God’s Word needs no authority other than itself.  When I comprehended that principle, I was free--free to search the Scriptures for truth!  In them, I found the way to God.  Man gets to God, God's way, through Jesus Christ, as revealed in the Bible.  “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father but by me” (John 14:6).

As a baby boomer, raised in a large Roman Catholic family during the 1950s and 60s in Los Angeles County, I have many fond memories, and painful ones as well, of growing up Catholic.  I was the middle child in a large close-knit family of nine children, and we were all educated in Catholic school.  My dad was our church’s choir director, and my mom was the local president of Catholic Daughters.  We had a Mary shrine in a grotto in our back yard, and there was a crucifix hanging on the wall in our living room filled with holy candles, holy water from Lourdes, and oil, which I was told was kept in case of an emergency.

During the Brazilian depression in 1934 my father abandoned our home and my mother found herself with the total responsibility of caring for her family.  We were quite poor, my parents had struggled to overcome difficulties and hard times, but our family had togetherness.  That is, until my father’s frequent visits to a “Spiritist Center” began to cause many arguments and generate friction between my parents.