From One Convert to Another

[Jeanette_L]

I was debating as to whether to even bring this up, but it has been on my mind a lot lately, so here goes.

I am a convert from the Evangelical/Fundamentalist areas of the Protestant world. I pretty much have been all over the place there and have grown very familiar with the spirit of Protestantism, which is one of argument, division, spiritual pride and rebellion against anything authoritative. Of course, when you don’t have confidence that your leaders are in fact being led by the Holy Spirit or that any church can even claim to be, you really do need to constantly question authority, and it leads to constant turmoil and unrest.

Now, one of the reasons I became Catholic was I came to understand that Christ did not leave us in this state of unrest and confusion, and had a plan already in place to safeguard against it. I was so relieved to have discovered such peace - in knowing I could be confident in the Church that was my safe harbor. It took a lot to get me here, but what a relief when I finally made it!

What I would like to ask those of you here who understand what I’m saying - from experience - is this: have you found to your surprise that the same spirit exists much more within today’s Catholicism than you would first have guessed, and if so, how does it affect you and the way you interact with other Catholics, both here and in the ‘real world’?

 

[LeahInancsi]

I think that is why most of us are here. It’s the right place to be.

As for me, I had no previous religious experience. I became Catholic because it seemed to be the predominate religion in my family. I worshiped the ground my grandmother walked on and eventhough she left the church to marry my grandfather, I fell that she was Catholic through and through because that all she know. She knew what was RIGHT.

 

[JReducation]

What have always convinced me about Catholicism are its logic and its rich tradition. Then there were people like the Capuchin-Franciscan Brothers who taught me in high school and college. They were everything that I believed a Christian should be. They were intelligent, dedicated to prayer and very ascetic.

Unfortunately, when I came to CAF I found many dissatisfied Catholics here. I realize that the Catholic Church is made up of human beings with many faults, but they also have much to offer. My favourite Catholics are Francis of Assisi, Teresa of Avila, Elizabeth Ann Seton, Edith Stein, Maximilian Kolbe, Mother Teresa and John Paul II.

Those who are converts to the Church have to be careful on forums like CAF. There are many good people here, but there are even more discontent Catholics. I believe they find this to be a safe place to vent their frustration over changes in the Church. Often their vents can mislead those who are new to Catholicism to believe that the Church is in error and that it needs salvation from the error of its ways. This is sad.

I guess you’ll find frustrated people everywhere. Personally, I’m very happy with the Catholic Church, even when I disagree and question some of its positions.

JR

 

[Jeanette_L]

Those who are converts to the Church have to be careful on forums like CAF. There are many good people here, but there are even more discontent Catholics. I believe they find this to be a safe place to vent their frustration over changes in the Church. Often their vents can mislead those who are new to Catholicism to believe that the Church is in error and that it needs salvation from the error of its ways. This is sad.

I guess you’ll find frustrated people everywhere. Personally, I’m very happy with the Catholic Church, even when I disagree and question some of its positions.

JR

My concern is for converts, knowing the frustration and confusion it causes to be told so many things by so many people. Most of us have studied hard before making the decision to become Catholic, and in those studies discovered a Church that has been led and preserved beautifully through the ages, and whose claim as being so proved to be true.

The relief and peace that comes from the Faith and confidence in Holy Mother Church, being led by our Savior her Head and his Vicor our Pope, can become eroded over a short period of time when you hear the loudest voices being those who want to grumble at every turn about every blessed thing! This I thought I left behind, but it seems the spirit of discontent which leads to division is everywhere.

I just wanted to see if other converts were feeling in any way stressed over all the noise and what their thoughts were.

I personally find comfort, like you JR, in the writings of the Church, especially those of the Doctors and Saints, and in the Sacraments themselves. They bring things back into perspective. We are in the right place, and God has brought us here in this time of turmoil, maybe to make a difference, even if it’s one person at a time.

God Bless.

 

[Jeanette_L]

I think that is why most of us are here. It’s the right place to be.

As for me, I had no previous religious experience. I became Catholic because it seemed to be the predominate religion in my family. I worshiped the ground my grandmother walked on and eventhough she left the church to marry my grandfather, I fell that she was Catholic through and through because that all she know. She knew what was RIGHT.

