Calling All Catholic Converts

[Mannyfit75]

I’m a cradle Catholic and I like to read conversion stories. I especially like it when they confront the truth that Jesus is Truly Present in the Blessed Sacrament.

“Psst, Jesus is Truly there. Don’t let your senses deceived you. This Blessed Eucharist is the Body of the Lord. The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”

I would say that to a new convert.

 

[wanner47]

I was baptized, raised, and confirmed ELCA Lutheran, as was my husband.

About two years after our marriage, my husband told me that he intended to convert to Catholicism. He had been having many and long discussion with his best friend, a devout Catholic, and had been doing a lot of reading, research, and prayer on his own, and he felt that the Catholic Church was the true Church.

I was 100% against his decision and argued about it with him, but he remained firm. I decided to attend RCIA with him so I could either “disprove” the RCC’s claims or learn more about the faith I’d have to raise my children in.

Throughout the course of RCIA, I realized that everything I’d “known” about the Catholic Church was based on myths, misconceptions, and half-truths.

I started realizing that sola scriptura wasn’t even Biblical.

I started realizing that it made no sense that Jesus would establish a church and then leave no infallible earthly authority to guide it.

I began to question the Protestant belief that God had allowed the Christian Church to languish in error until Martin Luther (or Joseph Smith, or Charles Taze Russell, or Henry VIII, or whoever) came along.

I began to realize just how many Catholic doctrines were rooted in the teachings of the early Church fathers, those who had personally known the disciples.

In short, I started realizing that the Catholic Church was the Church that Jesus himself had established, and that it contained the fullness of Truth as well as the Authority to proclaim that Truth. Once I realized that, I couldn’t stay away.

 

[Eliza10]

In response to the call for a day of prayer and fasting for his conversion, professional apologist and anti-Catholic James White has begun posting letters…

Really?

… written by former Catholics who credit Mr. White for helping them to leave the Church…

Who credit himself? Oh, brother. Whatever happened to humility?

I remember, after conversion to Catholicsim from Evangelical Christianity, noticing that, in spite of the low faith of some Catholics, there yet was this common godly quality among Catholics as a group that I had never seen among peoples before. It was curious, yet, pervasively consistent. It is humility.

Only in recent years I have noticed that there is also among Evangelicals a particular collective lack of humility, a pride that is off-putting. I noticed it in myself when I was Evangelical, and tried to overcome it. Particularly I noticed it when others acted as my mirror when I tried guiding them to salvation. I knew something in it wasn’t Christlike.

I realize that it was rooted in my un-Christlike theology - the extra-bibilical "once saved always saved’ dogma, which we all believed to some degree.

A pride comes with being all done with accomplishing the *one most important thing in this life *- attaining our eternal salvation. We Evangelicals had *already *done **all **we needed to do to get to heaven. We had taken that one, simple step of salvation, accepting Jesus. It was hard not to think others were a bit thick-headed, not to take this one, simple step, and by virtue of this, be saved, forever!

I hope you don’t mind me getting off-track a bit as the real purpose of your new thread was to collect conversion stories. I will add mine to the pot when I have a chance to rewrite it. I wrote mine immediately after my conversion, and like others, it has many layers. Like other Evangelicals, it including undoing of all the wrong beliefs, and is long and involved! But inspired! Like these others here.

 

[Pixie_Dust]

From my blog:

I was raised loosely Methodist. We went to church when we lived in Michigan and I attended nursery school at this church. In 1st grade we moved to Puerto Rico and didn’t go to church at all; and then before I started 3rd grade we moved to Indiana. My dad was a contract engineer for the phone company so he got transferred a lot. I had no idea what it meant to be Methodist, or how their beliefs differed from anyone else, I just knew I was Methodist like some people know they’re Catholic or Jewish.

Once we were back in the States, I think my parents had just fallen out of the habit of going to church, because the only time I went to church was if I went with a friend. I always enjoyed going but it never occured to me to ask why WE didn’t go. Come to think of it, a lot of questions never occured to me at that time.

I was visiting a Baptist church with a friend when I was 16 years old, (we’d go hide outside and smoke while her aunt was in choir rehearsal) and I saw someone get baptized. I thought perhaps I should be baptized if I hadn’t been - not sure why I wanted to other than it seemed like the thing to do. I had seen my on-again, off-again boyfriend get baptized at that same church a year before. My friend told me that I had to be saved first. I said, “OK, I’ll get saved!” not having the first clue what that meant.

