How I went from Christian to Catholic

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sdegutis

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I hope that this little story of mine will speak to the hearts of anyone else who is in a similar situation that I was in and might give them encouragement and hope.

(I’ll save the part where I first went from atheist to Christian for another day.)

Finally I became a believer in Jesus and the Bible, so I decided to buy my first Bible. Such an exciting moment that was!

So I dug in and began reading the New Testament. I read it any time I could, almost always eagerly. I read it before bed, in the morning, at stop lights, while on break or lunch at work, during dinner, to my kids at bed time, pretty much any time I could. I loved it!

I also decided we needed to worship God properly at a church, so we googled it and looked for churches nearby. We found one and started going, and they were really eager to get us in there as regular members, and I knew their intentions were good. I remember saying to my wife “oh look, the sign says Lutheran. I guess we’re Lutherans now!” But she said “no, I’m a Christian,” meaning she didn’t follow one person or another, just Christ.

At this point I had read most of the New Testament and remembered a gigantic portion of it somehow. And of course I had many questions on what Jesus and Paul and James and John and Luke and Peter etc. meant when they said this or that. I had less important questions, like whether the Resurrection would be of body or spirit only, and more important questions, such as how to obtain eternal life.

Often times I would read verses like Jesus saying “away from me you evildoers, I don’t know who you are or where you come from” or the parable of the improperly-attired man being thrown out of the wedding banquet, and they scared me immensely and made me very worried! I also read where it said to make every effort to fit through the narrow door. And how we should work out our salvation in fear and trembling. So naturally I feared and trembled. And panicked!

The first thing I tried to do was find churches with “fruits” that matched up with what Jesus preached, but every church I found, even the Catholic Church, seemed filled with hypocrites and evildoers, granted I only barely did any research into the matter. So that route seemed hopeless. But I knew not to condemn the true church, whichever one it may be, just because it was filled with sinners, for Jesus had not come to heal the healthy but the sick. So instead of closing every door, it opened every door, which was not that much better but at least it led me away from the atheism road that I once took and that everyone else I seemed to know also took for the same reason.

So I brought it up to the pastor at the church I was going to. I also joined a Bible study group and brought it up with them many times. Actually it wasn’t a Bible study, but it was called “Theological Topics” and discussed various points. The first session I visited was them “discussing” (read: trashing) the Book of Tobit and deciding matter-of-factly that it was very un-Christian.

Anyway I went to this Bible study and often changed the topic to asking them to give me their interpretation of Jesus’ words and what is the right path to eternal life, and to prove it to me somehow. I needed assurance that the path I was taking was a good path and that I wasn’t being led astray by false prophets. I also asked the pastor and some of his closer friends to talk with me at length about these things and they often brushed me off, but sometimes gave me the time, and when they did I was very greatful and listened carefully, but often their answers never satisfied me.

I would find myself ultimately asking them “but how can I trust that your interpretation of these words are true and not some other exclusive denomination, like the Catholics?” and they kept answering me, “it just is true; if you read the Scriptures you will see how much sense it makes and you will understand that it’s just true” which of course was never satisfying to me. But I always accepted it because, well, it was better than nothing.

One day I asked them the same question again. They said “look, if you want to be Catholic, just go and be Catholic” but I clarified, “it’s not the Catholic Church, I’m refering to any other interpretation of how to be saved that excludes people who aren’t in that denomination, like I’m sure there are Protestant denominations that are exclusivist just like the Catholic Church.” But at that point it hit me, there were no other credible denominations that were exclusivist like the Catholic Church. The only other ones were very obviously interpreting several Bible passages very strangely. And it made me realize that the Catholic Church stood out to me for some reason, and that I had no idea why, or what it really even taught, except that it somehow was a “faith and works” gospel, which the Lutherans condemned.

