How long did it take you to convert to Catholicism?

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When my wife and I were married, she was Catholic & I was searching. I attended the pre-marriage class with a great old priest. One on one. That was in 1966. Four years later I began instruction (one on one) to become Catholic. So in February of 1970 I was Baptised. In 1974 I was teaching the Confirmation class when the priest asked me if I had a sponsor for Confirmation. So in May of 1974 I was Confirmed with the kids I had been teaching.

My journey was underway. I found the TLM and fell in love. A bumpy journey to be sure but I would not trade it for anything.

God Bless
 
After two years of attending mass on and off with a friend and a previous 4-5 of church hopping and 15 years as a pentecostal, I went to adoration on October 7 of this year and started RCIA last week. The journey was very slow and picked up just recently. 😃
 
Well I always say about 12 hours, but maybe it was not quite that quick. Here is the (kinda) quick story.

My wife received the sacraments of initiation in 2004 with my oldest daughter. During the time I was an apostate Presbyterian that didn’t realize how anti-Catholic I was until my wife said when was going to be one. For the next 2.5 years I belittled my wife, by reading her books and saying things like “you seriously believe this s***?”

In October 2006 we went on a Marriage Encounter weekend. She had tried to find a non-denominational one, but only a Catholic one was available so I be grudgingly went with her. On Saturday afternoon we were told that Mass was going to be offered halfway through the middle of the Sunday morning session. That hacked me off and my wife and I fought that evening. I spent the rest of the night thinking about why I was so angry about her love of the Church and re-examined my own beliefs. I had read everything I could about the Church and her beliefs, and instead of approaching it from a can’t be true position I asked myself if it was possible. That mere opening of the door to the possibility that she was right turned my whole world on it’s ear. I always say that the Holy Spirit was knocking on the door and the second I opened it a crack He blew the door off it’s hinges. By mid-morning Sunday I was asking what it would take to join RCIA. The desire burned in me so much that I ended up getting personal instruction and made my profession of faith less than 3.5 months later.

Okay maybe not a quick story, but just wanted to share how the Holy Spirit can make drastic changes in our hearts if we only stop to listen. While I say 12 hours, in fact my reading to ridicule my wife was actually the beginning of my conversion, I just didn’t realize it.

It was only on the night that I was received that I learned that my wife had given up every Eucharist for 3 years for my conversion.
 
Became interested in 98/99. Decided I would convert in 2003. Enrolled in RCIA 04. Easter 05 convert! And it all started with, “That picture is so pretty! Hmmm… I wonder what the history behind Our Lady of Guadalupe is…”
 
dje101 said:
Not to derail the thread…RCIA is ok. Not as educational nor as fun as I thought it’d be. But I’m trying to make the best out of it. I try to get conversations started. I think this is a way that God is giving me patience as I normally don’t have very much.

🤷😃
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I’m with ya…my RCIA experience us disappointing…at one point, I asked “and how is this different from what I’ve been learning all along?” and he said it wasn’t. It’s been a refresher so far…
 
I could say 47 years or five minutes. I hadn’t been raised with any religion but something pulled me toward Christianity (through Unitarianism which is another story). I became a Methodist and was very involved with my church. Loved the people, loved the sense of mission and devotion to the poor, learned to truly hate the nebulous, here today gone tomorrow approach to their faith. Finally had a near breakdown after arguing with a retired pastor about abortion (referred to as a woman’s God given right). I was driving home and I just had what I call a “mental message” that I belonged in the Catholic Church. As soon as I got home I started searching how to become Catholic. Joined RCIA the following September and became Catholic at the Easter Vigil.

Although it seemed sudden, as I look back God was putting Catholics right in front of me. While I managed to go around them for years, somehow the seed was planted. I never wavered or reconsidered the message. It was truly Coming Home.

Lisa A
 
saribee said:
I’m with ya…my RCIA experience us disappointing…at one point, I asked “and how is this different from what I’ve been learning all along?” and he said it wasn’t. It’s been a refresher so far…
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So sorry to hear this. There are several RCIA threads. Maybe you can discuss with others and find out how to approach RCIA to make it a more inspiring experience. I’m on the RCIA team and often we have everything from someone who doesn’t know that Mark is in the New Testament to serious scholars of Scripture. It’s hard to balance everyone’s needs but we all want the RCIA class to be worth the (extensive) time

Lisa A
 
dje101 said:
Hey everyone,

I was just wondering how long it took for you fellow converts to finally decide to come to the Catholic Church? How long was you journey?

God Bless,

dje101
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I’ve been thinking seriously about it for 16 years. . . . . 😃

Edwin
 
I wasnt raised in any religion. I became an evangelical christian at age 14. While in college, I discovered the joy of liturgy in an Anglican Church. During college I took a lot of history classes. I had a college professor who was Catholic and I always used to bash Catholicism in his class. One day he challenged me to actually research Catholicism honestly. I read the early church and medieval theologians and mystics as well as comtemporary Catholic apologists. I came to the conclusion that what I currently believed really had no place church history. I moved after graduation. My wife and I went to our first Catholic mass at a 240 year old church in Northern California. I fell in love and joined RCIA soon after and in spite of that was confirmed in November 2008.
 
dje101 said:
I was Pentecostal. Fully believed the CC was of the devil and all Catholics were going to hell unless they saw “the truth”. One day happened to flip to EWTN on CAL. I heard about three of my objections answered logically and scripturally within the first 45 minutes or so. Decided to do more research. 3 months later, decided that the CC is where God has intended me to be. Started RCIA in August. Anxiously awaiting Easter Vigil.