She took me to the pastor, who took me into the church library and showed me the ‘Romans Road.’ I nodded and agreed with everything he said, and when he asked me if I wanted to pray, I informed him that I was not sure what to say. So I repeated a prayer after him and got dunked the following Sunday. It was right after that that my friend started working on Sundays and quit going to church. I sure wasn’t going if SHE wasn’t going!

After I graduated from high school, I moved in with my then boyfriend, now husband. The ONLY pastor available to marry us over Labor Day weekend was the same pastor that had baptized us and believed we were Christians. We had our first baby 9 months, 5 days later. When she was about 6 months old, he was looking in the classifieds for a better job and ran across an ad that read: “666 is COMING! Call 1-800-###-####” and out of morbid curiosity he called the number, expecting to hear some demonic message but instead it was an end times, repent and be saved, turn or burn message.

We found ourselves at the same Baptist church and this time, we heard the Spirit call us. I know that I have been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb! I sang all those Christmas carols for all those years and all of a sudden I knew what they were talking about when they sang, “Veiled in flesh the God-head see, hail th’incarnate Deity!” Hallelujah!!!

So, I was born-again and raised Independent, Fundamental, Pre-millenial, KJV-only Baptist. And I thought that I had the Truth. I believed everything they taught me because they could point to Bible verses and say, “That means this…” and I never doubted. When the Left Behind series came out, I thought maybe Mr. LaHaye had a bit of his eschatology mixed up, but the premise of the series gave me NO pause.
…

 

[Pixie_Dust]

Part Two:

Right around the same time that the Left Behind books were gaining popularity, we got Internet access. I started frequenting the Christian chat rooms and was shocked to find that there were Christians who didn’t believe dispensational theology, didn’t believe in the security of the believer, believed that baptism was necessary for salvation, and lo and behold THEY TOO could point to Bible verses to back up their statements.

I really thought that the Baptist view of Scripture was the only truly biblical view. (Lord, forgive me!) Imagine my surprise I was also shocked to discover that Baptists did not have the corner marketed on salvation. See, in my experience, Baptists would say that you could be saved in other denominations (except for Roman Catholicism) but they didn’t act like they really believed it. They teach that baptism is the first step in obedience for a new believer, the “answer of a good conscience toward God.” There was nothing salvific about the water in the baptistry, they made that pointedly clear.
B U T if you happened to have been raised in a church that practiced infant baptism or did not immerse, you HAD to be re-baptized, “scripturally.”

It was at this time that I was called to homeschool my kids, and found the Sonlight Forums. They had a forum called Edu-Anon, that has since been renamed Lifelong Learners. LL (or LLL) became the hub of theological discussion, and one of my favorite places to chat. Once again, my faith was challenged through lively discussions with Christians from other backgrounds.

I was obsessed for quite some time, researching different denominations and finding out what their essentials and distinctives are. If I was going to be conversing with these people regularly, I wanted to know EXACTLY where they were coming from, so I could “lovingly” show them the errors of their belief system. (I was still mostly right at this point)

I was searching for devotional materials when I ran across the Book of Common Prayer at CBD. I asked my deaconess friend about it - she said “Sure, it can be used as a devotional!” (I think she knew exactly what she was doing to me!!) So I ordered one. Something happened to me when I started reading through those ancient prayers and reading through the services. I just knew that liturgical worship, far from being dry, stale ritual, was alive and filled with the Word of God! The fact is, more Scripture is read in a liturgical church than I’d ever heard in Sunday morning AND evening services as a Baptist.

Not sure how my husband was going to feel about my change, I proceeded with caution and just shared little tidbits here and there about where I was being led (and I’m still unsure where I’ll end up in this life!) He knew I was unhappy in our current church for more reasons than just the theological differences, and told me that he didn’t 100% agree with Baptist doctrine. I was not yet ready to venture into a real church, so I got my liturgy “fix” by doing the Daily Office online and occasionally watching the Mass at the Notre Dame Cathedral that broadcast on a public access channel. I did visit an Episcopal church in Ohio while my oldest dd and I were there for a dance competition. She felt drawn into the liturgy as well, but didn’t care for the wine. (o;

Most of you may be aware of the issues surrounding the Episcopal Church USA recently. While I really felt like the Episcopal church was everything I was looking for in a church, basically Catholicism sans the Pope, I couldn’t in good conscience attend the church in my city after I contacted the rector and found out he was totally supportive of the homosexual bishop in NH. What to do? I was ready to experience liturgy for real and didn’t know where to go. I wasn’t about to become Catholic* and my options around here are very limited.

