for Protestants who became Catholic or who have considered it

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My husband is a cradle Catholic. I would attend mass with him and then I finally decided to join the RCIA and the rest is history. It was the best thing I ever did! Now i’m very much a devout Catholic. I love Jesus, Mary, the saints and everything about my religion. Even my mother in law says that it seems that i’m more into my religion than cradle Catholics. 😃 She is a devout Catholic as well. 🙂
 
jmcrae said:
But the Catholics going in know that their kids are not going to be learning how to say the Catholic prayers, and that it’s just going to be Bible stories and happy Jesus songs.
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How untrue, insulting, and bigoted. I suspect in Lutheran and Methodist Churches they will also learn about grace, unconditional love, and basic Christian beliefs as the Apostles’ Creed is said each morning.

In the South, many small Catholic parishes join with liturgical protestant traditions in VBS because they have very few children to do their own VBS.
 
ctos said:
Dear Protestants who became Catholic, or who have considered becoming Catholic:

What led you to consider the Catholic faith in more detail?
  1. A Catholic told you that your faith was in error.
  2. A Catholic piqued your curiosity or invited you to something.
  3. You were struck by the example of a Pope or other prelate.
    4. You are open-minded and one day decided to read more about it.
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And I did not like what I found out.
 
O.S.Luke said:
How untrue, insulting, and bigoted. I suspect in Lutheran and Methodist Churches they will also learn about grace, unconditional love, and basic Christian beliefs as the Apostles’ Creed is said each morning.
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I grew up Protestant, and attended ecumenical VBS every summer of grade school. I never once heard the Apostles’ Creed recited there. At my home church, yes, but never at VBS. It was run by the Baptists, though, and I don’t think Baptists believe in the Apostles’ Creed - if they do, I never heard them use it.

But it would have been the same no matter which church had been running it, since we had kids from every religion there, and they had to stick with what was held in common by all - they couldn’t put anything in that any of the groups would object to. Certainly, any Catholic distinctives would have been “out,” for sure.
In the South, many small Catholic parishes join with liturgical protestant traditions in VBS because they have very few children to do their own VBS.
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No doubt this is in addition to Catholic catechism classes, though, right?
 
TexRose said:
My husband is a cradle Catholic. I would attend mass with him and then I finally decided to join the RCIA and the rest is history. It was the best thing I ever did! Now i’m very much a devout Catholic. I love Jesus, Mary, the saints and everything about my religion. Even my mother in law says that it seems that i’m more into my religion than cradle Catholics. 😃 She is a devout Catholic as well. 🙂
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A guy at my parish used to be a non-Catholic Christian. One day he decided to read Catechism of the Catholic Church. Now he is a devout Catholic. I often see him at Eucharistic Adorations. 🙂
 
The Holy Spirit kept giving me hints over an eight year period… for me it was the way most protestants “handle” communion. John 6 kept saying one thing and I was in a community of believers who thought it was “a memorial”. I’m glad I listened to Spirit! He was patient, and I have never been so blessed!! I am one year a Catholic this Easter.
God bless all who seek Truth… may they never give up.
Renee
 
O.S.Luke said:
How untrue, insulting, and bigoted. I suspect in Lutheran and Methodist Churches they will also learn about grace, unconditional love, and basic Christian beliefs as the Apostles’ Creed is said each morning.

In the South, many small Catholic parishes join with liturgical protestant traditions in VBS because they have very few children to do their own VBS.
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There is a Coming Home Networks show that had a protestant who run a show about Bible stories in song. He converted to Catholicism and still continue his work by educating kids about the God and the Bible stories, and even the Eucharist.
 
O.S.Luke said:
How untrue, insulting, and bigoted.
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Probably depends on what grade level you are talking about. That description was a little cheeky, but it pretty accurately described the Lutheran VBS I went to one summer. It was fun though (rope swing, baby!) and I did learn some helpful things, I think, so I’m glad I went. 🙂
 
Btw, the Catholic Churches around here that do VBS use the very same curriculum that the Protestant Churches to. I know because I have friends who teach them and they all by the same programs from the same place and talk about doing the same games.
 
