Finley says it was his faith in God that guided him to a new career

Tom Heinen in today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel answers my earlier question, and confirms Dad29's recollection in his comment to my earlier post.

Born into a German-Irish family that prayed the rosary nearly every night, Dan Finley has made a spiritual journey from Roman Catholicism into Presbyterianism and now Eastern Orthodoxy.

The journey starts at his parents' home.

Joan and her husband, Jack, are what Dan Finley calls very liberal Catholics. There were three pictures on their living room wall when he was growing up - Jesus Christ, Pope John XXIII and President John F. Kennedy.

Next, his first marriage.

He and his first wife, Leslie, were married in the Catholic Church in 1980 and began divorce proceedings in 1993.

Displeased with the Catholic Church over such issues as its resistance to married priests and women's ordination, he began attending the First Presbyterian Church of Waukesha because he was impressed with its then-pastor, the Rev. Bill Humphreys.

Then, his second marriage.

He and Jenifer, who was raised in the Greek Orthodox tradition, were married by Humphreys in 1996.

Humphrys was the connection to Presbyterianism.

When Humphreys left that church to become chaplain at Carroll College in Waukesha, Dan Finley attended weekly Bible study sessions with him there until his new job at the museum made such weekday trips impossible.

With that connection broken, Finley moved on.

Meanwhile, the Finleys decided that maybe it was time for Jenifer to return to the faith of her childhood.

He went through a conversion process, and they had an Orthodox wedding in June.

"The Greek Orthodox faith is extraordinarily similar to Roman Catholicism," he said.

The only significant difference, from Finley's account, being that the Orthodox Church does not have the general rule against ordaining married men as priests that the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church has.