The blog post below is the transcript of the Podcast published in this post with some pictures of the areas mentioned. 

This is the first of a series of podcasts on the Catechism of the Catholic Church. This podcast is written and recorded on behalf of the Office of Evangelization & Catechesis in the Catholic Diocese of Baton Rouge. My name is Barry Schoedel, I am the present Associate Director of the Office of Evangelization & Catechesis
Initially, the topic matter of the Catechism may not seem that exciting to many people. Folks in one camp in the Church seem to bristle just at the word catechism. You can hardly bring it up in discussion without getting a defensive remark or criticism.  To some Catholics it is simply not even on the radar, they don’t care about a catechism, one way, or another. And among practicing Catholic families there is often still a sense of it as an impenetrable text that is reserved to Clergy, Religious, and maybe the occasional heroic member of the Lay Faithful. And often even those who would like to use it are not able to use it well because they don’t understand the method of presentation it uses and how it is meant to be reflective of the life of a disciple of Jesus. These podcasts are meant to demystify the Catechism of the Catholic Church for all of us.
I will begin by sharing a personal story of how I came to love the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Some people who have heard my story know that I am a convert to the Catholic faith. I had set foot in a church under 5 times in the first 26 years of my life, and those were accidental. I was young and neighbors took me along. I had never seen a Catholic priest, or a Catholic nun. I had no idea what the Mass was and had never read even one page of the Bible. However, I was deeply interested in the study of religion and philosophy from my late teens and early twenties. I was a seeker. This led me to many places including India for a 3 month period studying at a place in the Himalayan Province called the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives. I studied Comparative Religions, both Buddhism and Christianity as an undergraduate and graduate student. My dream was to get my PhD in academic Religious Studies. Because of this I spent a lot of time studying religious texts of other cultures. In fact, it was in India when my conversion to the Catholic faith really began in earnest.
I took a hike one day to a neo-gothic Anglican Church called St. John in the Wilderness near McLeod Ganj in the foothills of the Himalayan mountains. This Church was built in 1852 and was known for its stained glass. After being immersed in the Tibetan and Indian cultures of the area and studying closely their religious and philosophical texts I stumbled upon this beautiful Anglican Church. I was immediately drawn to the stained glass which depicted various scenes from the Gospel.
And that was it: the sacred art evangelized me. What I mean is that the stained glass communicated to me the Gospel in a way that opened up a new horizon for me. I don’t mean that at that point I had a deep understanding of the Gospel, I didn’t. But I did have a sense of the profound goodness of what those stained glass depictions of Jesus, Mary and the Saints represented, and I wanted to enter into that and understand it better.
So, you may find it strange, but immediately upon arriving back in the United States after my period of study in India I came across a large green book in Barnes and Noble in Olympia, WA, where I was completing my degree. It was called The Catechism of the Catholic Church. I thought, “this is it!”. Now I can see what they believe. I knew already that I was attracted to Catholicism primarily because I knew they had monks, and the religions I was used to studying had monks too. I also new already that Catholicism had a deep and rich tradition of meditation and prayer. And that drew me to it. So, I bought the book.