Catholic reverts-how did u do it?

[JRKH]

Thank you for answering. I believe I put Christ first but I have a hard in trusting the church. I almost feel ill when I say “I will just do this” when in my heart I do not agree with it. It feels horrible and wrong.

AnneTeresa,
For me, it helped to examine what it means to “not agree” with some teaching of the Church. Do you disagree because “you know better”, or have you thoroughly examined the teaching?
Have you investigated and read the documents that underlie the teaching? Have you spoken with a priest, theologian, Deacon etc.?

I had to ask myself these questions - most especially when I (early on) raised some points right here on CAF and received rapid, knowledgeable responses, many with links, answering and correcting my ignorance of the matter. Further, as I read the links on the given issue, I could see that the Church, far from being inconsistent or “a guys club” or any of the other things tossed at it, actually was highly consistent and quite thorough in how it arrived at a given teaching.

After the first couple of times where this happened, I decided that I perhaps I had best sit back for a time and listen and learn. So rather than say that I “do not agree” with a church teaching (implying that I know and have actively rejected it) I simply say that I have not looked too deeply into it and that there are areas that are unclear to me.

Do you see what I mean??

Peace
James

 

[bearer]

Thank you for answering. I believe I put Christ first but I have a hard in trusting the church. I almost feel ill when I say “I will just do this” when in my heart I do not agree with it. It feels horrible and wrong.

Remember that the Church is Christ’s bride (see Ephesians, chapter 5), and it guided by the Holy Spirit, which is why we can be secure in the Magisterium.

As a side note, the Church includes all faithful Catholics on earth, in addition to the Communion of Saints in heaven. There are many billions of us, united with Christ as His bride, and watched over by Our Blessed Mother. If we truly love Christ, we obey Him.

Love is an act of charity and sacrifice, not a feeling of contentment. I don’t always feel like doing what my wife asks me to do, but I love her, so I swallow my pride or hesitation and do it. We owe Christ the same.

God bless!

 

[fbl9]

I always held skewed beleif in the Eucharist/commuion bread, it was this thread of a beleif that lead me back. And while reading scripture i just couldn’t find any other church besides the Catholic Church.
The realization that somebody has to be in charge(have the authority) , to define proper beleif, was also part of my return.Upon accepting this fact, while i may have difficulty understanding some doctrines or the need for them, i accept the teachings.
I may question why and look to the Church to answer that question.

 

[Jack_Bauer]

When I left, I thought I was leaving for what the Catholics taught, including priests. It made no sense to belong to a faith where its members didn’t believe in much of the important tenets of the faith. Combine that with much pain caused from abuse, and neglect, I felt called to what I thought was the real church founded by Christ. I married my wife in that Church after a believer’s baptism [got dunked again completely submerged in water]. I was baptized Catholic, but never brought up Catholic until I was 14, when I first started receiving catechesis directly from a priest. A total of 7 lessons for my first communion. 3 years later, after the diocese discovered my interest in becoming a priest, arranged for my confirmation with only 1 or 2 classes because I was late getting in the program. No one around me took the initiative with my faith. I did it all. Not even my grandparents seemed to try to arrange things for me.

My first year in seminary was met with much resistance by what I saw, no one genuinely practicing the faith that I knew. Clergy seem, even today, to avoid specifically defending the teachings of the Church. That lack of initiative on their part is what I believe is leading Catholics out the front door today. Blind faith is no faith at all.

It took studying my bible more thoroughly to realize the inconsistencies in all of the Protestant faiths I explored. They claim to be bible only and that Catholics don’t know bible, but I found them to be just as ignorant of the facts, never mind the truth. The truth lied somewhere in the facts… If we only had evidence to show what the early Christians really believed. I thought it was a very sad thing that all of those documents had been destroyed by wars and such. I even believed the Catholic Church destroyed them at one point. But when I attended a particular series of services at our church on the DaVinci Code the preacher spoke about and showed images of pages of documents that I had thought lost for centuries if not longer. He said something that contradicted what I beleived about Mary Magdonlene. So I went to my computer at work during a break on Monday, and low and behold I found the motherload of ancient christian writings and started reading. By the end of the reading I was white as a ghost and realized that the Church teaches one thing and though the individuals including clergy may teach heresy, the truth still remains. So I made it a point to check out the Orthodox Church, because I vaguely remember something I saw on the news when I was a Christian Only in mindset.