(continued)
 
(continued from above)

At one point my wife told me about a “Come Home Catholics” event that was being held, and I wanted to go there and ask them the same hard questions and see if they could handle it any better. Before I went there, I sat on my bed and cried. I wanted desparately to find God’s True Church, wherever it was. At this point I was ready to give in on some minor things like whether Mary was a virgin all her life or not. I just wanted to come Home. We went to the event only to find out it was some kind of weird misunderstanding, and it was just a weird Bible-study-like group held by some Catholic (I think?) priest with only 4 people there, and we watched a lame movie and discussed very basic, introductory religious stuff afterwards. My wife and I quizzed the guy on some basic Christian stuff, and he failed a major test in our book, saying that God and Allah and Buddha were all basically the same, and that we all really worship the same God. We left, my wife seemed only annoyed, but I felt a deep sting in my heart. Deep down I truly wanted the Catholics to be right, so I could finally be home. Also, I knew this guy being wrong wasn’t technically enough to condemn the Catholic Church, because he was just one guy, and it could have been a fluke. So it stung because I knew I hadn’t really made any progress in my journey.

I kept presenting my fellow church-goers this argument: “You say that you can be in any denomination and be saved if you have faith. But the Catholic Church says you need to be part of their church to be saved. They’re exclusivist. But so are you! Because you say you need to be a Christian to be saved. So, why are they wrong about this?” And they always kept presenting me the same argument, that if you just look at the Scriptures and read it for yourself, and keep praying about it, you will come to the same conclusion they did. Except this wasn’t the case, since the more I did these things, the more I interpreted the Bible uncannily similarly to how the Catholic Church do, without even knowing at that time how the Catholics interpreted it.

Naturally there was a lot of tension. I kept asking them the same question, and even though the end of each conversation led to me accepting their answer, I was never satisfied with it. Over time they just changed their answers to simply “pray and read the Scriptures and you will figure it out eventually.” They have no idea how right they were!

At this point I began to seriously study what the Catholic Church’s interpretation really was, if only to find serious flaws. Originally I would deny them because they called priests “father” which Jesus strictly forbid, and because they held Mary too highly, and because they built such ornate churches instead of giving that money to the poor, and because they tell you to confess to priests which is nowhere in the Bible, and because they use holy water, and many other superficial arguments. But by now I admitted that, in context, the Catholic interpretation was just as feasible as the one I was using at that point, and I couldn’t really dismiss them nearly as easily as I had before.

Suddenly I remembered my friend Katie from college. She was the smartest person in our class by far, and yet she was homeschooled, which astounded me. And she was a Catholic. In my college days we would sit in the cafeteria and debate religion for hours, and after several semesters I still couldn’t convince her that I was right, that her religion was wrong because of this or that. But that was back in college. Now, I was ready to finally shut my big mouth for once and hear her out. I wanted to hear if she had good answers to these questions. She brought her father along, telling me “he has more catechetical training than me” but honestly I wasn’t interested so much in the technical questions as much as the emotional ones. That seemed to be my only block at this point. I had already gained a basic understanding of how you get to Heaven according to the Catholics. But some things just seemed deep-down wrong. So all three of us discussed the matter for a few hours, both of them being so loving and sweet and generous with their time. And finally I concluded that the Catholic interpretation wasn’t so awful after all!

As we departed, she recommended to me the book Rome Sweet Home by Scott Hahn, and I think she even let me borrow her copy. Or her mom did, I forget; they’re a very generous family. I read the book and was astounded at the fact that this guy had an almost identical story to mine! As a quick aside, over half a year after reading this book, I accidentally picked the same patron saint as him, St. Francis de Sales, without realizing the coincidence until several months later! Anyway, his Biblical proofs for the Catholic interpretation were not super-fantastic-amazing, which is why I asked for more books from my friend and her family to help me with more questions. But I loved the book because it showed me that I was not the only one who saw through “sola scriptura” and other flaws in Protestant interpretations.

Finally I went to my local Catholic parish and asked to speak to the priest. He seemed very knowledgeable and helped me get involved in RCIA and finally join the Catholic Church.

