Deacon David Caballero was born and raised Catholic. Like so many, he received the Sacraments of Baptism, First Communion, and Confirmation. Despite this promising beginning, there was a long season in his life when he was alienated from the Catholic Church.
As a teen and young adult, he too experienced the common gap in faith formation. “Opportunities for faith formation aren’t obvious unless you’re actually looking for it,” said Caballero. “It was hard. My faith wasn’t growing. I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to do as a Catholic. I wasn’t happy.”
Righteous Anger
Without realizing it at the time, Caballero was looking for something to separate him from the Catholic Church.
For Caballero, the straw that broke the camel’s back came one Sunday at Mass. A priest commented publicly about a family with three kids that arrived late to Mass. “Maybe he was just having a bad day,” said Caballero in retrospect, “but I used the actions of this one person and applied it to the whole Church.”
In doing so, “I severed myself from the source,” he said. “I still considered myself to be Catholic. I believed in faith but not the institution. Now I know that you can’t separate them.”
Over the span of two decades, Caballero nurtured a righteous anger. “I thought I was happy that way, but I wasn’t.”
During those years, Caballero met his wife, Melinda, a former Methodist who also lacked formation and was not practicing any form of Christianity. She later began considering converting to Catholicism. In 2013, Melinda wanted to go to a Catholic Mass. She began reading and learning more from Pope Francis. Caballero was still obstinate in only attending as a spectator.
Prodigal Son
When Melinda saw the sign for Alienated Catholics Anonymous at Our Mother of Sorrows Catholic Church in Tucson, she suggested to her husband that perhaps he should attend. “I wasn’t too happy about it,” Caballero recalls. “I expected a lot of lecturing and judgement, but there was none of that.”
Going into the Alienated Catholics Anonymous meeting, Caballero told himself, “They better not say anything I don’t want to hear, otherwise I’ll just walk out of the room. My wife said, ‘calm down and go in with an open mind.’ A few times, I didn’t like it, but I kept an open mind and stuck it out. If I had left, I wouldn’t have gotten to the prodigal son part.”
Monsignor Tom Cahalane began the session with Jesus’ three parables of the lost coin, the lost sheep, and the prodigal son. “I thought to myself, ‘I’ve heard this so many times: I was raised Catholic. I was still there in my cynicism. But Monsignor Tom asked a question that caught me off guard: ‘Which son are you?’ I realized for the first time that there was a second son in the story. I was the son who stayed there but allowed anger to drive me away from the Church. It was that moment that things switched. Monsignor Tom wasn’t afraid of addressing the anger.”
Caballero realized, “I gave myself permission to walk away. What that person did wasn’t nice, but I allowed that to become the entire Church. Once I turned away from that anger, God was like, ‘I had a plan for you all along.’”
Serving the Church as a Deacon
Melinda became Catholic in 2014 then immediately joined the RCIA team in an effort to continue learning more about the Catholic faith. “We needed to learn more! Twelve weeks was just not enough time.”
Together, they undertook three years of certification through the Catholic Bible Institute. Then in 2016, they started hearing calls to join the Common Formation Program to become Lay Ecclesial Ministers through the Diocese of Tucson. “My wife wanted to do it,” said Caballero. “I happened to go along to the info session.”
Alongside the Common Formation Program is the Deacon Formation. Director of Deacons, Rick Valencia, told those interested, “If you like to be in the spotlight, this is the wrong ministry for you.”
Caballero said, “I didn’t understand what the Diaconate was, but as soon as I heard it was a ministry of service, I wanted to learn more. My dad always encouraged service. He made sure his workers and family were taken care of. His main thing was service, and it was really engrained in us.”
There were many times when Caballero wanted to walk away. “But the Holy Spirit decided I couldn’t. I got the calling gradually through a little nagging feeling or voice in the back of my head saying, ‘this is where you want to go’. The more I tried to ignore it, the louder it got. It kept bothering me more, getting louder and louder. Finally, it felt like someone was screaming in the back of my head: this is what you need to do. Now if I feel the Holy Spirit calling, I don’t ignore it anymore; I just go along with it.”
Caballero was ordained a Catholic deacon for the Diocese of Tucson in 2021.
“Ultimately being a deacon is a ministry of service,” he said.
Inviting Catholics Home
For the first two and a half years since ordination, Deacon David served at Our Mother of Sorrows Catholic Church (OMOS). Earlier this year, he began ministering at San Martin de Porres in Sahuarita.
While at OMOS, he was invited to share his testimony from the pulpit, to encourage attendees to invite friends and family to Alienated Catholics Anonymous. Deacon David was also involved in the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA) where he told those preparing to enter the Church, “If you’re doing anything that drives you away from God, you need to stop doing that and do something else.”
Deacon David explained that you have to know someone and invite them properly to programs like Alienated Catholics Anonymous or Catholics Come Home. “These are non-judgmental and not forcing you to join the Church,” he explained. “They’re just going to talk. It’s a safe zone. When you look at Jesus, he always says, ‘Come and see,’ not forcing anyone to do anything, just come and look. It’s the gentle reminders.
“The most enticing way you can get somebody to ask about the faith is by being a good Christian!” he emphasized. “Words and Scripture are great, but you don’t get to use that until they’re willing to receive it. If you try to force someone, they’ll put shields up. The more you try to push somebody, the more they resist. If someone comes to ask, the doors are open.”
To encourage someone to come home to the Catholic Church, Deacon David says you must show them what a Christian looks like. “They’ll want what you have and ask how you do it. Work on being the best Christian you can be: be the face of Christ.”
Deacon David wears Catholic t-shirts and prepares himself to be asked questions about the faith. “If you don’t know the answer to a question, just say, ‘I don’t know, but let me get back to you.’ If you might never see them again, you’re missing your chance to evangelize. If you prepare yourself and put yourself out there where people can talk to you, you can actually bring people into the faith.”
Working for the state, Deacon David always wore a visible crucifix, though he was careful not to initiate conversation about his faith in that setting. “People would comment on my crucifix,” he said. “One time a woman came in and looked at my crucifix. She pulled out her crucifix and told me that every morning she would hide hers so people wouldn’t see it at the state office. But by me being me, not preaching or anything, she started being herself and not afraid anymore. That small gesture was not big for me, but huge for her. It gave her the courage. So many people keep their faith hidden outside church because they don’t want to be ridiculed.”
Deacon David tries to live by the words of St. Francis of Assisi, “The actions you do today might be the only sermon somebody hears.”
“People know I’m Catholic and Christian because they see my actions,” said Deacon David. “Whatever I’m doing, I’m evangelizing.”