I always feel like either a disappointment or a fraud answering this, because although I could talk about the beauty of the liturgy and Catholic art, the intellectual riguour of the Church’s sons throughout history, and so on, these are all frankly secondary and post-fact - the truth is I just always had something within me from a very young age that was drawn to the idea of ‘Catholic’ or ‘being Catholic’. I would hear about different things Catholics did or believed and would for some intangible reasons, while I would have been way too young to flesh out, feel ‘‘that’s right’’, or ‘‘we should do that’’ (my family was nominally Anglican). There was really no earthly reason why it should have been like that. I didn’t understand much about theology and I certainly didn’t feel this inner draw when I heard about ‘Baptists’ or ‘Methodists’ or other denominations we were not. But yet I was drawn to Catholicism.
Later when I studied the English reformation in school, I was genuinely upset and angry about what had happened - the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the split from Rome, the destruction of shrines. I still didn’t really know why all this was so bad (apart from the destruction of beautiful buildings, which is kind of instinctive). I was taught just as many supposed positive aspects to it as negative ones. But that’s how I felt.
Anyway between my mid teens and mid twenties was a difficult time for me, my own sort of dark age. I dropped out of education and failed in abortive attempts to get back into it near the end of that period. I used drugs, not hard drugs but I used soft drugs prolifically, and drank a lot too. I was implicated in some petty crimes, silly stuff. My world got smaller and I made myself lower. I didn’t even think about this long-held inner itch to become Catholic during that time. I was never an atheist but I was apathetic. These questions were just not on my mind.
Fast forward to age 30, live mostly cleaned up and I’d had a little renaissance of mind, gone back to university distance learning and started reading again - and I was married, with a comfortable job I enjoyed, even if the pay wasn’t great. I started to think about matters of faith again. I just felt that the time was right.
There was never any question of which ‘branch’ of Christianity it would be. The inner voice was finally heeded.