Thank you. It is the right place to be. Your grandmother knew. And I’m glad her life had that kind of beautiful influence on you.

 

[JReducation]

We have to understand several things here.

If you have a crowd of kids with many behaviour problems and you observe closely you’ll notice that while the raucous sounds like it’s coming from a large crowd, in fact it’s coming from four or five out of twenty. In any situation of protest, the protestors (no connection with Protestants) are going to be louder than the rest of the group.

What you hear in CAF and in other places, are the voices of a minority, conservative and liberals. They do not represent the majority of Catholics living today or through history. Real reformers are neither loud nor obnoxious. They are prayerful, humble, expedient and most of all obedient.

Let’s look at some real reformers and compare them to the loudmouths that you meet on CAF and other places.

St. Francis of Assisi:

Francis knew that the medieval Church was falling into chaos. It was too involved in the temporal affairs and political affairs of the world. Church authorities were so busy defending their power and territory that they often failed to provide for the spiritual welfare of the people. Monasteries that were once the centres of prayer and peace had become estates that provided for the interests of civil Lords.

Francis set off on a life of prayer, penance and preaching conversion. He never condemned the Church’s leadership. He never pointed the finger at the Monasteries that had become embroiled in the affairs of the feudal Lords. In fact, he presented his rule of life for approval by the Pope, who was one of the most powerful monarchs of the time. He borrowed a shed from the local Benedictine Monks who lived very well by the standards of the time. He brought people back to the Church by his example. He wished for nothing more than to become a perfect imitation of the crucified Christ. He was friendly, cheerful, a poet, a musician, and a preacher. He never became a priest, because he didn’t want an official position in the Church. All he wanted was to live as Christ had lived and to teach others to do so. He never mentions the weaknesses of the Church in any of his writings or sermons.

St. Teresa of Avila:

The Carmelite Order was originally founded to live a life of asceticism, silence and detachment from the world. They were to be witnesses of total consecration to prayer and charity. By the 1500s they had been sucked into the Renaissance. It had become a community of rich and powerful men and women who for whatever reason had not made a good marriage match and entered the Order. However, they continued to live as they had lived in the world, with all the worldly comforts and all the privileges of the rich and powerful. Prayer took a second place to pleasing the demands of the rich and powerful.

Teresa set out to reform the Carmelites. She never condemned her Carmelite Brothers and Sisters. She never condemned the Papacy for allowing these abuses to creep into her order. She rewrote the Carmelite rule according to the original spirit. She presented it to the local bishops. Some bishops allowed her to found new monasteries in their dioceses and others did not. Those who declined, she obeyed and moved on. When the Pope withdrew his support of her work she patiently sought support from those who had the Pope’s ear. However, she never spoke a single hostile word against the Pope. She believed that if her work was truly the will of God, the Pope would come around. What she had to do was to put the human machine into work to get the Pope to listen and to reconsider. Eventually he did and he approved her work.

Mother Teresa of Calcutta:

She had joined the Sisters of Our Lady of Loreto. She was sent to India as a Social Studies teacher at a school for rich Indian and European girls. She did her work quietly for more than 20 years. When on a trip from a retreat she saw the hunger and misery on the streets of Calcutta, she heard the call to leave the convent and quench Christ’s thirst on the streets. This was unheard of in the 1940s. Sisters did not live alone on the streets; much less leave their congregations after making perpetual vows.

She asked for permission to leave the convent, not her congregation. The permission was denied by her superiors. She approached the Bishop with her newly discovered vocation, which she called “a call within a call.” The Bishop told her to wait for a year.

Though she presented her call to serve Christ in the streets of Calcutta, she never denounced her Congregation or the Bishop for founding schools and institutions for the wealthy. She never spoke ill of the Church’s mission or modus operandi. She was focussed on what she head Christ telling her. She received the approval, because she presented what Christ had asked her to do, not all of the flaws and weaknesses that Church in India may have had

These are just some examples of true reformer. All of them were quiet, patient, preservative, prayerful and charitable toward the Church and her leadership. Above all, they were prayerful. Compare them to the so called reformers that you meet on some of these boards.

