A three-year stint teaching religion provided what Rick Mains calls “a real eye-opener.”

What he saw made him fear for the future of the Faith, and  motivated him to volunteer for the One Faith, One Hope, One Love campaign.

Rick, a certified public accountant, is a parishioner at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in Tipp City. The church, north of Dayton, served as one of 13 pilot parishes for One Faith, One Hope, One Love.

Rick and his wife Hazel were team-teaching Parish School of Religion classes to first-graders when his anxieties arose about the need to bolster Catholic education. He became aware that many parents didn’t have a solid background in religion.

“I had been brought up in a parochial school,” said Rick, 62, who’d attended St. Christopher Catholic School in nearby Vandalia, Ohio. “During that three-year period that my wife and I were team-teaching PSR, it was a real refresher course.

“Even though I feel like I have a good background in parochial schools, I’d kind of lost that. Teaching PSR refreshed me and brought back memories. I was ‘re-learning.’ One thing I was observing in the parish is that many of the parents of the kids hadn’t gone to parochial schools and didn’t know a lot of these things.”

During that time, he read a book edited by Catholic author Patrick Madrid, Surprised by Truth: 11 Converts Give the Biblical and Historical Reasons for Becoming Catholic. Rick was powerfully impressed by its personal accounts of evangelical Protestants who’d converted, and by their knowledge of Catholic tradition.

“It struck me how these converts knew more about the Catholic faith than a lot of our parents here,” Rick said. “I saw some statistics about the numbers of people in the country who’ve left the Catholic Faith, and I asked myself why.

“l’d hear from people saying they don’t get anything  out of our religious services. It’s because we don’t do enough to teach them.”

Which explains his powerful attraction to One Faith, One Hope, One Love.

“When I saw that half of the campaign money, $65 million, is going to education, that really hit me,”Rick said.

Rick and Hazel volunteered for the campaign. St. John the Baptist Church, with just over 800 members, was among 13 pilot parishes for One Faith, One Hope, One Love. By the end of last week, the parish had achieved 106% of its goal.

Commitment to Catholic education is a family tradition for Rick and Hazel. Across the Ohio River in Northern Kentucky, their daughter Cheryl Perez teaches first grade at Immaculate Heart of Mary School in Burlington. Cheryl’s two children are students at Covington Latin School.

“I feel very blessed,” said Rick, who started a Facebook group called Gracebook to share his thoughts on spirituality and other matters. The One Faith, One Hope, One Love campaign “put a lightbulb in my head. If we don’t do something, the Catholic religion will continue to decline.”

Image atop article: Parish patron St. John the Baptist conducting a religion class.