Are you a "revert?"

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I was just going over all the other threads and would like to hear a some stories of fellow “reverts.” I have never wholly left the Catholic Church but I was non-practicing for 8 years. And in those 8 years, did some pretty horrible things. I am still in humble awe and amazement that the Holy Spirit never left my side and although it was painful at first, I was pulled back completely. 👍
I started to come back 4 years ago and in that time, I learned I couldn’t come to the Sacraments until my marriage had been Convalidated. I had never felt such a renewal of hope just to figure out how to come back into Communion. I remember crying my first time back to Holy Communion. What an awesome feeling to finally be back home. :dancing: The past two years have been alot of trial and error and in some situations, tribulations. I find myself going to Confession alot more and I truly have been doing alot of research to know answers to others questions along with my own. Between Karl Keating and Scott Hahn ( :blessyou: ), I have learned how to be more patient and understanding of non-Catholics when they try to show me that we are in err.
Thanks for sharing your story. It’s always uplifting to read others revert stories. It shows (to me, anyway) the power of the Holy Spirit to not let go and the compassion and mercy of Christ through the Sacraments to welcome Her prodigal children back home.
Peace,
Theresa
 
I am also a “revert”. I stopped going to church in my teens and wandered for about 13 years. I did everything wrong and so, of course, my life was in a mess. But God never stopped hounding me and there is something to be said for that old Catholic guilt. I finally went to confession, the first step, and had to go through the anullment process to be married in the church. Now you couldn’t get me to leave the Church.
 
I never stopped going to church, but I privately denied many important teachings of the Church, including the Immaculate Conception, the Assumption, the perpetual virginity of our Lady. But the worst of all was the denial of the Real Presence of our Lord in the Holy Eucharist (I was therefore guilty of profaning the Body and Blood of the Lord).

it was after going through the Bible with an open heart and of course good Catholic apologetics books (e.g. Hahn, Ray, etc) that I regained my faith in the Eucharist. It the followed that the Eucharist comes about through the ministry of the Church, and therefore I had to believe the Church in its entirety.
 
Jesus Christ is the Good Shepherd Who doesn’t want to lose even one lost sheep. I am so grateful for the prayers of my parents and others. I am sure they brought me back to the Church. I wandered off after finding ancient artworks and myths which seemed to parallel the Virgin & Child story.

I assumed goddess worship predated Christianity so researched this and left the Church. I did my homework for years, and found that the Woman & Seed legal formula, God’s curse of Lucifer and his minions with the Woman & Seed, saturated the ancient world. D. James Kennedy has discovered other instances of orthodoxy underpinning what became corrupted into paganism, so would note the VIRGO was prophesied of old, and encoded in the “Gospel of the Stars.” Some claimed to be that special duo just as many have and will falsely claim to be Messiah.

I was blessed with a horribly painful back injury which drove off all my creepy friends and gave me time to pray to Him. Having been to spirit channelers or psychics, I was frustrated and wanted to go right to the source myself. So I began to pray.
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Weeping with pain and despair, I would pray to Jesus Christ and listen intently. I kept getting the quote, “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age.” This was nice of itself but more shockingly, I found out that “godless” paralytic Joni Erikson Tada also kept hearing this quote as the bones in her broken neck healed, which led to her conversion. I thank our Good Shepherd for showing that “all things work together for good to those who fear God.”
 
I was in and out of the Church several times in my 43 years of my life.
Baptized in the Byzantine Rite and then during grade school years went to Roman Rite.
Sometime in my early teens, the faith seemed dry to me and just went to Mass occasionally and not taking it seriously. (Maybe this is due to poor catachism…I wonder how many reverts are the same age as me?)
By my college years (early 1980’s), I rarely went to Mass and never took the Church seriously in her teachings.
By this time, I fell into the practice of the ‘alternative lifestyle’ and simply denounced the Church and did things I truly now regret!
However in 1997, all of a suddenly I just started going back to Roman RIte Mass. I was straddling both the lifestyle I was in and the Church. The internal struggles/battles on me were COMPLETE Hell! :eek:

However three years ago, I left the lifestyle COMPLETELY and fully with the Grace of God, came back as a revert.
However that is not the end ot the story. In 2002, I came home FULL circle and returned to My Byzantine Roots.
Our Lord lets us stray away however with our conscience and the prayers of loved ones, the ‘return home’ is much sweeter!