From that time to this very day, which has only been less than a year at the time of this writing, I have been ardently studying Catholic apologetics, at first to find whether they had any flaws, then later to strengthen my understanding of their positions for my own benefit, and now also to learn our arguments effectively for when we’re visited by the occasional Mormon or Jehovah’s Witness. And I have to admit, I’m blown away by how amazingly well every single objection to any Catholic doctrine can be answered by Catholics of all time. But there’s a special place in my heart for Saints Augustine, Francis de Sales, and Louis de Montfort, and to a lesser extent Thomas Aquinas and Justin Martyr.

All in all, I had been a non-Catholic Christian for a sum total of a year. I began believing around November 2010 which is around the time this story starts, and became a Catholic in October 2011, which is where it ended just in time for RCIA to start.
 
👍

I went from atheist to agnostic, briefly considering Lutheran and finally baptized Catholic. It took me about nine years but thank God that the persistence to pursue truth pushed me through.

I read Rome Sweet Home by Scott Hahn too. I remembered I was rolling my eyes most of the time. :o

Thanks for sharing. :hug3:
 
Aww, I can’t edit my post, and I forgot some of the juicier doctrinal stuff that was bothering me as a “Lutheran” such as, if we’re saved by faith alone, then why does Jesus say we need to be baptized, and that if we do not eat his flesh and drink his blood then we have no life in us? But anyway these are not questions I expect anyone to answer, since I’m already Catholic. I just wished I had put it in the original story. I’m not a very good writer.
 
sdegutis said:
[If] we’re saved by faith alone [as Lutherans teach], then why does Jesus say we need to be baptized, and that if we do not eat his flesh and drink his blood then we have no life in us?
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Lutherans view faith and forgiveness as originating from and/or being facilitated by the grace of baptism and communion, while Evangelicals regard the concept of sacramentalism as raising empty ritual works of man to a level where they detract from the “gospel” of Christ. In this area the former avoid the erroneous false dichotomizing that the latter commit.
 
sdegutis said:
I kept presenting my fellow church-goers this argument: “You say that you can be in any denomination and be saved if you have faith. But the Catholic Church says you need to be part of their church to be saved. They’re exclusivist. But so are you! Because you say you need to be a Christian to be saved. So, why are they wrong about this?” And they always kept presenting me the same argument, that if you just look at the Scriptures and read it for yourself, and keep praying about it, you will come to the same conclusion they did. Except this wasn’t the case, since the more I did these things, the more I interpreted the Bible uncannily similarly to how the Catholic Church do, without even knowing at that time how the Catholics interpreted it.
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What were the interpretations you were drawing from Scripture that would startlingly resemble those proffered in Catholicism?
 
sdegutis said:
Aww, I can’t edit my post, and I forgot some of the juicier doctrinal stuff that was bothering me as a “Lutheran” such as, if we’re saved by faith alone, then why does Jesus say we need to be baptized, and that if we do not eat his flesh and drink his blood then we have no life in us? But anyway these are not questions I expect anyone to answer, since I’m already Catholic. I just wished I had put it in the original story. I’m not a very good writer.
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Welcome home.

I can’t help noticing the thread title. Just to correct things Catholics ARE Christians so what you did was to convert from non-Catholic Christian to Catholic Christian.
 
thistle said:
Welcome home.

I can’t help noticing the thread title. Just to correct things Catholics ARE Christians so what you did was to convert from non-Catholic Christian to Catholic Christian.
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I know, but it’s prettier this way.
 
Trebor135 said:
What were the interpretations you were drawing from Scripture that would startlingly resemble those proffered in Catholicism?
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That it’s not just faith alone that saves us, because even those with faith can be damned. Also that our actions, good or bad, do in fact determine somehow our final destination. Also that sacramentals are in fact efficacious (like relics such as the bones of dead saints), since in the Book of Acts some people were healed just by going in the shadows of the Apostles. Also that the bread and wine are in fact the True Presence after consecration. Also that there is an Apostolic Succession which is where we can find the true authority to consecrate the Eucharist and forgive sins. Also that there is a visible Church with the authority to interpret Scripture, and that individual believers are not guaranteed to be guided by the Holy Spirit to interpret Scripture correctly. Just stuff like that.
 
