Berkley Center

Chuck Witschorik: I think that it was always a call to serve others from a place of faith. While I'm not specifically doing ministry in the Catholic Church anymore or ministry in other churches per se, I feel like I now do work that's meaningful to me in my career as a teacher and then ministry in ways that flow from that same place of faith that I've always had. So it's been a long journey.

It's been circuitous, I guess is the word in a sense. But I feel like it's led me to a place where I have a faith practice and I engage in service that is meaningful to me and that I hope is of some help to others and meaning to them. How about you? How do you understand that part of your journey?

Colleen Dunne: Well, I like being present in community.

Chuck Witschorik: Right. Absolutely.

Colleen Dunne: I like building community.

Chuck Witschorik: Absolutely. Yeah.

Colleen Dunne: That's really important to me. I think my call to ministry is I have never felt called to leave the Catholic Church as so many people are exploring disaffiliation, especially among young people, mostly from the Catholic Church, but from organized religions. I think it's culturally important to me, to my upbringing, to my family.

And I think it's also important to me in the life of the sacraments in honoring the liturgical here and honoring all the things that the Catholic Church gives to me in my life. So I've always felt called to give back. And to know that though the church as an institution isn't perfect, there are some people doing some really good things in the church.

Chuck Witschorik: Absolutely.

Colleen Dunne: That has given me a lot of gifts in my life.

Chuck Witschorik: Yeah. You're working and you're ministering from a place of authenticity for you within the Catholic Church and the Catholic tradition. And you're also using that tradition to welcome and to be inclusive of others, including here at Santa Clara and the university's goal and priority to be inclusive of different faith traditions. So I think that's great. There's a kind of harmony, I guess you might say, where when each of us is living authentically our spiritual journey, it can't help but resonate with others. That's Beautiful.

Colleen Dunne: What's left undone in terms of your life of faith?

Chuck Witschorik: That's a great question. I feel like for me, what's still to be done is unknown, but that's okay I guess. I think I've learned over the years to be okay with that because the Catholic tradition remains important and it remains a part of who I am. And I think for me individually in my journey, existing outside of that tradition or maybe again, in harmony with it, but not necessarily within it right now, has felt like something that is authentic for me.

So I feel like I continue to just allow the Spirit to move for me in my life. And so that has brought me to the Lutheran Church for a while. I've explored other traditions as well. And so I feel like my journey is maybe kind of an unfinished one and I don't really know where the ultimate outcome will be.

Colleen Dunne: We're still young.

Chuck Witschorik: Yeah, we're still young, exactly. To be in a place where I'm okay with just seeing how things unfold and letting the Spirit move.