How did you get involved in Apologetics?

[Count_Chocula]

Ok so every one has conversion stories all over the place, (well except cradle Cath’s like myself) but what got you up in arms to start studying up arguments against and for the RCC? I’ll start off with my story. [Also, if there is already a thread like this that I missed, just dump this one]

I was back in high school coming back to school from a football game (in the band, not the team) and me and some pals were sitting in the back of a school bus, amongst us was,

2 kids from Church of Christ
3 Mormons
1 Atheist (she might’ve been agnostic, doesn’t matter now)
1 ONE RCC ← Me I might add.

So we some how got wound up talking about religion, at the time I didn’t know much about the Bible, didn’t know much about RCC doctrines etc… and was essentially ripe for the picking. The only thing I believe that saved me was the fact that my history classes had talked of ancient Christian stuff and the only church invovled was well, and a heapin helpin of little man disease! Anyways, they sat there badgering me about the Pope, the Celibacy of Clergy, Mary etc., typical Protestant stuff. Only they’d studied their Bibles (and BoM’s) real hard and I hadn’t, I just knew what I’d picked up from going to church (VERY infrequently I might add) and from my mom who’s a cradle Catholic too and totally devout to this day, meanwhile they had all kinds of carefully constructed arguments full of Bible power. I did the best I could explaining that we don’t worship the Pope or Mary and that we choose to enforce Celibacy so our Clergy will not be divided amongst wife and God and more apt to serve God in a most efficient manner. Well suffice to say, we finally got back to school and had to unload instruments and stuff and the conversation was dropped, until later,

I was really good friends (in fact they still are) best friends with the 2 Chruch of Christ members and they did (with good intentions) showed me a pile of Chick tracts and showed me a copy of what I didn’t know at the time was Loraine Boettner’s Roman Catholicism, well I glanced thru the book, but one thing kept me from taking stock in what the book said, the fact that it was published by a Presbetyrian company which made me assume it wasn’t going to be accurate so I decided to go to my local Priests and mom and find out better info, well me and my folks sat down and went thru the Chick tracts with the NAB in hand and refuted a large majority of the Chick tracts (not very hard actually) and held steady in my faith, but certain things still bothered me i.e. infant baptism, a relative inability to refute Mary having other kids and some other more specific things. So I was still questioning the Chruch, well this had got me back into attending Mass and joined a small (and short lived sadly enough) Catholic youth group. I also started studying apologetics stuff too.

We went to some seminar “youth retreat” thing wayyyyyy out in some city I can’t remember, maybe St. Petersburg and I met some one who would change my views of Catholocism,

Tim Staples.

Yes, hearing his conversion story was cool and dandy and all, but what really got me was here was a Catholic standing up on an out door tent stage spouting line after line after line from the Bible ALL supporting the RCC lines of thinking and faith. So here I was sitting there thinking, WOW this dude is the MAN! So I went and pestered him with all kinds of questions which he answered very well and was totally cool about everything. This was the best Catholic experience of my life since Tim firmly grounded my faith to this rock of belief because he could stand there and use the Bible to prove us right and them wrong. Later on I would meet another speaker (sorry dude can’t remember your name) who conducted a seminar to teach RC’s to refute 7th Day Adventists, Witnessess and Mormons (some of the stuff he said about Mormons was a little hard to swallow since a majority of my friends were Mormon and at one time they had even gotten a little close to converting me back in high school (but the fact that the RCC is 2000 years old kept me grounded in it, and a lot of Mormon stuff just seemed too fruity)) and my faith was further grounded.

Later on though in high school and on into college I fell away from the church hard and became totally agnostic, I wasn’t dumb enough to be atheist (I figure that’s REALLY shootin yourself in the foot if you’re wrong) and lived a very Godless life and was only worried about getting rich, getting laid and a variety of other stupid things which left me sad because I wasn’t rich, wasn’t getting laid (good thing actually) and was still too grounded with the desire to lead a very moral life regardless of my godlessness at the time. This was me for a couple of years,

(cont’d)

 

[Count_Chocula]

(From above)

Fast forward to today, well I’d met this girl (whom I really adored) who claimed she was sent to a RCC school for a year or two and she HATED it (well what she thought the RCC was that is) and 1 thing kept us totally apart at the end, she wanted me to be all “religious” and stuff (i.e. Fundamentalist like her) and I just wanted to stay agnostic, well we had a falling out due to this but later got back together to go see the latest Harry Potter movie and on the way back we talked about her exp. with the RCC and she went off spouting so much anti-C and misinformation and such that it was hard to believe she ever attended a Catholic anything.

Well, this brought forth the little man disease somethin fierce which after some thought made me realize that being Catholic and the strong desire to rush to its defense in the face of any Protestant was something that would never leave my soul, so here I am, studying harder than ever before to do Christ’s work and defend the RCC while I’m at it!

BTW, if you read all this, God bless!

 

[II_Paradox_II]

Ok so every one has conversion stories all over the place, (well except cradle Cath’s like myself) but what got you up in arms to start studying up arguments against and for the RCC? I’ll start off with my story. [Also, if there is already a thread like this that I missed, just dump this one]

well, I’m not catholic, but I couldn’t help but post here anyways

I was raised agnostic and eventually came to faith around the age of 18 largely through the influence of Christian friends and the writings of Francis Schaeffer. Most of my early apologetic experience was with atheists and agnostics at the time.

