff.

[00:56:54] We’re just trying to offset costs because we recognize that we’ve been given this great gift by these donors. And the reason is to get the word out there. So, yeah, there are scholarships available and I should say anyone who wants to donate is welcome to as well. I know both to your St. John Paul II Academy and to our colleges.

[00:57:18] And I know people are strapped, but there are so many people who are willing to give and we’re so honored by that.

[00:57:26] Troy Van Vliet: Yeah, that’s huge. Donors, like I say, our school is built on donor money. It’s amazing. And a lot of people don’t know financially how in the elementary and high school we get 50% government funding as long as we’re running at the same operating at the same level as public schools are in our area. So we’ll get 50% towards operations, not towards infrastructure.

[00:57:51] So that building that we see there, that 100 plus million dollar structure is paid for, that is donors. No taxpayer money, zero. So that’s something a lot of the general public don’t know and because they think, oh well private schools are a drain on the system. Actually private schools are actually saving the government and saving the taxpayer a lot of money. And especially today when there’s such a shortage of schools in the public system, generally speaking.

[00:58:22] So our tuitions are we have them in place not because we’re an elitist school, which we’ve been accused of. It’s not that at all, but we do have to pay bills and we do not get the funding like a public system does. We don’t get virtually any in terms of infrastructure. So, you are using the word scholarships. In order to get a scholarship, is that a nice way of saying bursary in some case scenarios or are they scholars hips based on okay you’ve reached, you know, you’ve a high GPA and you’re an athlete or whatever, you know.

[00:59:04] So, can give you a scholarship based on what your past history has been and your credentials. Are they that or are they just people saying, hey look I’ve reached the minimum level to get into university here, I really want to go here but we can’t afford it. Yeah,

[00:59:24] Dr. John Martens: so for Corpus Christi I think Jerry Turcotte, our president could speak to that even more. But I think we have needs based scholarships as well as scholarships like our circle of fellows for undergraduates, which are for our, you know, a real leadership sort of scholarship and students, of course, have to apply and earn those. But like you say, bursaries can be very helpful. St. Michael’s College sort of kept me afloat with a very nice bursary when arrived there, which was really wonderful.

[00:59:59] For the graduate program, St. Mark’s gives out scholarships. It really isn’t needed. It’s more like if you’re a Catholic school teacher and you want to come and study with us, we have money available for you and some of the money, a lot of it comes through the archdiocese as well to support their own school teachers.

[01:00:17] Troy Van Vliet: Okay, yeah, that’s great. That’s something and I always encourage families too. Younger families coming to our school to SGP2 where they’ve said, you know, we can’t go there. We can’t afford that. And I’m like, come anyway.

[01:00:34] Yeah, we’ll figure it out. Come anyway. You know, we’ve got room right now. It’s not going to always be like this, but come anyway. And, well, I feel bad, you know, I don’t want somebody else paying.

[01:00:45] It’s like, no, no, no. What do you think happens at the public school? That’s right. Everybody else is paying for your kids to get educated. That’s how this system works.

[01:00:54] So we want you to come to our school whether you can afford it or not. Want you to apply anyway, you know, and if we can fit it in, we’re gonna fit it in. So we hate turning anybody away. Well, Doctor. John Martz, thank you for coming here today and if you have anything else, your podcast you may want to mention before we wrap up.

[01:01:20] Dr. John Martens: Sure. What matters most? You can find it on Apple and Spotify. What matters most? I love it.

[01:01:27] To get people to think about that. What matters most to you?

[01:01:29] Troy Van Vliet: All

[01:01:29] Dr. John Martens: right. Our lectures are available on the St. Mark’s YouTube channel. Oay. And if you connect to us at the Center for Christian Engagement, our website is there, Center for Christian Engagement, and you’ll find all of our programming and links to it.

[01:01:45] And I’m really hoping we can continue to do what you were talking about, of that continuing education stuff, too. So I’m thinking about how do we do sort of Bible courses for people, not as a for credit course necessarily, just to connect them to the faith and to help deepen their faith. So it’s always a matter of not just money, but time, right? A small center and it’s like, how much can we do? We’d love to do more and more and more, but we encourage people to check us out and we’re happy to do more and more and I’m happy to engage people anytime they want with Catholic theology.

[01:02:22] Troy Van Vliet: Yeah, for sure. Know and networking amongst the different organizations within our church and in education, you know, we have to network as much as possible. So you know we’ve set it out in the valley in our schools, there’s Holy Cross, there’s SJB, they’re like we’re in competition. No, no, no, we’re all on the same team, know, we’re trying to promote each other here. So we have to make sure that so getting the word out that Catholic education matters and we’re doing the right thing and it’s not just the kids that are going to our schools now but it’s the ones that aren’t yet.

[01:02:59] We have to get the word out to them that they’re welcome and we want them to come and receive the great education I know that I was privileged to receive.

[01:03:10] Dr. John Martens: Thank you.

[01:03:11] Troy Van Vliet: Yes, thank you very much and thank everybody for joining us here today and we are also on Spotify and Apple and YouTube, so please share the word and invite others to come and watch our show here. Thank That’s

[01:03:28] Dr. John Martens: what I say. Thanks so Thank

[01:03:30] Troy Van Vliet: you, John Martin.

[01:03:30] Dr. John Martens: Appreciate it. Yeah, my pleasure.

[01:03:32] Troy Van Vliet: All on your favorite listening platform, rate it, and also leave a review. Don’t forget to share this episode with your friends and family to help spread the word about the impact of Catholic education. Be sure to listen again.