JR

 

[j1s2a3]

Yes I left the church and married protestant woman and attended non-Catholic (churches I guess you call them).After awhile my heart harden and didn’t attend service for some time (not for lack of learning Bible) but just NOT feeling fullfilled.Anyway, W/O Jesus Christ as my guide in life things just seemed worthless and started me on long road back (many years) to Catholic Church.My take on whats wrong with protestant environment is that everything seems external (Bible-Faith) almost as if man is in control of Father.As Catholic everything seems to emit from inside.Wife & I are both Catholic.

 

[Jeanette_L]

Yes I left the church and married protestant woman and attended non-Catholic (churches I guess you call them).After awhile my heart harden and didn’t attend service for some time (not for lack of learning Bible) but just NOT feeling fullfilled.Anyway, W/O Jesus Christ as my guide in life things just seemed worthless and started me on long road back (many years) to Catholic Church.My take on whats wrong with protestant environment is that everything seems external (Bible-Faith) almost as if man is in control of Father.As Catholic everything seems to emit from inside.Wife & I are both Catholic.

Welcome back to the Church! A wonderful way to describe up your journey of faith back to our Church.

 

[JReducation]

Yes I left the church and married protestant woman and attended non-Catholic (churches I guess you call them).After awhile my heart harden and didn’t attend service for some time (not for lack of learning Bible) but just NOT feeling fullfilled.Anyway, W/O Jesus Christ as my guide in life things just seemed worthless and started me on long road back (many years) to Catholic Church.My take on whats wrong with protestant environment is that everything seems external (Bible-Faith) almost as if man is in control of Father.As Catholic everything seems to emit from inside.Wife & I are both Catholic.

I always like to speak respectfully of non-Catholic communities or other faiths. So I will say that the problem that Fundamentalist Protestantism has is the “sola scriptura”, rather than say the problem with Fundamentalist Protestantism. Fundamentalist Protestants are children of God. They are not a problem. They have a problem, big difference.

If you take scripture out of their historical context, you are left with many voids. Scripture was the product of reflection, prayer, and oral tradition that was passed down from first century Christians to a second generation. Only two of the Gospels were written by eye-witnesses, Matt and John, and Matt is highly suspect of being the product of various authors.

There is the other problem. The writers of the scriptures left many things out of their writings, not because they were not important, but because they were writing for a community that had received the teaching of the Apostles. What they did was to summarize the essential, believing that the Christians knew the rest and understood what they were speaking about.

We have to remember that the early Christian community believed that the second coming of Christ was immanent. They never conceived that 2000 years would pass and we would still be here. We were not in their worldview. This is why it’s important to remember that the fullness of public revelation is contained in scripture, but that the Holy Spirit continued to reveal God’s truth to the Church after the writing of the scriptures.

To believe that God reveals truth to the Church one must accept John’s final chapter. Observe that Jesus had said that he was the Good Shepherd. Then he speaks to Peter in John’s final chapter and asks Peter if he loves him. Three times he asks Peter the same question. Three times Peter responds in the affirmative. Three times Jesus says to Peter to “feed my sheep.”

Now . . . Peter was a fisherman, not a shepherd. Why would Christ ask Peter to feed sheep? John is pointing to the transfer of authority to Peter. Peter will now take over the role of the Good Shepherd. Christ turns a fisherman into a Shepherd. Just as the Father reveals himself through the Son who is the Good Shepherd, a new Shepherd is installed in his place. How can Peter feed the sheep, unless he is fed by the same source that Christ was fed.

From there we can move on to revelation through the Magisterium and through tradition. The scriptures came to us through tradition, but they were not the only tradition that we received from the early Christians. As John says at the end of his Gospel, many things were done and said by Christ that was not contained in the scriptures. Who has the knowledge of these other things that Christ revealed and taught, the early Church. That is tradition. Who has the authority to decide what was is good food for the sheep, the shepherd. The Vicar to the Good Shepherd was Peter.