I returned with a mature understanding of what I missed all those years that no one bothers to teach me or that I never understood until I struggled with the issues on my own without being pushed, pulled or bullies by my parents, family or friends. Telling my wife I was returning caused her to read the Catechism of the Catholic Church in full and she began asking questions from Catholics from or previous faith. She was convinced before me, while I was discerning truth in the Orthodox Church, of which I still have significant feelings, leanings.

I believe what the Church teaches, not only because it teaches the truth but because I struggled outside the church trying to make sense out of the irrational acceptance of issues like abortion, in vetro firtilization, vocal only music, and many others that ultimately led me to ask “who made the decision to include or exclude books from the scripture?” “When did they make this decision and why?” The truth was very disturbing and I went through a period where I wondered about the existence of the Christian God and began asking questions about the Jewish God and Islam. I wondered if there was a God at all. But evidence I’ve procured and debated over many years led me to hold onto my belief in God and the study of the ancient church fathers was the catalyst that pulled it together. I believe in infallibility of the Church because the Holy Spirit guides the Church. I believe the leadership of the Church is correct and meaningful. I believe in the Immaculate Conception, that Mary was without original sin and sinless as Eve was in the beginning. I believe that Jesus was not only the only son but also the only child of Mary. I could go on and on. I know now and if people could think my thoughts, I believe they’d be Catholic too. There’s just too much information to learn. Somewhere along the path, we must place our faith in Jesus. He’ll show us the way by way of the Holy Spirit.

 

[AnneTeresa]

Jack,

Wow, thank you so much for this post. It helped me a lot as I am going through sort of the same thing including my current interest in reading the ancient Christian writings.

bearer,

You said the church is the bride of Christ. That is awesome; I am going to meditate on that. I understand what you are saying.

JKRH,

I see what you are saying, especially what hit me is you refuse to reject the teachings. I am studying them trying to understand.

To everyone else,

Thanks SO MUCH for taking the time to answer me. I can’t tell you how much it has helped me. :thankyou:

 

[TypesAndShadows]

Jack, isn’t it funny the ideas you absorb and assume? I read the Bible a lot as a child, mostly the Old Testament, and yet I had a watershed moment as an adult who had drifted from the Church when I sat down to read the Bible as an adult with a nominally Hindu housemate and a non-denominational Christian of the sort who was afraid to shake hands with a Catholic priest. I had my little Good News Translation, they had their King James Bibles, and we started to regularly read passages from the Gospels and Epistles. Again and again, I would be surprised: “But look! There’s Purgatory! And there’s Confession! And Confirmation! And ordination! And Mary! And Mary petitioning Jesus to help with something!”

Somehow, without noticing, I had absorbed the idea that Catholic teaching had no basis in the Bible, that it required ignoring or explaining-away Biblical passages. Somehow, I had the impression that Mary was only mentioned in the briefest passing.

It was only in reading the Bible through the eyes of a non-Christian, completely unfamiliar with it, that I could see what was there. It annoyed the non-denominational Christian somewhat, but given she took us to a ‘People’s Church’ service that included a map of the Middle East projected on the wall and the phrase “We can convert the Jews in our lifetime”, I didn’t feel too bad about that.

 

[JRKH]

JKRH,

I see what you are saying, especially what hit me is you refuse to reject the teachings. I am studying them trying to understand.

If an analogy might help…
Think back to a time in school when you had a really hard time getting your head around a concept (For me it was math…).
We get so frustrated that we throw our hands up and declare “this makes no sense”, “I just don’t understand this” and so on. Yet the fact is that, especially in math, it DOES make sense and we know that it does because math is like that… We can’t reject it because it is Mathematically correct. We may not understand it - heck, we may NEVER understand it…mad:Calculus) but we can’t reject it.

Church teaching is kind of like that. If we accept the Church is Christ’s Church then we have to accept the teachings…We may not understand them but we can’t reject them.

Peace
James

 

[CB_Catholic]

I started attending catholic church a year ago again. I was raised catholic and left after having a conversion experience, then was catholic/protestant in parts over the years.

Other reverts, how do you deal with not agreeing with everything in the catholic church (probably from not understanding it fully yet)?

Converts go through a long RCIA process and they get to make a choice, but we who were born catholic and then returned, there seems to be less tolerance of our growing in our understanding. We are just supposed to “get it” all now because we are catholic.

The more I study, the more confused I seem to get. What was your experience? Did you “get it all” at once or was it a slow journey? I guess I just really need to know that I’m not the only one struggling as a revert.