My deacon friend again came through for me and recommended an ELCA Lutheran church, as the ELCA and the ECUSA are in communion with one another. There just happens to be an ELCA church less than 5 minutes from my house, so I’ve been going to their 8:00 service then joining my husband for church first at the Baptist church and currently at a very contemporary church that brings out my critical spirit, which, as you might guess, is not very conducive to pure worship. It’s more of a rock concert with a motivational speech.

*as you can see, things have changed significantly for me since writing that part of my blog.

 

[Pixie_Dust]

Part Three:

I had been praying for wisdom and direction. In my life God has placed several Christians who converted from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism. These are not people who were disgruntled or hurt by their protestant church in any way, but were seeking God earnestly and he led them to Rome. (The testimony of a couple of them indicates that it was very much against THEIR will, and they dug in their heels the whole way.) These were not people with a vague understanding of the Bible easily tossed about by every wind of doctrine. These were intelligent, Biblically literate people who gave up life as they knew it to follow where God led them, the Roman Catholic Church.

I still had some “insurmountables” that haven’t been adequately addressed in a way that I feel is substantial; but as I was humming through a Kutless song, “Promise of a Lifetime”

“I am holding on to the hope I have inside,
With You I will stay through every day
Putting my understanding aside,
I am comforted
To know You’re always there
To hear my every prayer
Inside I’m clinging to
The promise of a lifetime…”

and then my thoughts naturally (or supernaturally perhaps) gravitated to the verses in Proverbs. Yup, you know … Chapter 3:

5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart
And do not lean on your own understanding.
6 In all your ways acknowledge Him,
And He will make your paths straight.
7 Do not be wise in your own eyes;
Fear the LORD and turn away from evil.
8 It will be healing to your body
And refreshment to your bones. (NASB)

SIGH This is a lesson in TRUST and putting away MY understanding of the way things are. I get it now. I love to read and study Scripture and (gulp) pride myself in the academic knowledge I have. No better than a scribe, I suppose. I need to get back to the “faith as a little child” and climb up in Daddy’s lap and let Him hold me.

I told a friend that I thought I heard God whisper to me. She said that if you’re hearing something you want to hear, it’s probably not the Lord. If it’s something you do NOT want to hear, it probably IS. So the whisper I heard had said to me, “Go to Rome.”

I didn’t wanna hear it.

Then, another dear Catholic friend suggested I order some CDs from the Bible Christian Society. John Martignoni’s One Church CD was a Burning Bush moment for me! I knew I had to be Catholic. I have immersed myself in Catholic Apologetics and am more that ready to give an answer for the reason for my faith.

Now I just need to get through RCIA - Praise be to God, the parish I attend has an accelerated program for baptized Christians like myself.

 

[Cat]

I just want to say that for the last three years, our parish RCIA program has printed a booklet up including the testimonies of all the candidates and catechumens. It is great reading, and a great encouragement to the church.

The candidates and catechumens not only give the conversion story, but also talk about their patron saint and why they chose that saint.

Maybe your parish could try this, too. It makes a really nice “witnessing tool,” as we used to say in the evangelical churches!

 

[Michael_Howard]

Part Three:

I had been praying for wisdom and direction. In my life God has placed several Christians who converted from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism. These are not people who were disgruntled or hurt by their protestant church in any way, but were seeking God earnestly and he led them to Rome. (The testimony of a couple of them indicates that it was very much against THEIR will, and they dug in their heels the whole way.) These were not people with a vague understanding of the Bible easily tossed about by every wind of doctrine. These were intelligent, Biblically literate people who gave up life as they knew it to follow where God led them, the Roman Catholic Church.

