Tomorrow, I will mark 43 years from the day of my baptism and reception into the Catholic Church. There is no greater gift. May I adhere to it until my dying day.
When I was first received into the Church, though, I was referred to as a “convert”, which I accepted at the time, and used the term for myself, though later on I had to reconsider this, as I didn’t “convert” from anything. Aside from a few (mostly cultural) rudimentary remnants, I knew little of anything about Christianity until I came to Catholicism. I had basically not believed in much of anything.
I have spoken in other topic threads here about things I encountered once I entered the Church. My catechesis and in-school instruction were deficient (Humanae vitae and other things) and I discovered through reading — and I read constantly — pre-Vatican II catechisms, missals, historical accounts and so on, a world that was much different from what I saw in the local church. Things that were once taught vigorously were now treated as though they didn’t exist. As noted elsewhere, it was like someone had thrown a switch.
I found, though, that when I would ask questions, or challenge what I saw and heard, that it was generally a case of “you’re a convert, just be quiet and listen to us”. I was told, among other things, “you talk too much”, “just read the scriptures”, “you’re confusing yourself with all those books”, and finally, from the man I mentioned in another post, “you can never go wrong with a priest”. The Latin Mass was a taboo subject (I got a “Latin High Mass for Nostalgic Catholics” vinyl LP) and any resistance to communion in the hand or lay extraordinary ministers was — get this — “dissent”. The undercurrent was something like “you are bringing up things we’d rather not think about, we don’t want to hear it, so shut up”. My “you can never go wrong with a priest” friend referred several times to being a “cradle Catholic”.
Have any other “converts” experienced anything like this?
When I was first received into the Church, though, I was referred to as a “convert”, which I accepted at the time, and used the term for myself, though later on I had to reconsider this, as I didn’t “convert” from anything. Aside from a few (mostly cultural) rudimentary remnants, I knew little of anything about Christianity until I came to Catholicism. I had basically not believed in much of anything.
I have spoken in other topic threads here about things I encountered once I entered the Church. My catechesis and in-school instruction were deficient (Humanae vitae and other things) and I discovered through reading — and I read constantly — pre-Vatican II catechisms, missals, historical accounts and so on, a world that was much different from what I saw in the local church. Things that were once taught vigorously were now treated as though they didn’t exist. As noted elsewhere, it was like someone had thrown a switch.
I found, though, that when I would ask questions, or challenge what I saw and heard, that it was generally a case of “you’re a convert, just be quiet and listen to us”. I was told, among other things, “you talk too much”, “just read the scriptures”, “you’re confusing yourself with all those books”, and finally, from the man I mentioned in another post, “you can never go wrong with a priest”. The Latin Mass was a taboo subject (I got a “Latin High Mass for Nostalgic Catholics” vinyl LP) and any resistance to communion in the hand or lay extraordinary ministers was — get this — “dissent”. The undercurrent was something like “you are bringing up things we’d rather not think about, we don’t want to hear it, so shut up”. My “you can never go wrong with a priest” friend referred several times to being a “cradle Catholic”.
Have any other “converts” experienced anything like this?
) Yet my ideas now are the same as they were then…