GO with GOD!
Edwin
 
When I was a child my parents would go to church once and a while. Most of the time I would walk to church and sit in the pew with my grandmother. Then we moved away and where I currently live, I could not walk to church on Sundays. For six years I was cut off from the church and I was heavily influenced by the secular world. By the middle of the my senior year, I was able to get transportation to church every weekend. When I went away to College I still went to church every Sunday, but I was living a double life style, I was a cafeteria Catholic. Durring the middle of my third year of college I decided it was all or nothing and I was determined to get confirmed. I finally did at the 2004 Easter Vigil.
 
I came back to the Church in 1984 after having been away for 10 years. My husband of 29 years just converted in 2003.

We’re finally both practicing Catholics!

Micki
 
I was raised catholic, sent to catholic school and taken to mass until I was about 10. My parents just quit being catholic. (They are also divorced now) I guess I also quit too. But I married a catholic, who in morals is catholic, but struggles with his faith. I think he’ll come back someday-I pray for it. I have come back and left over the years. I have come back since the beginning of this past Lent and haven’t left. I was motivated originally because of my children and how awful a job I was doing raising them in their faith. I felt like a horrible mom. So I came back, and it’s been a wonderful half-year! Although, now I am defending myself alot to my mom especially. I think she doesnt believe in God at all, and it makes me so sad. I guess all I can do is pray.
 
I stopped going to Mass in my teens and was completely secular for over 25 years. I had to take my daughter to Mass one Sunday (she was a kindergartner in Catholic school) and I sat there knowing that I had just been completely changed. A few weeks later I went to confession.

Within a month, we were married in the Church and I started taking Communion and I’ve been to daily Mass ever since. My life is 100% changed and so much better…I don’t think I was looking for any of this and spent a few months in shock while undergoing this reversion (so much so I barely even spoke if it weren’t completely necessary). But Catholicism, for me, is a constant conversion and I’m still surprised at how much I learn through prayers, reading, and adoration.

JELane
 
But Catholicism, for me, is a constant conversion and I’m still surprised at how much I learn through prayers, reading, and adoration.

Well said. Applies to me also.

I was a “devout” Catholic in my youth, even went to seminary for a year. Then drifted away for about thirty years. It takes some people a long time to grow up spiritually … I am so grateful now that I did not become a priest, as I think I would not have been a good one.

Coming home was a great joy. One of the heartening things for me was the English Mass. One of the disheartening things about Mass is to learn that so many Catholics have ceased to dress properly for Church. Church should not be viewed as no more dressworthy than a summer camp or a bowling alley. When, how, and why did that mentality set in while I was gone?

Imagine a priest celebrating Mass in dirty shorts and t-shirt.
 
I was raised by very “Catholic” parents. I even thought of being a priest at one time. Then when I was 18 I met and fell in love with a baptist girl. I told her there was no way I would become baptist, she said she wouldn’t become Catholic. Instead of standing up for my faith I agreed to find something we both could live with.

About one year ago, a Catholic friend of mine gave me the book “By What Authority” by Mark Shea. Since then I can’t get enough of Catholic theology and I have yet to satisfy my hunger to learn more. I’ve gone to confession and have been going to mass whenever I can. My journey is not complete, though. My wife, the baptist girl, has not bought into my reversion. Having three children makes it more complicated.

Even though I did stop practicing the Catholic faith, I never abandoned it. I always thought “catholic”. The way it has turned out, I don’t regret my decision. I have a beautiful wife and three unbelievable kids that wouldn’t be around if I had insisted on remaining Catholic. I thank God, and credit the Holy Spirit, for bringing me back to the fullness of faith and the TRUTH of the Catholic Church.
 
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