Victor R. Claveau, MJ
My retirement from the Navy came in January 1986. During the last four years in the service, I served as an Organizational Management Consultant and in addition went to school full time. I managed to complete my bachelor’s degree and two Master’s Degrees in preparation for my retirement. I fully enjoyed my work and expected to continue in that profession upon retirement. As the time grew near to our separation from the Navy, my wife and I began to discuss where we would finally settle down. After so many transfers which meant sacrificing family relationships, we wanted to live in an area close to family. Eventually, we moved to the high desert of California to be close to her sister.
Unfortunately, there was no possibility of employment as a Management Consultant in the area, so I took a position as a Sales Manager for an international company. The position paid well, and we began to enjoy the fruits of a good income. We had a new home built and became active in our local parish.
My responsibilities in my new position included hiring and training a sales staff. As part of this staff, I had hired two Protestant ministers and a Mormon. Once we became familiar with each other, the employer/employee relationship was set aside, and we became friends. As a result, these men occasionally brought up questions about Catholicism. Questions that I could not answer. I felt very uncomfortable and tried to avoid these sessions by saying that as long as we both believed in Jesus, that was all that really mattered. I soon had to face the fact that I was just a mealy-mouthed Catholic.
My wife was experiencing similar problems. She had come into contact with a Jehovah’s Witness and a Fundamentalist. They began to ask questions about Catholicism. Our son Chad began to attend a youth-oriented Fundamentalist church. These occurrences demonstrated that we did not know how to defend or even properly explain the Faith.
The final straw came when one of my sales representatives came to me and boasted that he had enticed the daughter of a friend of ours into leaving the Catholic Church and joining his denomination. He proclaimed the fact as though he had just scored one for his side. I became quite angry and told him that she was the last Catholic he would ever get, as long as I had anything to do with it. Jan and I discussed the matter and decided to really put out the necessary effort to learn our faith well enough to champion it to others. But where and how to begin?
The most obvious place was our Pastor. He was a wonderful man, nearing retirement. He explained that he had neither the time nor the knowledge of apologetics to help us. I went to the Diocesan offices where I was shown into a little cubbyhole that was described as the library – no help there. Next, I began to make the rounds of the “Christian” stores. I remember going into a Berean bookstore about thirty-five miles from my home. When I asked for books about Catholicism, the manager led me into a back room, opened a cabinet and showed me their books on Catholicism. It was full of anti-Catholic material. They would not display these materials on their open shelves for fear of offending their Catholic customers. We had a few words, and I departed never to return. Even the Catholic stores left much to be desired. There, we found books that dealt with spirituality, but not fundamental theology. We were beginning to feel frustrated when friends of ours told us about an organization that lectured on Catholic apologetics. They promised to find out about them and let us know.
The organization turned out to be Catholic Answers, based in San Diego. As it turned out, they were scheduled to speak for two evenings at a church about fifty miles from our home. Jan and I enthusiastically listened as Karl Keating and Pat Madrid explained ways in which Protestant claims could be easily refuted. Upon the conclusion of the presentations, I sought out Karl and told him that I wanted to do what he was doing. I was so exhilarated that to this day, I can’t help wondering if Karl didn’t think that I was a bit strange. Nevertheless, two days later he telephoned and suggested some reading materials. A few of the books that he recommended are Catholic and Christian by Alan Schreck, Theology for Beginners by Frank Sheed, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma by Ludwig Ott and Karl’s own book, Catholicism and Fundamentalism. My wife and I began an intense study, many times interrupting each other’s study to relate some exciting bit of new information. Little by little, we began to grow in our faith and knowledge of the Church’s teachings. I had been lecturing and teaching for most of my adult career, and now it was time to put those skills to work in the service of the Church.
Karl Keating suggested that I work up a lecture on the teachings of the Watchtower Society. While reading the section about Jehovah’s Witnesses in Walter Martin’s The Kingdom of the Cults, I realized that the author was an outsider looking in. I have always been critical of people who rail against Catholicism without going to the source of our beliefs. I promptly put Walter Martin’s book aside and called a friend who had been with the Jehovah’s Witnesses for most of his adult life. I explained that I was interested in studying the teachings of the Watchtower Society and needed his help. Within a few days, I was inundated with Jehovah’s Witness materials. I began my research by doing a comparative analysis between the Watchtower’s teachings and the teachings of the Church.
