Tiber River Cafe--Welcome

Welcome to the Tiber River Café, the place for Catholic Adult Faith Formation and Education.  My name is Dean Humphreys.  Our recent popes have called for a New Evangelization, to go out to the ends of the world and to spread to Gospel message, the good news of Jesus Christ.  But just as important, perhaps even more so, is to reach out to those who already call themselves Christians, to those already Baptized, to those who have fallen away from the Catholic Church.  This is our new mission field.  This is where we can perhaps do the most good.  And that is the reason for this project, to show in very simple terms, using the power of the internet in a very low-budget production, some of the basic beliefs of the Catholic Church, the authentic truth of the Catholic faith.

Now, I am not a theologian or Bible scholar, far from it.  I work as a nurse practitioner in cardiology.  I have been married for over 20 years to Lisa, and we have one son Peter.  I am not a “super Catholic” either; we go to Church on most Sundays, and I try to read the Bible most days.  And like some Catholics I sometimes struggle with Church teaching.  Overall I’m pretty much an average Catholic, but I keep trying.  I was born and raised Protestant, lukewarm at best, in the United Church of Christ.  As far as I can tell there hasn’t been a Catholic in the Humphreys family since the Reformation.  But then I met and fell in love with a Catholic girl.  I wanted to raise our family in one faith so I started RCIA classes at our local parish—RCIA stands for the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults—classes one takes to learn about the Catholic faith before entering the Church.  I entered the Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil in April 1991, over 20 years ago, and at that time I was still lukewarm at best.  But the more I learned about our faith the stronger my faith became, and the more it makes complete sense.  And so here I am, the newest member of the New Evangelization Team.

So what’s up with the title, the Tiber River Café.  The Tiber River is the river of the City of Rome, and the Vatican was founded near the banks of the Tiber River.  When a Protestant leaves their Protestant denomination and comes into the Catholic Church, to come into full communion with the Catholic Church, it is sometimes called ‘crossing the Tiber’.  And the word café is a simple acronym for Catholic Adult Faith Formation and Education, c-a-f-e. 

Each video will be about 10 to 15 minutes in length.  Short, simple, and to the point— again, simply to plant the seed.  The Tiber River Café started production in January 2014 with my first video “Eucharist, the Real Presence”.  All the videos will be located on YouTube; I also have my own YouTube channel at YouTube.com/tiberrivercafe.  And I also have a blog site at tiberrivercafe.wordpress.com where blogs and writings will be posted.  The names of these websites will be posted at the end of each video. And I would like to thank my son, Peter, for all his technical assistance and expertise.  Before this project I knew absolutely nothing about making a video, setting up a website, or even what a ‘blog’ is. 

So, thanks for checking out the website and videos.  And again, welcome to the Tiber River Café, where these is always plenty of room at the banquet table.