Deacon John Beagan

For many years, prior and since ordination in Boston, Deacon John has struggled to pass the Catholic faith on to his children, relatives, teenagers in faith formation, and grownups coming to church, with various degrees of success and failure. After participating in diverse programs, observing the polls and the Church's continuous decline, and so forth, he came to a couple of basic conclusions.

First, people have fallen away and lack enthusiasm because of a range of doubt, disbelief, and misunderstanding. Thus, various simple reasons and cases for why we are convinced this faith is true must be regularly presented and made available.

Second, people must be made to care about their faith. Today, most everyone presumes eternal life except for those who are purely evil. But this is not what Jesus taught, nor what the Church continues to officially teach. In light of the crucifixion, we must be prepared to stand before God his Father, so we may be able to pray like Simeon, "Lord, now your servant is ready to go to you in peace." -- such a wonderful position to be in.

Deacon John has been a professional developer of information systems for decades. His wife, Marita, is a wellness nurse and social worker for 350 units of elderly housing.

They have three grown sons. Jesse was a Peace Corps volunteer in Cameroon, West Africa. Today, he's an ESL teacher in NYC public schools. Charlie was a Marine Corps infantry captain. He and his wife, Laura, have business careers in NYC. They also have two daughters. The youngest, Joe, is an infantry corporal in the Marines. God willing, he'll go to a good Catholic college next year.