A priest at a local retreat house allowed me to advertise the lecture and use his facilities. We filled the small chapel and, even though the lecture was over two hours in length, nobody left. The question and answer session went on for another hour. I was asked to repeat the lecture and did so two weeks later. The response of the people who attended spurred me on to do more. The most heartening was the comment of a young woman who stated that although she could not and would not remember all that she had heard, she knew in her heart that the Catholic Church’s teachings were true and that no one would ever convince her otherwise. I began lecturing whenever I could wrest an invitation.
My wife and I invested a few dollars and opened trade accounts with a number of Catholic publishing companies. Little by little, we began to convince parish priests to let us set up book fairs in their parishes. The response we received from the laity was overwhelming.
I remember one church in particular. A dear friend, Father Henry Johnston of St. Patrick’s Church in Angels Camp, California, invited me to lecture. He was the pastor of three churches about fifteen miles apart. Angels Camp is a small community, yet over one hundred people attended the two evening workshops. We had brought a truckload of good books to offer for sale. After each presentation, I recommended some of the same books that Karl Keating had recommended to me. My wife described the sales as a feeding frenzy. It was the same almost everywhere we went. Catholics cannot seem to get enough good material. Material that is faithful to the magisterial authority of the Church. There has been such a poor state of catechesis in our Church for so long that many people hunger for the purity of the Church’s authentic teaching. Realizing the need, Father Henry opened a parish bookstore to serve his parishioners.
When I first began to take books to churches, I did so in Chevrolet Sprint. At first, I just loaded the books in the back of the car. After a while, I had to take out the passenger’s seat to accommodate all the books. People used to shake their heads, laugh and stare as I drove the Sprint down the freeway about six inches off the pavement and crammed full to the roof with boxes of books. After about a year and a half we broke down and bought a small pickup truck with a camper shell. By 1990, we were going out an average of twice per month.
In September of that year, I went to a sales manager’s meeting in Las Vegas. I happened to tell the company Vice President what I had been doing. To my surprise, he told me that I had signed an exclusive contract and that I would have to stop this “moonlighting.” I had never considered lecturing or taking books to churches on the weekends as moonlighting. We weren’t doing this to make a profit. The money we made went back into the pot to purchase a wider selection of books.
We were now faced with a most serious decision. If I stayed with the company, I would have to stop evangelizing. I knew that what we were doing was having a positive impact on the lives of many people. I just couldn’t quit. After serious consideration I resigned my position. Jan called this decision my mid-life crisis. At the time of my resignation, I had no idea of what I was going to do to make a living. Little by little the idea of opening a Catholic bookstore began to germinate in my mind. The more I thought about the idea the more excited I became, common sense notwithstanding.
I looked around for a place to open Catholic Footsteps Bookstore. We found a 1,100-sq. ft. store on the main street of Hesperia and opened for business on January 1, 1991. At first, we didn’t have much of an inventory. I purchased some used bookshelves and display cases from another Catholic store that was going out of business. We opened with about 600 book titles, a dozen or so rosaries, and about six videos that we used as rentals.
By the time we were open about nine months, we were deeply in debt. My credit cards were charged to the hilt and our funds completely depleted. We were fifteen thousand dollars in debt, and I could see no way out. One day a wonderful couple, Peter and Mary (not their real names) came into the store. Even though they lived about sixty miles away, they came into the store about once per month. When they asked how the store was doing, I answered that I was going to have to close at the end of the month. They made their purchase and left. A few minutes later, they returned and made additional purchases, left again, and then once again returned. They stood before me and offered to loan me the money I needed. Needless to say, I was stunned. They wrote me a check for an interest-free loan. I paid the bills, and we remained open. Peter said that if we could win just one soul for Christ, then it would be worth the investment. That was 35 years ago.
Unfortunately, I had to close the store in 2014. I actually made a profit during two of those years; the largest was $307.