Thank you for your conversion story.

I’d love to hear about you going from atheist to Christian.
 
sdegutis said:
That it’s not just faith alone that saves us, because even those with faith can be damned. Also that our actions, good or bad, do in fact determine somehow our final destination. Also that sacramentals are in fact efficacious (like relics such as the bones of dead saints), since in the Book of Acts some people were healed just by going in the shadows of the Apostles. Also that the bread and wine are in fact the True Presence after consecration. Also that there is an Apostolic Succession which is where we can find the true authority to consecrate the Eucharist and forgive sins. Also that there is a visible Church with the authority to interpret Scripture, and that individual believers are not guaranteed to be guided by the Holy Spirit to interpret Scripture correctly. Just stuff like that.
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Wow, that’s impressive! 😃

I’m most interested to hear what passages convinced you that (1) “there is an Apostolic Succession which is where we can find the true authority to consecrate the Eucharist and forgive sins” and (2) “there is a visible Church with the authority to interpret Scripture, and that individual believers are not guaranteed to be guided by the Holy Spirit to interpret Scripture correctly” (emphasis added).

(I have scriptural arguments for these points, but perhaps you came up with some clever deductions that never occurred to me.)
 
Trebor135 said:
Wow, that’s impressive! 😃

I’m most interested to hear what passages convinced you that (1) “there is an Apostolic Succession which is where we can find the true authority to consecrate the Eucharist and forgive sins” and (2) “there is a visible Church with the authority to interpret Scripture, and that individual believers are not guaranteed to be guided by the Holy Spirit to interpret Scripture correctly” (emphasis added).

(I have scriptural arguments for these points, but perhaps you came up with some clever deductions that never occurred to me.)
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The fact that Peter received authority to bind on earth and loose on earth, and that God would ratify his decisions in Heaven, persuaded me that Peter had authority to grant authority to his successors. Also when Jesus built His church upon Peter, the “rock”, he declared that Peter was to be the head of the Church on earth. When Jesus later told Peter to feed His sheep, he was not reaffirming that Peter was the head of the Church on earth, the vicar of Christ, but also declaring his forgiveness for Peter’s previous denial and asserting that he is still head of the Church. But Jesus obviously didn’t mean this leadership would be for one generation only, since He knew that if the world was going to survive more than one generation, it would need constant leadership. When Jesus says that we ultimately should bring our disputes to the Church if they are not resolved sooner, this begs the question of who the Church is if it is not a visible body with a hierarchy. For surely there must be a hierarchy since there must be some way of settling disputes even among those who would settle the aforementioned disputes. And this consequently leads to a final authority, if all else fails and the dispute rises to the highest rank of authority, which again would point to the successor of Peter, a final authority on the matter. Jesus also breathed on His Apostles and gave them authority to forgive or retain sins on earth, reassuring them their decisions will be ratified in Heaven. He would not have done this if anyone can receive forgiveness simply by asking it of God directly, since this gift of the Apostles would then be redundant. Also when Jesus instituted the Eucharist, He did it only in the presence of His Twelve, who were the first bishops. This indicated to me that not only is Peter the head of the Church, but also that he had authority to grant his same authority to his successors, and that they had authority to pass on their ministerial gifts and responsibilities. And finally, if an individual could interprete Scripture infallibly then all individuals would be in agreement, which we see to not be the case either in our own time or in the early Church times. And if we cannot interpret it infallibly as individuals then the infallibility of Scripture is not accessible to us and the Scriptures are as good as fallible to the whole of humanity except a small few who guess the right interpretation by pure chance. Yet it was not God’s will that the Light be hidden under a bowl but put in a hill for all the world to see. So there must be some not only in the early Church but also throughout all time who held the authority to interpret Scripture infallibly so that we could accept and believe it with full assurance that it is correctly relaying to us God’s meanings. In the early days it was the Apostles led by Peter, and even since the earliest post-Apostolic days it was those who claimed to be their successors, all the way until today, which leads credence to the Magisterium as an infallible interpreter of Scripture.
 