If there was something I did not understand or could not quite agree with, I accepted it and asked the Holy Spirit to enlighten me. Then I let it go. Amazingly, I found the answers/or something became clear to me when least expected. The thing is to submit in obedience to the teachings of the Church, and ask God for the rest. The hardest things for me were the Marian Doctrines, after having spent enough time with our non-Catholic brethren to have serious doubts about them.

No it is not an easy journey and you are not the only one who struggles. But the struggle is good. It shows you care enough to seek the truth.

 

[fred_conty]

I started attending catholic church a year ago again. I was raised catholic and left after having a conversion experience, then was catholic/protestant in parts over the years.

Other reverts, how do you deal with not agreeing with everything in the catholic church (probably from not understanding it fully yet)?

Converts go through a long RCIA process and they get to make a choice, but we who were born catholic and then returned, there seems to be less tolerance of our growing in our understanding. We are just supposed to “get it” all now because we are catholic.

The more I study, the more confused I seem to get. What was your experience? Did you “get it all” at once or was it a slow journey? I guess I just really need to know that I’m not the only one struggling as a revert.

The more you read, the more questions come up. How true. Even for the most learned.
When you learn one thing, then arises 10 more questions. And from each of these 10
come 10 more. That’s just the way city hall works. The Bible is 100’s of pages. How many saint’s do we have? Thousands and many more books than that on them. How many papers and bulls have been written by the popes and bishops. Look at all the Fathers and Doctors of the church there are and how many of them have written treatices on different parts of the faith. The herecies and errors are numerous. Our Catechism is large.

Shall I go on? I’m just here to welcome you to the crowd of the “catch ups”, which excludes noone and includes everyone. Ignorance and “why” are part and partial of us.
The only time you need worry is if you give up.

After saying all of this, it is still a thrill when the Holy Spirit tells me “why”. For instance
I’ve wondered how on earth Peter ever was heard by 3000 people on Pentecost. I’ve always wondered how could he possibly be heard in the back or by most of them.
And all of them understood them in their own tongue tho he probably spoke in only one tongue. Now I’ve been wondering about this remarkable event forever. This past week I
was reading a book about a certain saint that spoke to large crowds of people using only his own voice and all the people heard him clearly. One crowd was 10,000. God gave him that power and this was centuries after Peter and Jesus. Jesus also preached to
thousands and he must have been heard as well otherwise what would be the point, That one always had me going. I have read that, and have heard that read many many times.
Now it is repeated in modern times. Some other saint I read about also had this gift as well.

There are various degrees of faith knowledge, but in the end, he wants your heart, because that is the only thing you really own and can give of yourself.

Just a thought.

 

[fbl9]

After saying all of this, it is still a thrill when the Holy Spirit tells me “why”. For instance
I’ve wondered how on earth Peter ever was heard by 3000 people on Pentecost. I’ve always wondered how could he possibly be heard in the back or by most of them.
And all of them understood them in their own tongue tho he probably spoke in only one tongue. Now I’ve been wondering about this remarkable event forever. This past week I
was reading a book about a certain saint that spoke to large crowds of people using only his own voice and all the people heard him clearly. One crowd was 10,000. God gave him that power and this was centuries after Peter and Jesus. Jesus also preached to
thousands and he must have been heard as well otherwise what would be the point, That one always had me going. I have read that, and have heard that read many many times.
Now it is repeated in modern times. Some other saint I read about also had this gift as well.

There are various degrees of faith knowledge, but in the end, he wants your heart, because that is the only thing you really own and can give of yourself.

Just a thought.

You know i never really thought of how all these peoples could hear the speaker.

 

[cecilia97]

I started attending catholic church a year ago again. I was raised catholic and left after having a conversion experience, then was catholic/protestant in parts over the years.

Other reverts, how do you deal with not agreeing with everything in the catholic church (probably from not understanding it fully yet)?

Converts go through a long RCIA process and they get to make a choice, but we who were born catholic and then returned, there seems to be less tolerance of our growing in our understanding. We are just supposed to “get it” all now because we are catholic.

The more I study, the more confused I seem to get. What was your experience? Did you “get it all” at once or was it a slow journey? I guess I just really need to know that I’m not the only one struggling as a revert.

Philip went to the Ethiopian eunuch to help him understand the scriptures. The point is: you can only grow so far in wisdom studying alone. Attend RCIA presentations at your parish. Most dioceses offer adult faith formation classes that are chock-full of great information. Read a book like “Catholic and Christian” by Alan Shreck or the Catholic Answers tracts here on the website. Then ask your solid Catholic friends questions about them.

