Converts should just "sit down and shut up"?

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Oh, wow… When I went through RCIA, there were only two of us in a class of about 10 who were converting from other Faiths (I was a unbaptized Protestant) and everyone else we’re cradle Catholics trying to finish their sacraments of initiation. The two converts in class were the only people who even owned Bibles…

Some of the folks on CAF are amazing in their knowledge and zeal for God and the Catholic Faith. Most the ones I know in real life (with exceptions of course) are converts.

No, I never got the same treatment you did because I am a convert. I find a lot of cradle Catholics to be quite impressed with a converts love for the faith. After all, the faith was not handed to us. Not many Protestants convert without a lot of research, prayer and even suffering. This tends to make ex protestant Catholics very zealous for our faith.
 
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I’m a convert and I’d just like to say it’s time for cradle Catholics to get out of the cradle.

runs for cover
 
GladTidings said:
Generally it occurred in the first ten years or so after my baptism.
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I have the same ideas now that I did then. Back then, it was more “we like the more liberal modern approach to Catholicism much better, and we don’t want to be reminded of the past, nor of anything that would make us question that”. We didn’t have things like EWTN, Catholic Answers, the restoration of the Latin Mass under societies such as the FSSP, and a young generation that is rediscovering traditional Catholicism. Churches are being restored to traditional styles. The “flavor” of Catholicism that was popular then is now seen as dated and as not having aged well. It was a time when everything was “up for grabs”. 40-50 years later things are starting to level out and make sense again.

I hope that those who opposed traditional, orthodox Catholic faith and worship then have reconsidered. The older ones are either dead or too far along in years to entertain changing. I do recognize that pre-Vatican II Catholicism left many of that generation traumatized by certain excesses, as we saw, for instance, among the Irish and the Quebecois. And you no longer have the phenomenon of “I was brought up to obey the Church and the priests, and you don’t need to worry about doing any thinking for yourself — it’s been done for you, and all you have to do is obey”. We are called upon to understand what we believe, as well as to live it.

Let’s just say things are finally getting straightened out and I wouldn’t want to see anything happen that could undo that.
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I converted when I was several years older than you. As many people in my family are Catholic, when I try to explain that I converted, most people get very confused. I don’t go out of my way to explain my conversion anymore. With my last name, people simply assume I’m a cradle Irish Catholic.

However, I have sensed similar things as you. You are curious about the faith you converted to. So am I. There is truly a massive amount to learn. The thing is that…Yes…people get nervous when you ask lots of questions. I haven’t totally figured out why.

Perhaps it has more to do with the ancient quote “Knowledge is Power”. In many of the cities I have lived in the Catholic churches have run a major school and have been significant employer in town. They also own lots of land. Not every Catholic employee is following Catholic teaching with their personal life too. Also, sometimes I’ve seen priests take up questionable political causes, and they’ve been pretty upset when there is loads of push back from the parishioners. The frustration with your questions may have more to do with these types of things than the fact you are a convert.
 
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Irishmom2 said:
I wouldn’t think of you as a convert either. You would have had to have been something to convert from. You said that you weren’t anything before.
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Well, even for me, previously an atheist (never anti-religious, btw), it was a conversion. Understood in its most basic meaning, conversion means to turn away from sin and turn towards Jesus. The term revert also doesn’t make much sense in that sense.
 
St Josemaria Escriva taught the need for “Intelligent Obedience”, that is to say we have a right to ask questions and ask for clarification, but with the ultimate intent of discerning God’s will, not ours.

Fr. Chad Ripperger also wrote in his book Magisterial Authority (which I highly recommend), that while we owe obedience to authentic magisterial teaching from our spiritual superiors, we owe a greater duty to God. If, on a particular subject, what a particular Bishop, for example, teaches appears to conflict with what the Church has always taught, we cannot simply come to our own conclusions. We must establish the position as set out in Sacred scripture and Sacred Tradition. If what the Bishop said is consistent or reconcilable with what the Church has always taught on a particular subject, we owe assent to it. If no, we obedience to what is established by the position established by Scripture and Tradition. Also, just because a particular Prelate is wrong on a particular subject does not mean they are wrong on everything and we have no right to simply dismiss everything they have to say.

I think what the OP is doing is correct, and he wants to live faithfully to what the Church teaches.
 
HomeschoolDad said:
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”.
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Whilst I am not a convert, I don’t think your experience as listed above is restricted just to converts. Those who are scrupulous, those returning to the Church after some years away, and those are genuinely seeking the truth in various matters as well as just trying to understand how things “work”, “why”,may also get “you’re not learned”, “don’t question your elders” or etc. etc etc. - also get “shut down” in various ways.