I still had some “insurmountables” that haven’t been adequately addressed in a way that I feel is substantial; but as I was humming through a Kutless song, “Promise of a Lifetime”

“I am holding on to the hope I have inside,
With You I will stay through every day
Putting my understanding aside,
I am comforted
To know You’re always there
To hear my every prayer
Inside I’m clinging to
The promise of a lifetime…”

and then my thoughts naturally (or supernaturally perhaps) gravitated to the verses in Proverbs. Yup, you know … Chapter 3:

5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart
And do not lean on your own understanding.
6 In all your ways acknowledge Him,
And He will make your paths straight.
7 Do not be wise in your own eyes;
Fear the LORD and turn away from evil.
8 It will be healing to your body
And refreshment to your bones. (NASB)

SIGH This is a lesson in TRUST and putting away MY understanding of the way things are. I get it now. I love to read and study Scripture and (gulp) pride myself in the academic knowledge I have. No better than a scribe, I suppose. I need to get back to the “faith as a little child” and climb up in Daddy’s lap and let Him hold me.

I told a friend that I thought I heard God whisper to me. She said that if you’re hearing something you want to hear, it’s probably not the Lord. If it’s something you do NOT want to hear, it probably IS. So the whisper I heard had said to me, “Go to Rome.”

I didn’t wanna hear it.

Then, another dear Catholic friend suggested I order some CDs from the Bible Christian Society. John Martignoni’s One Church CD was a Burning Bush moment for me! I knew I had to be Catholic. I have immersed myself in Catholic Apologetics and am more that ready to give an answer for the reason for my faith.

Now I just need to get through RCIA - Praise be to God, the parish I attend has an accelerated program for baptized Christians like myself.

Amen!

 

[kkieft]

Well I just wanted to tell everyone that I took the next step. I called the Priest at the church we attend and he put me in contact with the person in charge of the RCIA and I put my name on the list! I felt a deep sense of satisfaction when doing so, and I’m actually looking forward to the process. Thanks everyone.

Kevin

 

[wmscott]

It’s amazing what a good Catholic lady can do when a man marries her!!!

 

[jack_hawkins]

In response to the call for a day of prayer and fasting for his conversion, professional apologist and anti-Catholic James White has begun posting letters written by former Catholics who credit Mr. White for helping them to leave the Church.

I would encourage all converts to the Catholic Church to post the stories of their conversions in this thread. Please share what issues started the ball rolling, what the biggest obstacles were, and how you finally over came them.

I look forward to reading your stories!

I’m not sure you’d want to hear my story, esp what the biggest obstacle was…

 

[MrS]

I’m not sure you’d want to hear my story, esp what the biggest obstacle was…

Alway interesting to hear from a Christian NOS… especially one with an MD attached…

 

[Mary3]

Well I just wanted to tell everyone that I took the next step. I called the Priest at the church we attend and he put me in contact with the person in charge of the RCIA and I put my name on the list! I felt a deep sense of satisfaction when doing so, and I’m actually looking forward to the process. Thanks everyone.

Kevin

Thanks be to God, and welcome to the journey home!:clapping::dancing::extrahappy:

 

[water]

Well I just wanted to tell everyone that I took the next step. I called the Priest at the church we attend and he put me in contact with the person in charge of the RCIA and I put my name on the list! I felt a deep sense of satisfaction when doing so, and I’m actually looking forward to the process. Thanks everyone.

Kevin

God bless you Kevin. You have made one of the most important steps in your spiritual life. May the Holy Spirit guide you on your journey. You are in my prayer. :harp:
Welcome to CAF.

 

[Dirk_Skene]

I really had no obstacles. It was just a matter of the time to get through RCIA. After reading the Bible I realized that the “Bible Church” was the Catholic Church.

 

[Eliza10]

Wow, jmcrae, I enjoyed this story!

There are many wonderful stories in this thread. It is a rich thread! So I think I need to read these stories one at a time, so I can savor them. Yours happened to be the first story in this thread that I read. And its so good, I think I’m done for the day! I read both versions, the one here, and the one you linked (and I’ll comment on both).

I also was an art major in college, and I grew up Presbyterian. Is that what you mean by Knox United Church? Because the name and the committees sound like that! My mother always frowned on chruch-hooping, so I avoided that. But after being “born-again” in college, the Presbyterian church seemed too lifeless to me, and I always looked for a good Bible-believing church wherever we lived, and stayed true to that. For a time after we married, we attended a Plymouth Brethren Church, which was influential in forming some ideas that stuck with me and unfortunately were bad advice, because it was bad theology.

Some comments:

I love this beginning from your link:
Although I have no relatives who are Catholic, I did have contact with Roman Catholicism as a child. I was born in a Catholic hospital, which scandalized my elderly relatives: my mother was considered “foolish” to go to a Catholic doctor. My great grandmother even predicted that I would become Catholic, although how she knew is completely beyond me: she based this opinion on the fact that I was born in a Catholic hospital.
Quite a prediction! And it truly seems like destiny, where you were born. And particularly what you wrote at the end of your story (which I’ll quote below).