When we take the scripture outside of tradition and outside of Peter’s mission to feed the sheep, we have a problem. Anything that is not in the scriptures is up for grabs, because there is no other authoritative voice.

This is the problem that fundamentalist Protestantism has to grapple with.

JR

 

[Jeanette_L]

I want to somewhat clarify my original post, I don’t think I did a very good job of expressing myself.

What I think has me somewhat heartbroken is to see a similar dis-unitive spirit, a grumbling on the ground level against those in authority, and against some of the teachings of the Church; this division is something I thought I had left far behind in the world of Evangelical/Protestantism.

JR, your post above is a great lesson on how the Church was ordained to function, with a visible head who was responsible to feed those given to his care. I came to understand these truths and fully embraced them in the Catholic Church, the only place where this embodiment of Christ’s directives exists now as it has since Christ’s words were spoken.

My concern is for others who may have the same experience, coming into the Church expecting a more unitive Body and finding some of the same spirit that causes such division outside her walls.

I am hoping that those of us who have converted to the Church have the focus, the fortitude to persevere in spite of the grumblings that seem to be distracting many others - those who seemingly don’t have a proper understanding of how the Church has been, is and always will be led.

 

[brigid12]

Hi Jeanette,

I’m a convert from a mainline Protestant denom. and with the advent (through technology) could “listen in” on the General Convention there. What I heard (read, since they were e-mail type communiques) did not have anything to do with Scripture or Tradition. Then after lots of study and listening to other converts reasons for converting (including the ex-Episcopalian bishop of London speaking of his pride being the only thing in the way of converting and obeying the successor of Peter - really hit home!) I had to come to where it was assured that the Church would not fall (the gates of Hell would not prevail over it).

Yes, I have heard many of the same divisions within the Church, however they cannot prevail over the teaching of our Papa. I think it’s human nature (especially in our present post-modernist culture) to question, doubt (think of Thomas) and to try to get our way. The difference is that I don’t need to worry about the Church “rejecting” Christ. When I first converted I got in a “tizzy” when I heard anything that didn’t go along with orthodoxy. Now I know that I don’t need to worry (or even listen), only Love.

A healthy part of the earthly reason I converted was due to CA Radio and CAF , so when I hear dissent here it just sounds human (but fairly learned). It’s not as if I haven’t had anything I wanted to complain about since I’ve converted and it’s only due to His Grace when I don’t.

 

[Jeanette_L]

Hi Jeanette,

A healthy part of the earthly reason I converted was due to CA Radio and CAF , so when I hear dissent here it just sounds human (but fairly learned). It’s not as if I haven’t had anything I wanted to complain about since I’ve converted and it’s only due to His Grace when I don’t.

That’s a great attitude. I’ve been trying to steer clear of most of it, sometimes I get sucked in, batted around and spit back out!

I’m learning though.

God Bless.

 

[TRUTHORELSE]

I left the CC at the age of 23. I had a bad experience back then in the late sixties.

I began a forty year search that took me into several different denominations. For the first time I learned what was in the Bible. I attended Ontario Bible College for a spell. My journey has been phenomenal.

In 2007 I returned to the Catholic Faith. It is my belief that it is the true church started with Christ. If you don’t know what the Bible teaches, you are like a lite bulb without power. We must learn about the Holy Spirit and depend on Him to direct our lives.

I have a hugh background with many hurts but I am a very happy Christian now, I AM FINALLY AT HOME.

Patricia.

 

[Jeanette_L]

I left the CC at the age of 23. I had a bad experience back then in the late sixties.

I began a forty year search that took me into several different denominations. For the first time I learned what was in the Bible. I attended Ontario Bible College for a spell. My journey has been phenomenal.

In 2007 I returned to the Catholic Faith. It is my belief that it is the true church started with Christ. If you don’t know what the Bible teaches, you are like a lite bulb without power. We must learn about the Holy Spirit and depend on Him to direct our lives.

I have a hugh background with many hurts but I am a very happy Christian now, I AM FINALLY AT HOME.

Patricia.

It seems that the longer it takes and the harder the journey to find our way home, the more we appreciate what a treasure it is.

God bless you Patricia!