sdegutis said:
The fact that Peter received authority to bind on earth and loose on earth, and that God would ratify his decisions in Heaven, persuaded me that Peter had authority to grant authority to his successors. Also when Jesus built His church upon Peter, the “rock”, he declared that Peter was to be the head of the Church on earth. When Jesus later told Peter to feed His sheep, he was not reaffirming that Peter was the head of the Church on earth, the vicar of Christ, but also declaring his forgiveness for Peter’s previous denial and asserting that he is still head of the Church. But Jesus obviously didn’t mean this leadership would be for one generation only, since He knew that if the world was going to survive more than one generation, it would need constant leadership. When Jesus says that we ultimately should bring our disputes to the Church if they are not resolved sooner, this begs the question of who the Church is if it is not a visible body with a hierarchy. For surely there must be a hierarchy since there must be some way of settling disputes even among those who would settle the aforementioned disputes. And this consequently leads to a final authority, if all else fails and the dispute rises to the highest rank of authority, which again would point to the successor of Peter, a final authority on the matter. Jesus also breathed on His Apostles and gave them authority to forgive or retain sins on earth, reassuring them their decisions will be ratified in Heaven. He would not have done this if anyone can receive forgiveness simply by asking it of God directly, since this gift of the Apostles would then be redundant. Also when Jesus instituted the Eucharist, He did it only in the presence of His Twelve, who were the first bishops. This indicated to me that not only is Peter the head of the Church, but also that he had authority to grant his same authority to his successors, and that they had authority to pass on their ministerial gifts and responsibilities. And finally, if an individual could interprete Scripture infallibly then all individuals would be in agreement, which we see to not be the case either in our own time or in the early Church times. And if we cannot interpret it infallibly as individuals then the infallibility of Scripture is not accessible to us and the Scriptures are as good as fallible to the whole of humanity except a small few who guess the right interpretation by pure chance. Yet it was not God’s will that the Light be hidden under a bowl but put in a hill for all the world to see. So there must be some not only in the early Church but also throughout all time who held the authority to interpret Scripture infallibly so that we could accept and believe it with full assurance that it is correctly relaying to us God’s meanings. In the early days it was the Apostles led by Peter, and even since the earliest post-Apostolic days it was those who claimed to be their successors, all the way until today, which leads credence to the Magisterium as an infallible interpreter of Scripture.
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Wow, what a breath of fresh air to find out that you quickly saw through the right of private judgment and the church as an invisible entity. I have Evangelical friends who interpret the passages about binding/loosing and forgiving sins to mean that each individual Christian has such authority. And refuting their ahistorical misunderstandings of the words of Christ is a tedious task: please pray for them.
 
Trebor135 said:
Wow, what a breath of fresh air to find out that you quickly saw through the right of private judgment and the church as an invisible entity. I have Evangelical friends who interpret the passages about binding/loosing and forgiving sins to mean that each individual Christian has such authority. And refuting their ahistorical misunderstandings of the words of Christ is a tedious task: please pray for them.
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Well, I might not have saw through it this clearly from the beginning. I’m only presenting my current understanding of what I sort of vaguely saw back then, as through a dim glass. But I knew there was something like these ideas, even though at the time I couldn’t articulate it well enough. So I don’t want to take credit for having “quickly saw through” it all.
 
sdegutis said:
Aww, I can’t edit my post, and I forgot some of the juicier doctrinal stuff that was bothering me as a “Lutheran” such as, if we’re saved by faith alone, then why does Jesus say we need to be baptized, and that if we do not eat his flesh and drink his blood then we have no life in us? But anyway these are not questions I expect anyone to answer, since I’m already Catholic. I just wished I had put it in the original story. I’m not a very good writer.
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Actually, when I read your story I was thinking that you’re a wonderful writer. Welcome home!
 
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