…August 7, 1983, about 4:55 pm

Age 22, too shy to speak to strangers, for any reason whatsoever. Out walking, got caught up in a group of people who were heading into a Church, waiting for them to get past. While waiting for them to get past, Father Arthur comes out, grabs me by the front of the shirt, pulls me in, and says, “Hurry up! You’re going to be late for Mass!” The only alternative being to explain to him that he has mistaken me for someone else (physically impossible; see above) I go in and experience the Mass for the first time in my life. Completely blown away; ready to convert on the spot. …so that I went back to Mass the following January, and have been attending every Sunday ever since. (Didn’t become Catholic until April 2001, however, mostly out of fear of offending friends and family.)

I am amazed that you faithfully attended both Churches all those years! It says a lot for two things: your stalwartness in sticking with the church of your childhood, and that your heart was so drawn to the Mass.
But what you said in the link is so telling:
…a little old man (he later turned out to be Father Arthur) grabbed me by the arm and dragged me inside.
**I never did have the opportunity to find out why he did that, since he became extremely ill and then died shortly afterwards… **

Wow. I think he was literally dragging one more person into the church before he died! Or, I can just imagine his guardian angel telling him, “Look! Drag her in!” I bet you pray for Father Arthur now.

…
Lost my fear of offending friends and family on October 23, 2000 at about 9:00 am when my grandmother died. (The meaning of the phrase “God is no respecter of persons” became very clear to me at that time.)

What you wrote in link is moving:
…we had had Lorraine, one of the ministers at Knox, come to pray with us and with Grandma. When I looked into her face, I knew that whatever we did or said meant nothing to her. I felt that she was afraid of meeting Jesus, and that nothing that we were doing was reassuring her or helping her.
I could not help thinking of a Catholic friend of mine who had died amid the chanting of Rosaries and the Prayers for the Sick, and felt a little jealous. The words of Oscar Wilde came to me at that moment - "It is better to die a Catholic."

Isn’t that the truth!

[continued on next post]

 

[Eliza10]

[continued from previous post]

…November 30, 2000, about 5:45 pm: In response to a post I had made defending the “invisible Church” (the exact content of which I have since forgotten) someone posting under the name “pax” responded with four simple words: ONE. HOLY. CATHOLIC. APOSTOLIC. At which point, the lights came on, everything I’d learned since that moment when Father Arthur had messed up my shirt back in 1983 all came together, made sense, and I realized that “some day,” I had to become Catholic - no choices, no ifs, no ands, and no buts.

Wow, this gives me the chills! But not as much as this:
On January 11, I told my mother about my intention to become Catholic, and I told her that Jesus had said “You belong to me, not to her.”
I told her this so that she would understand that I must obey Jesus, and that I had no intentions of deliberately hurting her feelings.
She then told me something which surprised me very much. She said, "On the day that you were born, Jesus came to me and said, ‘When your daughter grows up, she will do something completely unexpected. When she does this, you are not to stop her. You must remember that she belongs to me, not to you.’"

Wow!

 

[Eliza10]

jmcrae, you also wrote:
I left a letter for Mr. Dawson, the senior minister of Knox, explaining that I would not be returning, since I intended to become Roman Catholic.

And I am wondering why you did not tell him in person? You sered at his chruch so long. And what was his reaction? Did he ever speak to you about it?

 

[jmcrae]

jmcrae, you also wrote:
I left a letter for Mr. Dawson, the senior minister of Knox, explaining that I would not be returning, since I intended to become Roman Catholic.

And I am wondering why you did not tell him in person? You served at his church so long. And what was his reaction? Did he ever speak to you about it?

He wrote me back in an e-mail, which I kept with my RCIA notes and my scrapbook of memories. It was a really nice letter. He also took me out for coffee shortly after that, and we had a good long talk. I still see him from time to time, and we chat about this and that.

He said it was good that I wrote him a letter instead of telling him in person, since he said his first reaction was not something he would have wanted me to see. He was glad he had the opportunity to take a deep breath and consider his response.

 

[Michael_Howard]

I really had no obstacles. It was just a matter of the time to get through RCIA. After reading the Bible I realized that the “Bible Church” was the Catholic Church.