However, a few years into my new-found faith I was given a copy of “Jesus, Peter and the Keys” by a local catholic I knew. As could be expected, the book shook me up quite badly for a few months as I had never read anything dealing with these issues before (like I said, most of my experience had been with those who denied the faith altogether). As time went on, however, I began to be disenchanted by the arguments in the book as they seemed to follow a similar pattern of asserting more than it seemed they could prove.

Later on I was given a copy of Lorraine Boettner’s “Roman Catholicism” which I also found to be less than impressive (it’s problem was simply being shallow). Overall, the entire debate seemed to me to be a bust so I largely ignored the issue for next few years in favor of studying philosophy.

Moving on to a few years ago, a friend of mine was starting to flirt with Catholicism and Orthodoxy after marrying a conservative catholic girl. Anyways, he asked me to research some issues for him and we talked a few times a month over these issues, back and forth. As it turned out, he eventually stayed evangelical and I kept on reading. Since then, I’ve found a lot of enjoyment not so much in apologetics proper, but the underlying disciplines of history and theology.

ken

 

[Richard_Lamb]

my father was protestant I went to his church when young and was questioned, this forced me to learn…

 

[Pax]

I’ve always been interested in why people think the way they do. Reasoning to truth has always been something I felt to be important. While I’ve never been shy about defending the catholic faith, I was never really good at it.

Once I went through a second conversion, apologetics just became an outgrowth and consequence of my spiritual life experience. Once you’re on fire for the faith it’s kind of hard to keep quiet about it. Sometimes I’m sure I get a little over the top because I’ve never been shy about sharing my opinions about any of the great questions of life.

Being assertive has never been a problem for me. If anything, I have to make an effort to tone things down. Apologetics has made me a better listener and has given me a much better understanding of where the other side is coming from.

 

[Dr.Colossus]

Well, being born a cradle Catholic, I went to Church with my family, RE classes (i.e. 4 years of “God loves you!”), and Catholic Schools (i.e. 12 years of “God loves you!”). Anyway, my Junior year in high school I had a wonderful thomistic theology teacher who finally made me realize “Hey, there’s a reason we believe this junk!”. After I found that out, I couldn’t get enough! I’ve been reading magazines, books, and articles online ever since. I’m now the “go to guy” among my friends and family for questions regarding the faith, and I couldn’t be happier!

 

[Poisson]

I went to see a speaker (a Catholic deacon) whose talk was called something like “The Catholic Church Under Siege: The Great Apostasy” Shortly thereafter a friend of mine was “born again” at an Evangelical church and began to grill me on all the hot button issues. At first I couldn’t answer and she was pretty pleased with herself. Now she ends every debate with “well we’ll just have to agree to disagree”

 

[weunice]

Mine was a multi-step process and it is really my conversion story, but I will angle it towards my interest in apologetics …

As a Protestant, I heard a pastor plead for funds to send missionaries to Rome to convert Catholics because they believed that their sins could be forgiven by obtaining indulgences. Several other gross errors about Catholicism were made which did not square with my meager understanding of the faith. If they were true though, I would have to work on converting my Catholic parents but instead they convinced me of the errors of that pastor. I left that church. That was the start. At that point I had no intention of converting.

I got married and found out the truth about the birth control pill. One of the sites I read information on noted that all Protestants were against contraception until 1930. This was the key and something that really caught my eye later. In my research I came across more Catholic apologetics. I still had no intention of converting.

Even as a Protestant, I eventually found myself defending Catholicism against blatantly errant things like they worship Mary/statues/saints, they don’t read the bible in church etc. I found myself even more stunned at the hatred some displayed towards the Church. I am not talking uneducated folks. I am talking teachers, doctors and others with high levels of education and a thorough understanding of scripture. All of this directed me to apologetics sites and books.

I realized there was more myth than truth out there about Catholicism and while I believed the Church was wrong in some areas, I didn’t think they were the gross evil that most of my Protestant friends thought they were. I felt compelled to at least be able to defend against the error that Catholics were not Christian and againt the truly amazing stories some tell about the Church. I still had no intention of converting.

At the time I was Episcopalian and I discovered the 39 articles at the back of my prayer book. None of them bothered me initially except the verbage towards the Catholic Church seemed very strong. I then examined the 39 articles in light of Protestant apologetics and Catholic apologetics. One by one the Catholic side came out on top. For the first time Catholicism started seeming interesting but I had serious doubt.

Then came the infant baptism discussion right about the time my second son was born. This caused me to really read apologetics thoroughly for the first time. I was truly torn about this doctrine. I read both sides for days. This introduced me to a number of apologists. It was at this point I started to feel drawn because I started to ask myself “Is she who she claims to be” … It wasn’t about the individual doctrines. It was about the CLAIM.

After that, read Chestertons steps of coversion. I am a classic case. Excitement. Fear. Submission. I am particularly interested in the historical case for Catholicism in the first 4 centuries of the Church and “matter vs. spirit” in its many forms is one of my favorite topics to read about as well as any topic to do with marriage.