That’s it in a nutshell.
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Welcome home from a fellow former pentecostal.
 
corsair said:
When my wife and I were married, she was Catholic & I was searching. I attended the pre-marriage class with a great old priest. One on one. That was in 1966. Four years later I began instruction (one on one) to become Catholic. So in February of 1970 I was Baptised. In 1974 I was teaching the Confirmation class when the priest asked me if I had a sponsor for Confirmation. So in May of 1974 I was Confirmed with the kids I had been teaching.

My journey was underway. I found the TLM and fell in love. A bumpy journey to be sure but I would not trade it for anything.

God Bless
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I too had private instruction from a very Holy priest who taught me the faith the true faith very well not some watered down version.
 
Contarini said:
I’ve been thinking seriously about it for 16 years. . . . . 😃

Edwin
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As you probably remember, I too was Episcopalian. The tipping point for me was the fact that I could have believed anything I wanted–anything at all and still have called myself a good Episcopalian. Of course, my perspective was a bit different from what yours probably is. I had left the ECA as a teenager when my mother left and took us kids with her into the Assemblies of God. There couldn’t be more opposite approaches to the Christian faith than that, except Catholic “vs” Pentecostal. But while I was in the AoG (as we shortened it) I did learn a great deal of orthodoxy that I found was being denied when I returned to the Episcopal Church–even the divinity of Christ and the inerrancy of Scripture, etc. The support for contraceptives and even abortion really did it for me.

The AoG was overly restrictive in many ways, but at least it taught what it truly believed–one of the reasons leaving it was so hard. I have to say in all honesty that only the Catholic Church has never wavered in its teaching, and it isn’t decided by conferences or the whims of society, either. I found the Holy Father to be one of the most attractive things about the Church, it was Bl. JPII then, and BXVI is just as good and holy as his predecessor. I would entrust my faith and my life to either one of those great men, knowing that they have Christ’s own promise of infallibility, which no other church/ecclesial body can say.

I won’t say you have to be reconciled to the Church, Edwin, but I would encourage you to “cross the Tiber” if you believe that is where God wants you. 🙂
 
Officially, my journey into the Catholic faith began the day of the Easter Vigil in 2005. I went to Mass for the first time the next day (Easter Sunday) and started RCIA a few weeks later. I was welcomed into the Church in October 2005. Looking back on it, I can tell that God was leading me in this direction long before I decided to answer His call. The signposts and guides we encounter on our journey are more obvious when looking back on them with the perspective that the passage of time gives us.

-CK
 
Catholic_Kenpo said:
Officially, my journey into the Catholic faith began the day of the Easter Vigil in 2005. I went to Mass for the first time the next day (Easter Sunday) and started RCIA a few weeks later. I was welcomed into the Church in October 2005. Looking back on it, I can tell that God was leading me in this direction long before I decided to answer His call. The signposts and guides we encounter on our journey are more obvious when looking back on them with the perspective that the passage of time gives us.

-CK
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Yes, I too can see all the signposts and guides I received along the way that didn’t seem to matter all that much at the time. Or that I simply didn’t “get” then. 😉

My conversion story was printed in “This Rock” Magazine (now Catholic Answers Magazine) back in the 90’s (which, it appears, is no longer available online). Anyway, it was a long process and sometimes a great spiritual struggle, but I’m here now and have absolutely no regrets.
 
I grew up not practicing religion at all in a non-christian and i would have to say not so tolerant family either. At the age of 16 i took interest in what was going on in N-Ireland and how the catholics there were treated.

For the next 21 1/2 years i kept going on my life not caring much about religion, God or my soul for that sake of matter and much of that time (from 1995 to 2006 things were really hard in my life. Lost my mum, struggeled with debts, porn addicition and was on edge with my family).

But things changed slowly. In the easter of 2008 i found myself crying and said to myself: Jesus died for us and our sins! Slowly things started to happen in my life and got much better. In december 2009 (12.17) i sat my foot in a catholic church for the first time ever.

I felt this strong holyness and a feeling of warm and cold at the same time, this strong love, careness and remember i wispered the words: yes, please…let me come home! My cousin sat next to me (he converted at the same time i did 11/24/2010) and noticed that i as he said it: “acted different”.

Of course i did! I remember that the words that came in my mind was: do not be afraid, pray, love and learn.

So i began attending masses in january 2010, started in a class much like RCIA in late january and converted in november 2010. The entire year i spent learning prayers, going to mass, learning the rite of the mass, developing a prayer life and going regulary to mass 1-3 times a week.

Today, being home. Life treats me so good. Ok, there are still challenges. Im debtfree and battling one specific addiction and it is getting much better (still got some setbacks, but they are fewer and fewer - i trust in God and pray that He gives me guidances and has done some important measures to cut down the possibilities of temptation - yet i know it is lurking like the devil does.

I go to mass 4-6 times a week, work as a volunteer in the local parish officer and at the moment are undergoing training to become an adult altar server, the first ever in the parish 45 long history.

So how long my journey took? 22 years in heart, three years in exploring the truth and one in doing it practically. It was and has been an at times hard ride, but i needed it and it has done me good.

God bless you all.
 
I became vaguely interested in the Church when I watched John Paul II’s funeral on television, but nothing ever came to fruition. Last year, I was talking to my Catholic friend, and he mentioned the various traditional practices of the Church. Those things interested me because I saw them as part of an intellectual approach to the Christian faith, which I had never experienced before, and which, frankly, I don’t think really exists anywhere else. It was always interesting to examine a traditional Catholic practice and ask myself, “Why do they do that? How is this rooted not only in faith but intellect and rationality?” Time and time again, things just made sense. It was a feeling, but at the same time, things also made sense rationally when I thought about them. That was in September of 2010. I enrolled in RCIA in October of 2010, and received the sacraments of initiation on the Easter Vigil of 2011.
 
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