 

[JReducation]

My journey was a little different. I was born and raised Jewish. My mother was Jewish and my father Catholic. However, due to the Jewish law that children must be raised in the faith of the mother, we were raised Jewish. My devout Catholic father made sure that he got the proper dispensations from the Church for this.

Nonetheless, we attended Catholic schools and even Catholic colleges and universities. My mother was very respectful of Catholic education. She dearly loved my father and his Catholic family. Sending us to Catholic schools was a no brainer.

I loved Catholic theology, even from my early years as an elementary school student. I had the good fortune of being educated by the Capuchin-Franciscan Friars now called Brothers. In fact, one of the people whom I most admired during my younger years was Brother Sean O’Malley, now Cardinal Sean O’Malley, a very holy man and a dear friend to everyone he met. Through the Brothers I got to know St. Francis of Assisi who really inspired me. Later I had the privilege of hearing Mother Teresa speak and of attending mass celebrated by Pope John Paul II in Baltimore and then in the Vatican on Christmas Eve 1999. I was as excited as a kid to be sitting in the third row in front of the Pope for midnight mass.

My Catholic and Jewish relatives also played an important role in my conversion. They were tolerant of my questions and supportive of my search. But the most beautiful part of my experience was seeing family, Jewish and Catholic loving each other and getting along.

Then came the disappointment. Everything I learned in theology, both college and grad school was fantastic. It made so much sense to me. But as I moved outside my circle of Catholic relatives and my beloved Capuchin-Franciscan Brothers I discovered more and more of the Catholic laity. I have to confess that I did not like them at all. It was very hard for me to deal with the average Catholic lay person. I found them to be very opinionated and political about religion. You were either traditionalist or modern. They didn’t seem open to the grey in the middle or to an integration of both sides. Other Catholics I found to be indifferent. They went to mass and lived their lives from Sunday to Sunday without much concern for anything except their job and their family. The poor and the suffering were remote to them. This was a group to whom one made a donation several times a year.

I was even less impressed by American Sisters. In my opinion they were social workers in vows. I couldn’t understand why someone would want to be a religious just to be a social worker. After being exposed to the love for the crucified Christ, penance, conversion, meditation, prayer, liturgy, corporal works of mercy and community by the Capuchin-Franciscans, it was a shock to find people who did wonderful things in the world of social service, but seemed to lack a focus on the cross and lacked knowledge of Catholic dogma, Tradition and scripture.

It took me a long time to feel at home outside of my comfort zone. I had spent seven years at the university studying theology, philosophy and math. Everything in my mind revolved around the logical. I would become frustrated with those who were illogical and emotional about Catholicism. The laity drove me crazy, especially when I first arrived on the mainland. I felt they wanted to Americanize the Church. By this I mean do to the Church what they do to the country, break it down into parties.

As I realize that Catholicism is a universal family and that a family this size is going to include all kinds of people, I have become more patient and tolerant of what I once considered weaknesses or silliness on the part of my fellow Catholics. It has been a tough road and sometimes it continues to be. Nonetheless, I focus on Christ’s passion and resurrection and everything makes sense in light of the Paschal mystery.

Thanks for letting me share.

JR

 

[Jeanette_L]

As I realize that Catholicism is a universal family and that a family this size is going to include all kinds of people, I have become more patient and tolerant of what I once considered weaknesses or silliness on the part of my fellow Catholics. It has been a tough road and sometimes it continues to be. Nonetheless, I focus on Christ’s passion and resurrection and everything makes sense in light of the Paschal mystery.

Thanks for letting me share.

JR

You were very fortunate to have had a good grounding in the faith before being exposed to the American version of it! You have roots that are very deep and although it has probably been disorienting for you here, you have that firm foundation from your childhood on through your life to draw from.

I guess what it comes down to for all of us, is to realize that we are where we are supposed to be, God has blessed us with the grace to get here, and we need to keep our eyes on Him and not be distracted by the noise that’s all around us making us weary.

As a side, I was living in Baltimore when the Pope was there, and sadly I wasn’t even a bit aware of how important that event was. Catholicism wasn’t even a blip on my radar screen in those days! Of course, that has drastically changed.