I’m sorry that’s been your experience.
 
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No offense, but if you joined the Church at age 15, and it’s been 43 entire years, you aren’t really a “convert” IMHO. There’s not that much that goes on in a person’s spiritual life before age 15 (except for the rare cases of child saints), and plenty of cradle Catholics don’t go to Catholic schools so that’s not an essential part of “growing up Catholic”. I’ve heard from plenty of priests who for whatever family situation did not come to Catholicism until their teens or even later.

A number of the major Catholic apologists are also converts, at MUCH older ages than 15. They are apologists, answering questions all day, precisely BECAUSE they are interested in religion (which is how they converted in the first place) and they know how to pitch their answers to a non-Catholic audience, something that cradle Catholics often don’t “get”.

43 years ago was a weird time for the Church, there was a lot of sniping, there were a lot of disgruntled cradles who were disgruntled because they had grown up a certain way and they either wanted major change in the Church or didn’t want major change in the Church, it was a different era. I don’t want to sound like the people who brushed you off, but I’m sure you can see now why anyone wanting to go back to the Latin Mass or communion in the hand was a “taboo subject” 43 years ago. The Vatican and many priests were pretty much telling everybody to please start all doing it in unity in the new way, and the major proponents of Latin Mass and old ways were schismatic groups. Even today when we are relatively free to attend Latin Mass and kneel for communion, these are hot button issues. I don’t know why you’d be surprised you got a hostile reaction.

Also, just to make a couple of observations:
  1. You ask a lot of questions just based on the number of threads you start here. This isn’t a bad thing here; it’s what the forum is for, and anyone who doesn’t want to answer a question can just skip the thread. However, if you went around in real life asking lots of questions, I can see where it might have been frustrating to people. Not every RL Catholic wants to be bombarded with questions. People get tired of answering or maybe they don’t know the answer so they wind up acting like impatient parents and saying, “Because I said so” in so many words, which for a convert might end up being something like “Yeah well you’re a convert, if you were a cradle you’d know, now go away and stop bugging me.” If you were a teenager asking the questions, I can see older people reacting like this especially.
  2. To the extent you might still have a small chip on your shoulder about being a convert, since this seems to have come up in a couple of your threads, after 43 years I think maybe it’s time to consider knocking it off and just moving on.
Just my 2 cents…
 
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I have never experienced the kind of distrust or disdain that you describe. We no longer live in the city where I converted, so apart from family members and a few old friends from the old days, most people we have met here don’t know I’m a convert and no one has never asked. Whenever I talk to a priest, either in confession or socially, I always make sure he is aware that I’m a convert, simply because I wouldn’t want him to suspect me of pretending to be a cradle Catholic. But no priest has ever treated me any differently as a result.
 
My husband and I converted to Catholicism after 47 years as Evangelical Protestants.

We were SUPER Evangelical Protestants. Most weeks, we were in our church or involved in some ministry or fellowship of the church 5-6 days/evenings a week.

We are thrilled to be Catholics, and have not had any experiences like the OP except when it comes to fellowship. We get a lot of "Catholicism isn’t about “fellowship,” it’s about the Lord Jesus,’ which is a great guilt-inducer.

Our biggest disappointment with the Catholic Church to date is that we have a very hard time making friends, but someone here on CAF pointed out, wisely, that we are at an awkward age, early 60s, where most people have grandchildren and prefer to spend much of their free time with them and their grown children. (We have no grandchildren yet, and our married daughter and her husband are struggling with infertility issues.)

Also, we didn’t grow up in the Church, so we didn’t attend Catholic schools or go through Religious Ed, so we never made a group of Catholic friends while we were young.

We do miss the rich fellowship that we had in the Evangelical Protestant churches. Many of our friends and our “get-togethers” are with these people who are so much more friendly and easy to be with.

Our daughter tells us that we should try harder to invite people over and not give up, and I think she’s right.

Anyway, it’s OK. And that’s the point of this post, to remind the OP that it’s OK for everyone to be different. Everyone is on their own faith walk, and we all need to accept that God is in their lives and ours, and that’s what matters.

If I were the OP, I would get past the way they were treated when they were teenage and twenty something, and get on with life now. OP, if you prefer a Traditional Catholicism, you have plenty of legitimate, Church-approved options today, so jump right in and be glad! As for those who disagree with you and try to persuade you to take a different walk, that’s their right, and likewise, you have the right to try to persuade them of the joy of your walk. Just stay nice, and stop taking it as a personal affront.