I didn’t vote since none of the answers fit my situation. I was a Baptist/fundamentalist who was very dead set against Catholicism for the usual reasons (Mary, the Pope, Purgatory etc.). I had a Catholic friend who was trying to get me to go to RCIA just to find out what Catholics believe, but I refused, because I had my Bible and I knew better. Then I met someone who was Eastern Orthodox, and discovered that this ancient church had many of the same features of Catholicism (liturgy, sacrament, hierarchical priesthood, devotion to Mary and the Saints, prayers for the dead, etc.) which lead me to conclude that it was Protestantism, not Catholicism, was the aberrant form of Christianity. However, the problem I had with Orthodoxy was that is as very ethnically based (Greek, Russian, Slavonic, etc.) which is fine if you belong to those ethnic groups. At about this time I took my friend’s suggestion to check out RCIA, so I did. I would say the thing that finally convinced me to become Catholic was the example of the Pope. He provides the necessary unity for the Church and IMO asks as the voice of Christianity in a way that neither Orthodox nor Protestant leaders can do.
In short I became Catholic for the following reasons.
  1. The authority of the Pope (and his bishops) mentioned above. To me Protestantism’s Sola Scriptura leads to an “every man for himself” mentality.
  2. The Eucharist. Even as a Protestant, I felt the Lord’s Supper was very important. Yet, I was dismayed because the Protestant churches I attended rarely celebrated it. Also, the ministers I listened to talked about worship, yet our ‘worship’ consisted of singing songs and listening to preaching. To me, it wasn’t enough, there seemed to be a big hole in my spiritual life. As a Catholic, attending Mass and partaking of the Eucharist is true worship.
  3. The doctrine of Sola Fide is false. As a Protestant, I was told that simply believing in Jesus was sufficient for salvation. Yet, as I read my Bible, I found that what I was taught did not square with what I read (James 2:24, Jesus saying that non all who say ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, plus his parables on the talents and sheep and goats, etc). I found that the Catholic teaching (and not the Protestant distortion I was taught) of faith *and *works was the Biblical position.
 
I voted #4. I grew up Baptist, but was always attracted to liturgical type worship. (Must be the Episcopalian kindegarden school I went to. :D) . Seven years ago I went to a couple of Orthodox Holy Week services and was in awe and felt I was witnessing the historical church. I read up on the Orthodox Church, but although I agreed with many of the things (the Sacraments), I couldn’t come to terms on a few issues. Then I started to look at the Catholic Church (mainly from the books of former Protestants, mainly Baptists) and at the Early Church Fathers. In the end, I concluded that the Catholic Church was The Church and I wanted to belong to it and to recieve the Eucharist. (I still think the Liturgy of the East is awesome, but as I told a dear Orthodox friend of mine, I’m a gal from the West. 😃 Luckily, the CC does have an Eastern lung. 👍 )
 
I, like at least one post above, would say “none of the above.”

I first became interested in learning more about Catholic theology after attending one of the annual “Aquinas-Luther Conferences,” held at Lenoir-Rhyne College in Hickory, North Carolina. The conferences bring together Catholic and Lutheran theologians to speak on given topic. The first time I attended, it was because of a Lutheran, one of whose books I had read.

I found the speakers, both Lutheran and Catholic, to be very interesting and I became interested in learning more about Catholic theology. This first encounter took place several years before I felt the call to ministry and began the process of preparing for ordination in the Lutheran church. I have done a fair amount of reading of Catholic books – Scott Hahn, Avery Cardinal Dulles, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and some of the Vatican II documents. I also read from the series Lutherans and Catholics in Dialogue.

In the course of my seminary education, I took several courses in Catholic seminaries, so I did learn a bit more there – although I didn’t take any courses in Catholic eccesiology. I had actually hoped to take a course in Mariology but it never worked its way into my schedule.
 
I’m another who would have to say “none of the above”. When I was a young teenager, a group of us from Sunday School decided that we would stop in at the local Catholic church which we always passed on our way home. (Btw, we did not go there to mock or cause any trouble, simply out of curiosity.)

Some of the others left quickly, but I sat in one of the back pews until the Mass was over. I had no idea what was going on, but God reached down that morning and touched me, and I knew that someday I had to be a Catholic.

I’m now a member of Christ’s Church, but, ironically, the very instrument of grace that God used to draw me to Him is now forbidden to all of us who worship in my diocese, in spite of numerous pleas–not even one or two TLMs a year are allowed.

I sometimes wonder if the Bishops who maintain this hard-line attitude realize the pain that they cause in some of the faithful under their care…
 
GOP said:
I’ll be by more often. Baby steps. 🙂
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Luke 10:21: he rejoiced in the Holy Ghost, and said: I confess to thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to little ones.

🙂
 
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