I was poorly catechized as a child and fell away during college. I did not leave because of a conversion experience, I left because I wanted to lead a sinful life and Christ’s teachings got in my way. I simply did not practice any faith/religion at all for at least a decade.

When I felt the pull to come home to the Church, I went to Confession, started attending Mass again, and I still had a LOT to learn. Realize that a lot of the Catholics in the pews who never fell away also have a lot to learn. You are in a blessed position because you know what you do not know.

God bless you,
cecilia
p.s…about the things you don’t currently agree with…pray to God for the grace to understand or, if that is not His Will, then ask for the grace to accept and obey. Obedience to the Holy Spirit’s teachings as revealed to us through Christ’s Church is a great blessing. Our society does not value obedience, but you will find it spoken very highly of throughout the scriptures. Obey until you understand. It took me a short while to come around on contraception and female clergy, but a long time to come around on capital punishment, homosexual unions, etc. Working through those issues is part of a process of being purified in our minds and ideas that I think God wants us to go through in order to grow in our love of Him…I sometimes suspect this is why He does not grant us immediate understanding…it’s good for us to struggle and learn.

 

[Jack_Bauer]

I just posted this on another thread. But I feel it’s relevant to this thread. Ignore the seemingly off topic tone. It does describe some of my thinking when I left and returned to the Catholic Church.

There really is no official name of the Catholic Church, only historical ones. In the New Testament the members of the Church were first called Christian. But then the Church was called several things collectively speaking. Church of Christ, Assembly of God, Church of the First Born, Disciples of Christ, etc. But these were never official names. In modern days, more precisely over the past 100 to 200 years these biblical names, translations, started to appear. Note: The reason I converted to the Church of Christ was in part over the name being biblical. I also believed my infant baptism was poorly explained and poorly historically supported. But the interesting analogies that taught me to believe in the Church of Christ also got me to realizing that the scriptures were possibly being incorrectly interpreted on the basis of a term called “necessary inference”.

Example: Jesus would never want us to eat flesh or drink blood. It was prohibited by Jewish law, also scriptural. So we assumed it was wrong. But conveniently in our church we always seemed to skip studies of John 6, in its entirely. The fact that Jesus disciples for the most part walked away from him after he reiterated this teaching clearly multiple times gave me pause. So I wondered first, why didn’t we discuss this in depth. Second, we celebrated communion weekly, as required. But secretly I began to wonder if we were really receiving the actual body and blood of Christ, both symbolically and literally. This is only one of many teachings found in scripture. The reason I discredited all of the other so called Protestant religions was based on scripture. The only religion that came close to my beliefs were Catholic and Church of Christ. The fact that the Catholic Church also refers to itself as the “Church of Christ” sealed the deal with me joining the Church of Christ. Later I began to feel duped because of my wife’s family and their procelytizing methods that lured me away from what I considered truth, based not on Catholic teaching, but my own studies. I was always internally bible only and began that pursuit from a very young age. That’s because my mom and most of my family were bible only Christians.

The name is something that has always intrigued me about how people end up calling themselves different names, some which are really off the wall. Why would any group allow themselves to be called after the name of a person, for example, Lutheran. I’m sure there are more, but this is the only example that comes to mind. Orthodox is like an argument in the middle of the name. It’s a descriptor or adjective that comes across as really odd to me. Locational modifications added in front or after a main name is different. And if Eastern Orthodox Christians consider themselves the original Church along with what they believe is now the Papists, an insulting name attached to invoke hostility towards its members and the organization, then why did they add the term “Orthodox” and drop “Catholic”? Makes no sense other than to hijack the identity of the original Church. Frankly, the Church has the authority to excommunicate members of the Church, but an organization attached by history from the beginning. Therefore, when the Sees excommunicated each other in the beginning, they were both wrong and should have been chastised for it back then. My opinion inserted for clarifying my personal feelings on it. Excommunication would only be valid in the case of individuals for valid reason related to teaching and gravely sinful acts. An argument over miscommunication? Very shallow and temperamental…thus, for a lack of a better word, I find it stupid. Please, I feel the same way about all of us. We argue over petty things. The bible instructs us not to, yet we continue to.

Now for those Catholics that feel I sound bible only now, here’s food for thought. The bible is a collection of written down Sacred Teachings, along with historical information and analogies to help us understand God. Names are fine, but can you trace your heritage and when you do find a historical [visible church] that goes to the root, Jesus? And in that trace id your leaders break from any church or rebel from any teaching that can also be traced to the root, Jesus?