Consider that not everyone had a wonderful experience with Traditional Catholicism–one older man once told me that if the Church had not introduced the OF Mass, he would have quit when he was 18–he was planning to, but along came Vatican II and all the changes, and he loved it! I think there are others like him in the Church, and it would be good to accept their point of view and try to understand why they disagree with your Catholic preferences just as it would be good for all of us who love the OF Mass and all the “modern” trappings that came about after Vatican II to accept the point of view of those who prefer the old ways.
 
You converted ~10 years after major changes in the Church, a time when a large portion of the faithful revelled in the “new Church”. They didn’t want to be reminded of what had been, even if what “had been” still “was”.

If at the age of 15 you were discussing with those your age or slightly older they likely had less knowledge than you had, since catechesis in the previous 10 years or so had not been stellar. Older people would have had no patience for being challenged by someone your age. By my calculations I’m 7 years older than you. At 15 I was still expected to listen and shut up in every aspect of my interaction with adults.
 
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Maybe it is because I know a bunch of “converts.” Maybe not. But I wouldn’t say that those that convert to the faith know it better or have more zeal for the faith. In fact, I would say just the opposite.

In fact, our parish does things to keep those that have converted interested in the Church. With cradle Catholics, it is simply assumed that they will stay.

Obviously after 40+ years, it is a different story.
 
I am a convert. I was a Methodist, and I joined the Catholic Church when I was seventeen. Your experience had not been mine.

If you were baptized at fifteen, you are certainly a convert. Why do I say this, though you say you didn’t convert from anything? Well, as you also say, I had basically not believed in much of anything. Well, that is what you converted from.
 
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Sometimes people who are new to something (whether it’s a religion, a political philosophy, or even just a hobby) tend to go a little overboard in their enthusiasm. Not that one can have too much love for Christ, but sometimes people will get so wrapped up in their new identity that it becomes all they can talk or think about. Occasionally you’ll meet Catholics who seem incapable of doing anything that isn’t explicitly Catholic. If they’re watching a movie, it has to be something religious. If they’re listening to music, it has to be Gregorian chanting. If they’re reading a book for pleasure, the author better be Fulton Sheen.

That can get a bit annoying, because it almost seems like they’re just enjoying belonging to a subculture for the sake of having an identity.

I’m not saying that applies to all or even most converts, but you do encounter it occasionally.
 
HomeschoolDad said:
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.
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Properly speaking, you are a convert. The unbaptized would be technically called “pagan” or “infidels” (at least in older church documents), but that includes those who identify as “nothing”. When you are baptized, you complete your conversion to Catholicism.

We also speak of converts when those who are in non-Catholic Christian churches or ecclesial communities come into full communities.
HomeschoolDad said:
any resistance to communion in the hand or lay extraordinary ministers was — get this — “dissent”.
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These are both valid options in the church, so I’m not sure what sort of “resistance” you had/have or why. And, how you express that “resistance” may be the reason you received push back. They are valid options.
HomeschoolDad said:
Have any other “converts” experienced anything like this?
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Nope. Never. Not since 1992 when I entered the Church. I’ve been in many, many roles in lay ministry and lay leadership, including parish council, young adults, religious education, pro life, and more.
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
However, if you went around in real life asking lots of questions, I can see where it might have been frustrating to people.
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I would just notice things from time to time, and bring them up. It wasn’t always well-received, hence the reason for this thread.
Tis_Bearself said:
To the extent you might still have a small chip on your shoulder about being a convert, since this seems to have come up in a couple of your threads, after 43 years I think maybe it’s time to consider knocking it off and just moving on.
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Thanks for the concern, but I don’t think I have any “chip”. I am simply thankful to be a Catholic and I don’t think about, or care about, the way in which I received the faith.

Obviously I was raising questions back then that challenged changes in the Church. Many people welcomed these changes, and when they didn’t understand them or couldn’t assimilate or articulate how they conflicted with what was true in times past — especially when it came to sensitive moral issues — they became hostile about being challenged. Simple as that.

Perhaps a better and more general way of asking the question would be “are the unique and original contributions and observations of converts welcomed, or are they expected simply to come into the Church, keep their mouths shut, and not question anything?”.

I think it’s also true that those in any closed, insular society where people are convinced that theirs is the truest and the best way — and that could include the United States of America itself vis-à-vis “foreigners” — do not want to have their ways, manners, or customs questioned. Kind of like Jante’s Law (Janteloven):

1ke said:
any resistance to communion in the hand or lay extraordinary ministers was — get this — “dissent”.
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They may be valid now, but they weren’t then. Everyone just “understood” that the Host was never to be touched by anyone other than a priest. The cries of “dissent” came not from the lay faithful, but from the priests and “change agents”. CITH and EMHCs were things that would not have crossed anyone’s mind unless the Church had introduced them. But once they were introduced, it was a case of “this is THE way and that’s that”.
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